IB Digital Society Predicted Topics 2026

Only partly, and it is worth being clear about which part. Four sittings is too few for a ranking, but three micro-topics have now appeared in all four — digital media dilemmas, robot characteristics and robot dilemmas — and six more in three of the four, including data security, data dilemmas, machine learning and AI dilemmas. What you cannot do is skip anything: the first three sittings each drew on all seven content topics, and November 2025 dropped only networks and the internet. A topic missing from one paper is a topic due in the next, not a topic you can leave out.

The structure, which has not varied across any of the four sittings. Every Paper 1 question runs part a (6 marks of recall, usually three 2-mark items), part b (6 marks of explanation, split 2 and 4) and part c (one 8-mark extended response). Paper 2 runs a 2-mark source-reading question, a 4-mark analysis, a 6-mark compare and contrast, and a 12-mark synthesis. HL Paper 3 runs a 4-mark identify, a 6-mark explain, an 8-mark evaluation and a 12-mark recommend — and in all four sittings that last question named exactly two interventions and asked you to choose between them.

Across the four sittings, Paper 1 is dominated by Identify (68 parts) and Explain (54), almost all at 2 marks, with the AO3 terms behind them — To what extent (15), Discuss (14) and Evaluate (7) — carrying the 8 and 12-mark responses. Describe and Outline appear six times each, Suggest four, Distinguish twice. Paper 2 question 3 has been Compare and contrast in all four sittings, and Paper 3 has ended with a 12-mark Recommend every single time.

Yes, and this is where a naive frequency count misleads badly. Of the 38 content micro-topics, 27 have been examined directly; of the 26 concept micro-topics, only 5 have. That looks like the concepts are safe to skip. They are not: they are the lens every 8-mark and 12-mark answer is written through, HL Section B names three of them in the question itself, and the markbands reward answers that use them explicitly. The concepts are assessed constantly — just never as the subject of the stem.

Almost certainly a few, and fewer than last time. Each sitting has examined about 20 of the 104 micro-topics, but the number appearing for the first time has fallen steadily — 22 in May 2024, then 11, 11 and 4. On that curve May 2026 should introduce roughly four to six new ones, and they will almost certainly come from the content and context units rather than from the concepts, which have supplied two first appearances in four sittings. Just under half the syllabus has now been examined directly, and it will not reach much beyond about two-thirds, because the concepts are assessed through the extended responses instead.

Twenty-three question papers across five sittings: the four live ones — May 2024, November 2024, May 2025 and November 2025 — plus the 2024 specimen. Each sitting has an SL and an HL Paper 1, a shared Paper 2 (two timezones in the May sessions) and an HL Paper 3. Aimnova indexes every question part from all of them by topic, command term and tariff, and every one is mirrored by practice questions of our own.