Aim for FiveArt History

Exam guide

The AP® Art History exam

When it is, how it's set up, what's on it, how students have scored, and a straight answer on how hard it is.

Your exam:

Checked against College Board's website in October 2026.

When is the 2027 exam?

Date
, session 2 (usually afternoon). Your AP coordinator sets the exact start time.
Length
3 hours
How you take it
Fully digital: you answer everything in the Bluebook testing app.
Calculator
No calculator.

See every exam on one page in the 2027 exam calendar.

New

What's new for the May 2027 exam

College Board changed one thing about the Art History exam. Open one to see what it means for you.

  • A few required works have new titles or corrected details

    Work 141 is now titled The Migration Series, Panel 49, work 175 is now the Sande Sowei mask, and work 227 is dated 1979. The captions for works 61, 64 and 94 were corrected too.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · CED clarifications, p. 1 (Framework Clarifications))

Updated October 3, 2026 from College Board's pages. All 2027 exam changes

How the exam is set up

The sections of the 2027 Art History exam
SectionQuestionsTimeShare of score
Multiple choiceSingle questions and sets of 2 or 3 questions about images of works of art.80 questions1 hour50%
Free responseA comparison, a visual or contextual analysis, and short essays on visual analysis, context, attribution, and continuity and change.6 questions (2 long essays, 4 short essays)2 hours50%

What's on the exam

College Board says roughly how much of the exam comes from each unit. The biggest are Unit 3, Early Europe and Colonial Americas, 200–1750 CE (About 21%) and Unit 4, Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 CE (About 21%).

  1. Unit 1Global Prehistory, 30,000–500 BCEAbout 4%
  2. Unit 2Ancient Mediterranean, 3500 BCE–300 CEAbout 15%
  3. Unit 3Early Europe and Colonial Americas, 200–1750 CEAbout 21%
  4. Unit 4Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 CEAbout 21%
  5. Unit 5Indigenous Americas, 1000 BCE–1980 CEAbout 6%
  6. Unit 6Africa, 1100–1980 CEAbout 6%
  7. Unit 7West and Central Asia, 500 BCE–1980 CEAbout 4%
  8. Unit 8South, East, and Southeast Asia, 300 BCE–1980 CEAbout 8%
  9. Unit 9The Pacific, 700–1980 CEAbout 4%
  10. Unit 10Global Contemporary, 1980 CE to PresentAbout 11%

How it's scored

Multiple choice is scored by computer, and a wrong answer costs you nothing, so answer every question. The free-response answers are scored in June by AP teachers and college professors, using a rubric.

Each section's points are weighted by its share of the score, added up, and turned into a score from 1 to 5. College Board doesn't publish exactly how many points each score needs, and the cutoffs can change a little from year to year.

Want a rough idea of where you stand? Try the Art History score calculator with your practice test results. For the 1 to 5 scale and college credit, see how AP scores work.

How students scored in 2026

AP® Art History scores in 2026, percent of students
Score of 5
15%
Score of 4
25%
Score of 3
27%
Score of 2
24%
Score of 1
9%

Scores of 3 or higher (67% of students) have green bars; 2s and 1s have gray ones. A 3 is where many colleges start to give credit.

In 2026, 67% of students scored 3 or higher, and 15% got a 5. The most common score was a 3.

In 2025, 25,584 students took the exam. 65.6% scored 3 or higher, 16% got a 5, and the average score was 3.11. College Board hasn't published the 2026 number of students or average score yet.

Source: College Board's AP Art History score distributions. Percentages are College Board's, rounded, so they may not add to exactly 100. Compare every course.

Is AP® Art History hard?

Judging by pass rates alone, Art History is one of the harder exams to pass. In 2026, 67% of students scored 3 or higher: the 20th highest pass rate of the 27 exams on this site. 15% got a 5, tied for the 18th highest share of 5s.

Art History has 250 required works of art, from prehistory to today and from every part of the world. For each one you need to know what it is, where and when it was made, and why it matters.

The multiple choice moves fast (80 questions in 1 hour), and the essays ask you to compare works and explain their context.

Pass rates show how students did, not exactly how hard the material is. They also depend on who takes each exam and how much they prepared. See every course's pass rate.

Get ready on this site

Where these facts come from

College Board runs the exams and can change the rules. If something here doesn't match their site, trust their site.