Latest IELTS Writing Questions 2026: 10 Sites Compared

Why so many recent-question lists go wrong

Most recent-question pages start with good intentions. A teacher or a website collects what candidates report and posts it. The problems begin with how that collection is kept up.

The first problem is the source. A page that relies on the reports that happen to reach one teacher or one community will see only a small slice of the tests taking place around the world. When those reports dry up, the page often stays online with its old questions, and nothing on it tells you that it has gone quiet.

The second problem is the date. Many pages are dated by month, and some only in the title. A title that says "October" may simply mean the page was edited in October. Unless each question carries its own date, you cannot tell whether it was reported last week or last year.

The third problem is copying. Recalls travel. A question reported on one site is often copied to several others, sometimes with small changes in wording. Seeing the same question on five pages can make it look widely reported when it came from a single candidate.

The last problem is the hardest to spot: old questions presented as new. IELTS reuses questions, and a prompt from several years ago can appear again this month. Unless a list checks each question against earlier records, there is no way to tell a genuinely new question from an old one coming back.

How we build our list, and why you can rely on it

We set out to fix each of those problems, and the method is simple to describe even if it takes work every week.

We follow IELTS recall sources from many countries around the world, in many languages, every week. Each report is checked in the same way. First we decide whether it is a new question or another report of one we already have, because two candidates rarely remember a prompt in exactly the same words. Then we record the test date and, where the report says so, the type of test, such as a computer-delivered IDP or British Council test. Finally we look for the question in earlier records, including dated public pages from previous years and the official Cambridge IELTS books.

The result is one clean list instead of a pile of copies. Each question appears once, under the week candidates reported it. A question reported after tests on at least two different days in the last three months is marked "Recent repeat". An old question that has come back is marked "Recycled", with the year it first appeared. Both badges link to the records behind them, so you can check the evidence for yourself instead of taking our word for it.

Here is what that looks like for one question.

As far as we know, no other site tracks recent IELTS Writing questions this way.

10 popular recent-question sites compared

To see how other lists measure up, we checked ten popular recent-question sites on 8 October 2026 against the four things that matter most. Has the list been updated in the last four weeks? Does each question have its own date? Are old questions marked as repeats? And does each report say which test or country it came from? Each check passed earns one star. Sites that date questions only by month were given the benefit of the doubt: a "September" label counts as a recent update.

The pattern is clear. Several well-known pages stopped adding questions months ago. Others carry the current month in their titles while the questions inside are older. None of the sites we checked marks old questions as repeats, which, as the next section shows, is where most of the value lies.

Most "new" questions are old

Tracking every report has one big advantage: we can see how many "new" questions are really new. The short answer is very few. At least 86% of the questions reported in the last three months had appeared before.

Between 7 July and 4 October 2026 we recorded 244 dated reports covering 209 different questions, 103 for Task 2 and 106 for Academic Task 1. Of those 209 questions, 180 had appeared before. We could not match the other 29 to an earlier question, but most of them are well-known topics in new words: whether watching television is bad for children, why obesity is rising, people looking for medical advice online, who should pay university fees. So the real share of old questions is very likely higher than 86%.

Many of these questions are not just a little old. Where we found a dated public record, the gap was never shorter than eight months; the median was almost three years, and the oldest record went back to 2012.

The examples behind these numbers are striking. A Task 2 question asking whether reading and watching the news is a waste of time, first recorded in December 2022, was reported three times between 11 July and 8 August 2026. A question about whether ambition is a positive quality, first seen in January 2024, came up again three times between July and October. An Academic Task 1 line graph on cinema attendance in the UK, reported in August 2026, appears in a public record from June 2012. And a chart about how families in one country spent their weekly income in 1968 and 2018 is a task from the official Cambridge IELTS 17 book.

Repeats also cluster in time. Thirty of the 209 questions were reported after tests on more than one day within these three months, which is exactly what our "Recent repeat" badge picks out.

IELTS does not say how it chooses its questions, but the reports make the pattern plain. Questions and topics come back, sometimes after many years, and the same question can be reported several times within a few weeks.

That is good news for your preparation. A recent-questions list is not a preview of next week's paper, and no list can be. What it can do is show you which familiar questions are in use right now. If you practise the question types and topics that keep returning, you cover most of what you are likely to meet, and you are not relying on luck.

How to prepare with recent questions

Start with the last four weeks. Read through the current list and notice the question types as much as the topics: for Task 2, opinion essays, discussion essays, problem and solution, advantages and disadvantages and two-part questions; for Academic Task 1, line graphs, bar charts, tables, maps and processes. Then look back over the previous months, for example September 2026, to see what keeps coming up.

Give priority to questions marked "Recent repeat". They have been reported after tests on at least two different days, so they are clearly in use. Questions marked "Recycled" deserve attention too, because they have already proved that they come back.

Then write. Pick one question, answer it under exam conditions, 40 minutes for Task 2 or 20 minutes for Task 1, and get feedback on all four criteria the same day. Questions on our list that have a full question page come with scored sample essays and line-by-line feedback, and you can submit your own answer there. Rewrite the weakest paragraph before moving on.

One warning: do not memorise model answers for the questions you find. Memorised language does not earn credit, and the next time a question appears, its wording will be a little different. What carries over is the ability to plan quickly, answer the exact question asked and support your ideas clearly. Recent questions are the best practice material for building that skill, because they are the questions candidates are actually facing.

Common questions

Where can I find the latest IELTS Writing questions?

On our Recent IELTS Writing questions page, updated every week. Each question is listed under the week candidates reported it, with links to the records behind it, and earlier months stay available in the monthly archive, for example September 2026.

Are IELTS Writing questions repeated?

Yes, often. In our data, at least 86% of the questions reported between July and October 2026 had appeared before, some more than a decade earlier. Topics repeat even more often than exact questions.

Is there an official list of recent IELTS Writing questions?

No. IELTS does not publish the questions used in live tests. Official practice material is available from IELTS, the British Council and IDP, but every list of recent questions, including ours, is built from candidates' reports.

How often is the recent-questions list updated?

Every week. Each question sits under the week it was reported, earlier months stay available in a monthly archive, and the badges are updated as new reports arrive.

What our list does not cover yet

Our list has limits, and it is better to say so. We do not yet cover General Training Task 1 letters, because we have not found them reported with reliable dates every week. A question can only appear after someone reports it, so the newest week is always the least complete. And we only show a test type when the original report includes one.