History updates

The new DP history course will be launched in February 2026 for first teaching in August 2026. First assessment will take place in May 2028.

Below you will find an overview of the course updates. For a technical breakdown of the DP curriculum and assessment methods for this course, read the history subject brief.

You also can view information on the current history course.

To view all subject briefs, visit the DP curriculum page.

Overview of the new course

History is a dynamic, evidence-based and interpretative discipline that engages with the past. DP history is designed around historical inquiry with an overarching emphasis on teaching students to think historically. Students will explore the past through a variety of contexts, concepts, content and skills, and they will engage with diverse perspectives and evidence to reach their own judgements.

The course is designed to meet the needs of diverse school contexts. It is a world history course grounded in a variety of global, regional and national themes. The course allows for a mixture of comparative, thematic and in-depth study; it also provides a balance of structure and flexibility, making it possible to implement the course in a wide range of contexts.  

How DP history meets the needs of the current teaching landscape

The DP history course provides a great deal of choice on what content to study within a common framework of inquiry contexts, concepts and skills. Teachers must choose one paired case study, one global theme and (for HL students only) two regional-in depth topics from a selected region. For whichever global theme they select, teachers must then select relevant examples.

These choices mean teachers can meet different requirements, such as national or state requirements, when designing the course.

Teachers should consider where to offer student choice within the course. This is required in the internal assessment, but all parts of the course—from choosing examples for the global themes to selecting which regional in-depth topics to study—can, where appropriate, incorporate student choice.

Course content changes

The updated history course includes:

• Redefined specified concepts: The new course introduces four specified concepts (cause and consequence, continuity and change, perspectives, and significance) that are threaded throughout the course.
• Paired case studies: The current course’s prescribed subjects have been redesigned as paired case studies. Students must study one set of paired case studies from a choice of five. Paired case studies are designed to build skills in using sources. Each set of paired case studies is designed to encourage students to engage with diverse sources.
• Global themes: The current course’s world history topics have been redesigned as global themes. Students must choose one of four global themes to study. Each global theme is designed to build skills in making connections among the diverse historical examples they study. While covering similar content as the current course, each global theme gives greater choice for teachers to select diverse, relevant examples for their context.
• Regional in-depth topics: The current course’s depth studies have been redesigned as regional in-depth topics. Students must choose two of twelve regional in-depth topics to study from their selected region (Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, or Europe). Each regional in-depth topic is designed to build skills in evaluating arguments. There is significant continuity of topics with the current course, though each topic has been refined to support more focused study.

There also is a balance of continuity and change in the course content topics.  While there is significant continuity with the current course, the new course introduces the option to study more diverse topics such as climate and resilience, as well as innovation and transformation. It also increases opportunities to explore the experiences of diverse, sometimes marginalized, perspectives.

Changes to the assessment model

The updated history course has significant continuity with its predecessor in terms of assessment. However, there are some important changes:

External assessment:

• A more authentic, less mechanistic Paper 1: Paper 1 is still a source-based paper designed around the paired case studies (previously prescribed subjects). The paper now is designed using a framing inquiry question to encourage more authentic use of sources. The questions ask students to identify relevant information from two sources, analyze the context of a source and examine diverse perspectives across three sources in ways that would help a historian answer the inquiry question. The questions also have been designed to allow for more open-ended student responses.
• More short-response and conceptual questions in Paper 2: Paper 2 has changed with the introduction of a new section A, where students respond to a question on one of the specified concepts. In Section B, students respond to a short response and essay response question on their global theme (previously world history topic). The reduction in essay responses creates a more diverse, accessible exam.
• Reduction and streamlining of Paper 3: Paper 3 is still an essay-based paper on the regional in-depth topics (previously depth studies). Students respond to two essay questions, instead of three as they do in the current course, which must be chosen from different topics. All questions provide students with an argument they must evaluate.
• Time allocation for papers: The time students are given to complete all the papers has been adjusted to give them more thinking time during the exam.

Internal assessment:

The internal assessment remains a historical investigation of the student's choice. The reflection section has been removed and the three sections now are: historical inquiry question, sources and perspectives, and synthesis and evaluation. The updated internal assessment has a greater emphasis on students’ explanations of the development of their inquiry question and their selection of sources. Students can include a maximum of seven sources in their internal assessment to help them develop a more focused historical inquiry.