Dental Schools UK: The 2027 Entry Directory

UK dental schools are the 18 universities whose dentistry degrees appear on the General Dental Council’s list of qualifications leading to registration as a dentist. Sixteen of them admitted 1,216 new dental students in 2025-26 on the Office for Students’ initial count, and the University of East Anglia and the University of Portsmouth take their first students in September 2027, each with up to 25 government-funded places.

Which universities are UK dental schools for 2027 entry?

18 universities appear on the General Dental Council’s list of dentistry qualifications that lead to registration as a dentist. The count is 16 established schools, each with at least one GDC report on the list, plus the University of East Anglia and the University of Portsmouth, whose new degrees the GDC has provisionally accepted: 16 + 2 = 18. The same list also names the Royal College of Surgeons of England, whose listed qualification is the Licence in Dental Surgery, which the Department of Health and Social Care describes as “an exam that overseas-trained dentists can take in order to practise in the UK”, so it is not counted as a dental school. The 16 established schools are exactly the 16 universities that reported a dental intake to the Office for Students for 2025-26.

The table sets out all 18 by nation. Intake is the OfS’s initial count for 2025-26 from its Medical and Dental Students survey, prepared by the OfS as an official statistic on 4 December 2025, and it means the headcount of students starting a first UK registrable dental qualification. The OfS rounded every school and nation figure to the nearest 5, and warns that subtotals and totals may not sum exactly. “Other fee” covers students not eligible to pay the home level of fees, such as overseas students. The funded limit is the OfS maximum fundable limit, which applies to schools in England only.

Sources: OfS data on medical and dental intakes and its Medical and Dental Students survey 2025 workbook; OfS medical and dental maximum fundable limits; the GDC list linked above, read on 17 October 2026. Each intake cell is rounded on its own, so a row’s home and other-fee figures may not add to its total: Newcastle’s 70 home and 5 other fee sit beside a total of 70.

The OfS notes that medical and dental schools “set their own admissions criteria”, while the GDC sets the standards for dental education. Entry grades, UCAT use, interview format and contextual offers can therefore differ from one school to the next.

Who sets the number of dental places? England’s limit of 809, rising to 859 in 2027-28

The Office for Students says the total number of publicly funded students who can start medical and dental courses each year is limited, “and this limit is set by government”, and that each medical and dental school “is issued with an expected maximum intake”. In England that becomes a maximum fundable limit for each provider. Across England’s dental schools the limit from 2025-26 is 809 places, made up of 766 anticipated home places and 43 anticipated overseas places. From 2027-28 it becomes 859, with 816 home places.

Once set, a school’s limit carries forward. The OfS says a provider’s allocation “is not reassessed each year”; it rolls over unless government adds places. Recruitment is checked against it on a rolling five-year average, and a provider that over-recruits has the student numbers counted for its funding reduced the following year. Schools may use part of their limit for overseas students, for whom they receive no OfS funding, but the OfS says recent increases “can only be used to recruit home students”. The England total was also 809 for 2024-25 entry.

The 50 extra places for 2027-28 began with a government letter to the OfS on 10 March 2026. The Department of Health and Social Care’s press release that day called it the “first sustained expansion of dental school places in nearly 2 decades” and said the OfS had been asked to prioritise “so-called dental deserts that do not currently train dentists”, giving rural and coastal areas as examples. The OfS confirmed on 3 June 2026 that the places go to two new dental schools, the University of East Anglia and the University of Portsmouth, up to 25 each. Welcoming the expansion, the Dental Schools Council’s chief executive said that each year dental schools “are forced to turn away talented applicants who show great potential”.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sit outside the England limits but not outside the count. The OfS says its survey covers all providers across the UK with an expected maximum intake, and that the data for those three nations is used by the Scottish Funding Council, Medr and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland. International places are capped too: the Dental Schools Council states that the yearly intake of international students a dental school can accept “is capped by the government”.

What the OfS’s initial 2025-26 count of 1,216 new dental students shows

The OfS counted 1,216 students starting UK dental degrees in 2025-26 in its initial figures. By nation, rounded to the nearest 5 by the OfS, that is 900 in England, 175 in Scotland, 80 in Wales and 60 in Northern Ireland.

