Frontier Large Language Models on the 2026 Spanish MIR Examination: A Multimodal Cross-Sectional Evaluation.

Authors

  • Manuel Carpio Salmerón Department of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Santa Lucía University General Hospital, Cartagena, Spain https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8772-4565
  • Carlos Carazo-Casas Department of Otolaryngology, Ramón y Cajal Hospital, Madrid, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7568-7140
  • Pau Benito Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Clinical Institute of Medicine and Dermatology (ICMiD), Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2480-9133
  • Clemente Garcia Department of Radiology, Hospital Morales Meseguer, Murcia, Spain. https://orcid.org/0009-0001-6672-2714
  • Jesús Alonso-Carrillo Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4910-1497
  • Beatriz Carratalá Innovation and Digital Projects Academic Department, Healthcademia, Madrid, Spain
  • Georgios Kyriakos Department of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Santa Lucía University General Hospital, Cartagena, Spain. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2459-8655
  • Pablo González-Castro Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, Sevilla, Spain https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0077-126X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6018/edumed.716401
Keywords: Academic Research, Medical Education, Medical residents, MIR examination, Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Introduction: Large language model-based AI systems are increasingly used in medical education, but their educational value in multilingual, high-stakes examination settings remains insufficiently defined. Objective: To assess the accuracy of latest-generation AI systems on the official 2026 Spanish Médico Interno Residente (MIR) examination and compare their performance with the Healthcademia chatbot, AMIR faculty experts, and average candidates. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional quantitative evaluation analyzed all 200 valid questions from the official MIR 2026 Version 0 booklet. Performance was assessed using automated pipelines for text-only items and manual multimodal input for the 24 image-associated questions. Two instruction conditions, neutral and expert-role, were tested, with additional effort-level stratification for GPT-5.2. Accuracy was measured against the final official answer key. Human comparison groups included AMIR faculty experts and the average MIR candidate. Results: Several latest-generation AI systems showed very high accuracy on the MIR 2026 examination. The highest-performing configuration, GPT-5.2 high effort without expert-role instruction, achieved 199/200 correct answers (99.5%). Gemini 3 Flash with expert-role instruction achieved 198/200 (99.0%). AMIR faculty experts achieved 194/200 (97.0%), whereas the average candidate achieved 131/200 (65.7%). On image-associated questions, several multimodal configurations achieved 24/24 correct answers when the corresponding image was provided. Conclusions: Under the conditions evaluated in this study, several AI configurations achieved near-perfect accuracy on a complete, high-stakes national medical licensing examination. These findings support licensing-style examinations as benchmarks for educational AI and suggest potential use in supervised feedback and self-assessment. Performance on multiple-choice items should not be interpreted as evidence of autonomous clinical reasoning.

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Published
12-06-2026
How to Cite
Carpio Salmerón, M., Carazo-Casas , C., Benito, P., Garcia , C., Alonso-Carrillo , J., Carratalá , B., … González-Castro , P. (2026). Frontier Large Language Models on the 2026 Spanish MIR Examination: A Multimodal Cross-Sectional Evaluation. Spanish Journal of Medical Education, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.6018/edumed.716401