Edexcel GCSE Chemistry grade boundaries 2026: every grade

Chemistry 1CH0: the 2026 lines

From Pearson's GCSE (9-1) document for June 2026. The second row of each table is the mark as a share of 200.

The course is covered in the Edexcel GCSE Chemistry guide, and the whole board in Edexcel GCSE grade boundaries 2026.

How 2026 sits against the last two summers

Here are the key lines for 2024, 2025 and 2026:

After the large rise in 2025, Higher grade 4 came back 7 marks to 55, and grade 3 fell 8 to 43. The top end held: grade 9 rose 4 to 165, the highest of the three years. The Foundation lines went the opposite way. Grade 5 climbed from 124 to 137, and grade 4 from 104 to 118, a long way above the 99 of 2024.

A line that moves this far in both directions is a reminder that no single year predicts the next.

Marks to grades in 2026

• Higher. Paper 1 is 62 and Paper 2 is 58, so the total is 120. That is above 103 (grade 6) and below 127 (grade 7): a grade 6, 7 marks short of a 7.
• Foundation. 120 is above 118 (grade 4) and below 137 (grade 5): a grade 4, 17 marks short of a 5.
• One tier up. 55 out of 200 is a Higher grade 4 exactly, because the boundary is the lowest mark for the grade. On Foundation it would be a grade 1, above 30 and below 59.

Aiming for a Chemistry grade

Pearson defines a boundary as the minimum mark at which a numbered grade can be achieved. On Higher the lowest line is grade 3 at 43, so a Higher candidate on 42 gets a U, and on Foundation anything below the grade 1 line of 30 is a U. That is worth knowing if you are deciding how much to risk on the last extended answer of a paper.

• Higher grade 7 needs 127 marks, 64%. That is one mark fewer than the 128 of 2025.
• Foundation grade 4 needs 59%, so every mark on the early recall questions counts.
• Separate chemistry content sits in topics 5 and 9 of the specification, inside the same two papers.

For a quick read, sit today's Higher or Foundation paper. It is not an Edexcel paper, so use the share, not the raw mark.

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UK · GCSEEdexcel GCSE grade boundaries 2026: marks for every gradePearson's official June 2026 Edexcel GCSE boundaries for Maths, the sciences and Computer Science, compared with 2025 and with AQA.