Which Cambridge Colleges Interview Online? Format by College, 2027 Entry

Cambridge interviews for 2027 entry run from 7 to 18 December 2026, and the format depends on which College is assessing you. Fourteen of the 29 colleges interview everyone online. Four interview everyone in person, wherever they live, and the rest split by where the applicant is based or by course. If you live outside the UK, five Colleges can mean a flight to Cambridge: Churchill, Emmanuel, King’s and Selwyn for every course, and Clare for Medicine and Music.

Which Cambridge Colleges Interview Online for 2027 Entry?

Cambridge’s own statement is that interviews “may be online or in person, depending on which College is assessing your application and the course you have applied for”. Both halves of that matter, and inside many of the rows sits a third factor: where you live.

Grouped, the 29 colleges fall into four patterns:

All online (14): Christ’s, Downing, Fitzwilliam, Girton, Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish, Magdalene, Murray Edwards, Newnham, Queens’, St Catharine’s, St Edmund’s, St John’s, Wolfson.
All in person, wherever you live (4): Churchill, Emmanuel, King’s, Selwyn.
Split by where you live (8): Corpus Christi, Gonville & Caius, Pembroke, Peterhouse, Robinson, Sidney Sussex, Trinity, Trinity Hall.
Split by your course (3): Clare, Homerton, Jesus.

Just under half of Cambridge’s colleges interview every applicant online, so for a large share of candidates the question of travel does not arise at all. The second group is the one to read carefully if you live abroad: those four Colleges ignore where you live, so living abroad earns no exception.

The Full Table, All 29 Colleges

Each entry is split by where the applicant is based, because that decides whether you travel. The last column is Cambridge’s ruling on the Gaokao, China’s university entrance examination.

Hughes Hall, St Edmund’s and Wolfson admit only students aged 21 or over, so an applicant coming straight from school chooses from the other 26.

If you live outside the UK, read the third column. Ten Colleges distinguish by where the applicant is based, and every one of them interviews applicants from abroad online or lets them choose. The Colleges that can make an overseas applicant travel are the ones that draw no such distinction: Churchill, Emmanuel, King’s and Selwyn interview every shortlisted applicant in person, wherever they live, and Clare interviews Medicine and Music in person for everyone. That is five Colleges at which an international candidate can be required to fly to Cambridge in December, and each of the four all-in-person Colleges limits travel funding to applicants in the UK.

Which Colleges Can Make an Overseas Applicant Travel?

Cambridge’s rule is that you “will not usually be able to request a particular format”, with an alternative at the discretion of the College assessing you. The four all-in-person Colleges each publish how they apply it.

King’s is the strictest and the most explicit. The deadline for its Applicant Form, the only place to ask, falls more than a month before interviews, and King’s warns that if the form is missed “your application may be automatically discontinued”. After that there is one late route: a visa “not granted by five days prior to your interview date” earns an online interview if you applied promptly. There is no way out by moving: “you will not be able to transfer your application to another college.”

Emmanuel interviews from 7 to 16 December. Selwyn’s rule is new, applying “From 2026”, and it may hold early interviews from the week beginning 30 November for subjects without a pre-registered admissions assessment. Churchill arranges online interviews “only in exceptional circumstances”.

Clare is the one an applicant abroad is most likely to miss, because its default is online. For Medicine and Music, Cambridge’s table says “all interviews will be in person”, and Clare’s own page puts most of its interviews between 7 and 16 December. Neither carves out applicants from overseas.

Much of the advice still in circulation predates these rules. In June 2023 Varsity reported that King’s offered overseas candidates a remote or in-person interview and that Selwyn would encourage them to accept an online one. For 2027 entry both require everyone in person.

Questions on My Cambridge Application tell Cambridge which column you are in: where you will be during the first three weeks of December, and if that is abroad, your country and time zone (“UTC +8” for China, Singapore, Hong Kong or Malaysia, “UTC +5:30” for India). Cambridge asks “so that we can try to schedule online interviews at an appropriate time for applicants and interviewers”. It schedules an online interview; it does not turn an in-person College into an online one. For what your offset means in local hours, see our guide to Oxbridge interview time zones for overseas applicants.

Does an Open Application Avoid an In-Person Interview?

No. An open application is allocated “to a College that has received fewer applications per place for your course”, and Cambridge states: “If you make an open application, you cannot be reallocated to a College with a different interview format.” Churchill, Emmanuel and Selwyn each say in terms that their in-person rule covers open applicants; King’s page does not mention them either way. If travelling would be impossible for you, the way to rule it out is to name a College whose third-column entry is online for your course, or a choice.