King’s College London is the largest single school, with 150 new dental students (145 home, 5 other fee), 20 of them on graduate entry, against an England limit of 148. Bristol, Glasgow and Leeds reported 90 each. At the other end, Aberdeen’s 20 and Lancashire’s 30 were all graduate entry on the OfS figures. The GDC lists Lancashire’s programme as a “BDS four year graduate entry programme”, and the Dental Schools Council’s 2027-entry booklet lists both schools under Graduate Entry Dentistry, which is why they belong with the graduate-entry courses rather than on a school leaver’s list.

Other-fee places are spread unevenly. Dundee reported 25 other-fee students out of 65, Leeds 20 out of 90 and Bristol 15 out of 90, while Sheffield’s other-fee figure rounds to 0 out of 80. For an applicant without home fee status, those figures show where students paying other fees started in 2025-26.

The OfS also splits the 2025-26 intake by sex at nation level. In England 560 women and 340 men started dental degrees; in Scotland the figures were 120 and 55, in Wales 50 and 30, and in Northern Ireland 50 and 10. On those figures, more women than men started dentistry in each of the four nations.

One caution applies before comparing years. The confirmed total for 2024-25 was 1,118, but the OfS notes that initial intakes “now include students that are exempted from counting against the maximum fundable limit, which were not previously collected”, so the gap between 1,118 and 1,216 is not a clean measure of growth.

UEA and Portsmouth: new dental schools the GDC has provisionally accepted

Both new schools are in England and both are funded through the 50 places described above. The University of East Anglia’s BDS Dental Surgery (UCAS code A200) and the University of Portsmouth’s Dental Surgery BDS (UCAS code B758, institution code P80) are five-year courses starting in September 2027. The Dental Schools Council’s 2027-entry booklet prints Portsmouth’s code as A758; Portsmouth’s own course page gives B758.

Both degrees are at the provisional stage of GDC approval. On 17 October 2026, the GDC’s list said each programme “has been provisionally accepted by the GDC Registrar”, and that the decision on whether a new dentistry programme is sufficient “will not be made until the first cohort has completed their studies and examinations, or assessments and the programme inspected by the GDC”. Its quality assurance pages explain the wider rules: the GDC assesses and approves all new programmes that lead to a registrable qualification, every new programme receives a full inspection in the year of its first graduating cohort, and a provider needs Dental Authority Status before it can set up a new dental school at all. On the same date, UEA described its course as “subject to approval by the General Dental Council (GDC)” and “progressing through the final stages of the approval process”, and Portsmouth said its course “has GDC pre-accreditation approval”.

Timing also matters for 2027 entry. On 17 October 2026, Portsmouth’s course page said its equal consideration deadline of 15 October 2026 had passed and that it was “no longer accepting applications from UK/home students”, although international students could still apply. On 31 October 2026 UEA listed tuition of £10,050 for UK students in 2027/28, and Portsmouth listed £10,050 a year for UK students starting in September 2027, “subject to annual increase”.

Can you change dental school after you start? What the Dental Schools Council says

The Dental Schools Council’s statement on transfers begins: “Dental schools do not accept transfers of students from other schools.” It gives two reasons. The requirements for graduation defined by the regulator “are not taught and assessed in a similar order” from one school to the next, and “Government capped places would also be disrupted by student transfers.” It then states one exception: schools “may consider transfers for students in unforeseen exceptional circumstances with approval of both the sending and receiving programmes”, adding: “In most cases the student would need to re-start from year one.” Students at a dental school outside the UK “are unable to transfer into a programme in a UK dental school”.

The same statement asks applicants to weigh the intensity of the course and its “potential geographical distance from their support networks” before applying.

For 2027 entry, the UCAS equal consideration date for most dentistry courses was 15 October 2026 at 18:00 UK time, and UCAS allows five choices in total; the University of Birmingham notes that “only four choices can be used to apply to dental schools”. Booking for the UCAT 2026 closed on 16 September 2026 at 15:00 UK time, and on 17 October 2026 the UCAT’s booking page said instructions on how to register and book for the UCAT 2027 “will be published in March 2027”. If you have applied for 2027 entry, a free consultation with one of our dentistry admissions tutors covers interview preparation for the schools on your application.

