DELE C1 for health professionals

Spain’s Ministry of Health fills its specialised health training places (formación sanitaria especializada) through one national selection exam a year. The current call is Orden SND/854/2026 of 4 August 2026, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 10 August 2026. It offers places to graduates in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, psychology, chemistry, biology and physics for training that starts in 2027, and its exam is on 23 January 2027.

The requirement as the call words it

Requirement e) in the call’s list of admission requirements reads: Demostrar un conocimiento suficiente del idioma español, en el caso de las personas aspirantes nacionales de Estados cuya lengua oficial no sea el español, a través de un título oficial que acredite que el nivel adquirido es, como mínimo, el C1, según la clasificación derivada del Marco Común Europeo de referencia para las lenguas, tal como se establece en el artículo 19 del Real Decreto 589/2022, de 19 de julio.

In English: applicants who are nationals of a state whose official language is not Spanish must prove sufficient Spanish with an official certificate showing at least C1 on the Common European Framework scale. The requirement depends on your nationality. Nationals of Spanish-speaking countries do not need a certificate.

Certificates the call accepts

The call’s section on the documents that prove each requirement lists these for Spanish. You submit an authentic copy (copia auténtica) of one of these:

• A DELE diploma at C1 or C2. If you do not have the diploma yet, the call accepts a certificate from the centre where you sat the exam stating that you were declared apto on the official marks of the Instituto Cervantes.
• A certificate from an official language school (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas) for the specialised courses at C1 or above.
• A diploma or certificate in the SICELE system, if you show that it is equivalent to the DELE at C1 or above.
• A SIELE certificate that shows C1 equivalence in each of its four tests. DELE or SIELE compares the two exams.

Who is exempt

The call exempts two groups from proving Spanish:

• applicants whose university degree, the one they apply with, was taught in Spanish at a university in Spain or in a country where Spanish is an official language;
• applicants who have completed at least two full years of specialised health training in Spain.

When your C1 must be ready

The call says the admission requirements deberán reunirse y acreditarse dentro del plazo de presentación de solicitudes: they must be met and proven within the application period. The documents go in with the application. Applicants left off the provisional list of admitted candidates get ten working days to send what is missing, but the requirement itself belongs to the application period.

For the 2026 call that period ran from 1 to 14 September 2026, and it has closed. Each year’s call sets its own dates, so check the next one when it appears in the BOE. To use a DELE C1, choose a sitting whose results are out before that call’s application period ends. The table below lists the C1 sittings you can still book, and DELE results explains when results come out. If your diploma has not arrived by then, ask the centre where you sat the exam for the certificate the call describes.

Preparing for DELE C1

The DELE C1 guide sets out each test and the pass rules. Since April 2024, C1 includes mediation tasks: you summarise a lecture in writing and a press article aloud, then give your view. Free DELE C1 practice has a set for every reading and listening task, both writing tasks and the three speaking tasks.