The Gaokao and the CBSE, College by College

For applicants from China the first filter is not format. Cambridge says the Gaokao “is considered suitable preparation for Cambridge by most Colleges”, then splits all 29 three ways: 13 Colleges want a rank in the top 0.1% of your province, and “typically expect” extra achievement such as Olympiads or APs; 8 want at least 90% in each of three core subjects or the top 1% to 3%; and 8 do not accept it alone. Two of the Colleges that accept it, Hughes Hall and Wolfson, take only students aged 21 or over.

Set beside the interview table, which is our comparison rather than a statement Cambridge makes, two Colleges close twice for a Gaokao-only applicant abroad. King’s and Selwyn do not accept the Gaokao alone, and would require the flight if they did. Churchill and Emmanuel accept it at the top-0.1% tier but still interview in person. Trinity and Pembroke, the two that let every applicant abroad choose their format, sit in the first and second tiers.

The same Cambridge page lists India’s CBSE Class XII for 23 courses at 20 Colleges, three of which (Hughes Hall, St Edmund’s and Wolfson) are for mature students only. Of the four all-in-person Colleges, only Selwyn is among the 20. Clare is too, and Music, which Clare interviews in person, is one of the 23.

Three Colleges Where It Depends on Your Course

Jesus is the striking one: ten named courses, most of them the ones where a candidate is likely to be handed something to work on. A UK-based applicant to Jesus for one of the ten is travelling to Cambridge, although for History and Modern Languages only the Languages interview is in person. A UK-based applicant for anything else, and every applicant outside the UK, is online.

Music appears in all three lists with three different results: at Clare every Music applicant travels, at Homerton UK-based applicants choose, and at Jesus UK-based applicants travel. If you are applying for Music, check your College’s arrangements first rather than last.

Can You Ask for a Different Format?

The honest answer is usually no. Cambridge offers an alternative format only “in exceptional circumstances (for example if you have a disability or your visa application is declined)”, and then “at the discretion of the College assessing your application”. The request goes to the College assessing your application, and a preference for one format over the other is not a ground.

Travel support is narrower than it first looks. Cambridge: “For in-person interviews, travel support is available for UK students eligible for Free School Meals.” For applicants abroad, King’s is “unable to reimburse travel costs for non-UK-based applicants”, Selwyn does not reimburse international travel, and Churchill and Emmanuel pay transport only for applicants living in the UK. What Selwyn does offer overseas travellers is up to two nights of free accommodation.

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What the Invitation Tells You, and When

The invitation settles everything. Cambridge says it tells you when and where your interview is, what you’ll need on the day, whether there is pre-interview reading or a task to work through, and how to attend. Most go out in November, some in early December, and “The timing of your interview does not reflect your perceived strength as a candidate.”

One more sentence from Cambridge is worth carrying into the room: “We invite many applicants to interview. Not everyone interviewed will be offered a place, but everyone who is made an offer will have been interviewed.” The interview is where the decision is made, which is the argument for treating the format as logistics and the conversation as the work.

How Many Interviews, and How Long?

Cambridge: “The number of interviews you have does not relate to how strong your application is. Most applicants will have 1 or 2 interviews lasting a total of 35 minutes to an hour. Some may have 3 or 4 interviews, depending on subject and College.”

Oxford runs its interviews differently. Every Oxford interview for 2027 entry is online, on Microsoft Teams, with three technology tiers; our guide to Oxford’s three interview technology tiers lists which courses sit in each.

What the Format Changes About Preparing

If you are online, Cambridge’s preparation checklist asks for a quiet space, a charged device, a tested webcam, microphone and connection, and “a pen and paper in case you need to make notes or show how you’ve worked out a problem”. If you are travelling, plan the journey and expect waiting, which is where confidence is most easily lost.

What does not change is the conversation: interviewers “are interested in how you work out your answers and how you think”. See how to think out loud in an Oxbridge interview and what Oxbridge interviewers actually mark. Whether questions vary by College is separate: do Oxbridge interview questions differ by college? Cambridge also warns that commercial interview services “do not have access to any exclusive information”; that is true of us too, and our guide to what Cambridge publishes shows where the real material is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed September 2026: every College’s format checked against Cambridge’s 2027-entry table, the in-person Colleges’ exception routes and travel rules against their admissions pages, and the Gaokao and CBSE lists against Cambridge’s international entry requirements.