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Who pays for five years of dentistry? It depends on where you live

Which body a student applies to for funding depends on where they normally live. The Student Awards Agency Scotland puts it plainly: “Each part of the UK has its own student funding agency.” A student who normally lives in Scotland applies to SAAS, which provides “government money to colleges and universities to pay for your course tuition fees”; students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland apply to their own nation’s body. What follows is orientation for students from England only, with the year and the scheme attached to every figure.

For courses that started before 1 January 2027, GOV.UK’s student finance pages give a Tuition Fee Loan of up to £9,790 for a full-time student in 2026-27, up from £9,535 in 2025-26. For courses starting on or after 1 January 2027, which includes a dental degree starting in September 2027, GOV.UK says students may need to apply through the new Lifelong Learning Entitlement, that its Tuition Fee Loans run to a total of £39,160, “the same as around 4 years of full-time study or 480 credits”, and that an extra loan may be available if a course is longer than four years. Dentistry is one of the subjects listed for priority additional entitlement, extra loan for when “your Tuition Fee Loan does not cover the full cost of a longer priority course”. GOV.UK says the amount a student can get is set out in the Notification of Entitlement issued after they apply.

The NHS Bursary is a separate scheme for eligible medical or dental students “who normally live in England”; a student who moved to England from somewhere else in the UK for their studies is not eligible. On an undergraduate course of five or more years it can be claimed for years 5 and 6. Its 2026-27 rates include a tuition fee contribution of up to £9,790 for an undergraduate course lasting five or six years, a non-means-tested grant of £1,081, and a means-tested bursary. How the bursary works on accelerated courses is covered in our guide to graduate-entry dentistry.

International students pay international fees, which the Dental Schools Council notes vary between dental schools, and it states that they “do not qualify for any UK government financial support”.

What does every UK dental degree lead to? GDC registration, then Dental Foundation Training

Whichever school a student chooses, the destination is the same register. The GDC says “only dental professionals registered with the GDC are allowed to work in the UK”, and the OfS describes dental degrees as pre-registration courses: completing one makes a student eligible to apply for registration with the GDC. The standards behind that registration belong to the GDC rather than to any school. Its Safe Practitioner framework of learning outcomes and behaviours took effect from 1 August 2025, with all education providers to be mapped against it by the academic year 2030/31, and its revised Standards for Education, published in September 2025, come into effect in the 2026/27 academic year, replacing the set first published in May 2015.

Registration is not the last step for NHS work. The Dental Schools Council explains that to practise in the NHS a newly qualified dentist “must complete a further one year of training” in a Dental Foundation Training scheme. There are two schemes, Dental Foundation Training for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Vocational Training for Scotland, and applicants can apply to both. They need a BDS or equivalent by the start of the training programme and full GDC registration by the date of appointment, and the Council describes entry as “highly competitive”. After the foundation year, it says, dentists “can begin work as an associate in a practice”.

Where to go next: school pages and dentistry guides

School-by-school pages in this directory:

• University of Birmingham dental school
• King's College London dental school
• University of Leeds dental school
• University of Manchester dental school
• Newcastle University dental school
• University of Sheffield dental school
• Queen's University Belfast dental school

Questions that run across every school are answered in our dentistry guides:

• Dental schools without the UCAT for 2027 entry: routes that set no admissions test.
• Dental schools ranked by UCAT score: how each school weights the test.
• Dental school UCAT cut-offs and trends: published thresholds, year by year.
• Dental school GCSE requirements: the GCSE bar on each course.
• Dental school interview questions and MMI stations: interview formats and stations.
• Low UCAT score dentistry options: building a realistic shortlist.
• Graduate-entry dentistry courses compared: accelerated courses and second-degree funding.
• Dentistry admissions in the UK: how dentistry admissions differ from medicine.

For medicine, the equivalent directory is our UK medical schools hub. The Dental Schools Council also publishes its entry requirements booklet for 2027 entry, which it describes as “the only resource that collates entry requirements directly from admissions staff in UK dental schools”.

Frequently asked questions about UK dental schools