Over 159,000 students sought a first-year or transfer seat this year, with increases in almost every key applicant category.
Members of the California Straw Hat Band perform at the 2025 Fall Convocation for new students.
Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley
February 24, 2026
A UC Berkeley education remains in high demand, with more than 159,000 students seeking a seat in the fall 2026 first-year or transfer class, admissions officials announced Tuesday.
First-year applications increased by 5% compared to fall 2025, while transfer applications jumped to a record high of 12%.
The growth follows a historic year for Berkeley in which two faculty members were awarded Nobel Prizes — Omar Yaghi for chemistry and John Clarke for physics — and the university’s standing as the No. 1 public school in the country was cemented by rankings from U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Times Higher Education and Forbes.
There were more than 133,100 first-year applications for fall 2026, approximately 6,300 more than last year. Transfer students submitted more than 26,200 applications, about 2,900 more than the prior year.
Application data for all University of California campuses is available here.
Among first-year applicants as well as transfer students, UC Berkeley saw an increase in applications from almost every key applicant category, meaning more California residents, more residents from outside the state or country, more first-generation college students and more applications from students of all ethnic and racial groups, except for Pacific Islander first-year applicants. (It is not unusual for racial categories with relatively small numbers of applicants to experience year-to-year fluctuations.)
Admission decisions for most first-year applicants will be posted March 26. For transfer students, decisions will be posted April 17.