Public School School & Concertada Lottery

Did you know that on Tuesday 28th April 2026 the public school and concertada Lottery takes place that will determine the public school and concertada places for September?

What is the Lottery and how does it work?

Between 4th – 18th March families applied for places at the many public schools and concertadas across Catalunya.

Unfortunately, not all schools will have enough space for all the families who want to send their children there, so a series of steps have to be followed to assign the places in a fair and orderly manner.

The first step is that the applications are ordered based on priority criteria and then complementary criteria, and then, if the remaining applicants have the same number of points, they move onto a tiebreak situation. 

All applicants who applied in March have already been assigned their tiebreak number. If you applied and do not know your number, you need to go to your online application and see where they have written Número de Desempat. This is your tiebreak number.

Comparing this number with the number drawn on 28th April at the Department of Education should give applicants a fairly good idea of whether they will get a place or not at the school they put as their first choice.

I have number 13,431, what does this mean?

The number that is drawn on the 28th April could be anything from 1 until the number of applicants there are in the system this year. This will most likely be around 140,000 since each applicant across Catalunya is given their own unique number. So, for example, if the number drawn is 13,065, then the number 13,065 is the best number to have, 13,066 is the next best number to have. Taking on board how many applicants there are then, the number 13,431 would be in this case a very good number.

The numbers go in order upwards until the highest number (which is the number of applicants there are in total this year) and start again at 1, going upwards again until the number drawn. So, if you were to have the number 12,023 with the draw number being 13,065, this would be a very poor number and it is very unlikely that you will get the school you have put in first place if there were more applicants than places.

On the 29th April 2026, the lists are published which detail the applicants and the order of their places, taking on board the lottery number they were assigned.

There are further steps before the 'matriculation period' (when you accept the place that has been assigned to you). For more details about these stages and their respective dates, read my post here or get in touch!