What is on the VCE English text list?

Forty entries a year: twenty on List 1, which are the texts studied for text response and comparative analysis, and twenty on List 2, the mentor texts for Creating Texts. Both lists are below, for 2026 and for 2027.

The number beside each text is VCAA’s own annotation, and it counts how many years that text has been set. It is worth reading: a text in its fourth year is usually in its last, which matters if you are choosing something to build a year of work around.

The eight texts leaving after 2026

These appear on the 2026 List 1 and not on the 2027 one. Seven of the eight are annotated (4) — the fourth year, which is where VCAA’s own stated practice usually ends a text’s run. This is a comparison of two published lists, not a forecast.

Text	Author	Form	Years set
We Have Always Lived in the Castle	Shirley Jackson	novel	4
Bad Dreams and Other Stories	Tessa Hadley	short stories	4
Rainbow’s End	Jane Harrison	play	4
New and Selected Poems, Volume One	Mary Oliver	poetry	2
High Ground	Stephen Johnson (director)	film	4
Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder (director)	film	4
Requiem for a Beast	Matt Ottley	multimodal	4
Born a Crime	Trevor Noah	nonfiction	4

If your school is teaching one of these in 2026, nothing about that is a problem — the text is set for this year’s exam and the November paper will examine it. It matters only for work meant to outlast the year. How long a text stays on the list sets out the pattern across eight years of lists, including the three texts that broke it.

The eight arriving for 2027 — seven of them new

Eight titles appear on the 2027 list that are not on the 2026 one. Seven are genuinely new and VCAA annotates each (1); the eighth is the Mary Oliver selection, which carries (3) because it is the same poet’s work under a changed title rather than a new text. VATE’s own August 2026 session on “the new texts on the 2027 VCE English and EAL text list” named exactly the seven, which is the reading this page follows.

Text	Author	Form	Years set
Edenglassie	Melissa Lucashenko	novel	1
The Lottery and Other Stories	Shirley Jackson	short stories	1
The One Day of the Year	Alan Seymour	play	1
Selected Poems 1965-2005	Mary Oliver	poetry	3
The Holdovers	Alexander Payne (director)	film	1
Picnic at Hanging Rock	Peter Weir (director)	film	1
Gurrumul	Paul Williams (director)	multimodal	1
Educated	Tara Westover	nonfiction	1

List 1, 2026 — text response and comparative

The twenty texts set for 2026. Highlighted entries do not continue into 2027.

Text	Author	Form	Year on the list
Regeneration	Pat Barker	novel	1
Jane Eyre	Charlotte Brontë	novel	2
My Brilliant Career	Miles Franklin	novel	3
Chronicle of a Death Foretold	Gabriel García Márquez	novel	3
Orbital	Samantha Harvey	novel	1
We Have Always Lived in the Castle	Shirley Jackson	novel	4 · last year
Ghost Wall	Sarah Moss	novel	2
The Memory Police	Yōko Ogawa	novel	3
Bad Dreams and Other Stories	Tessa Hadley	short stories	4 · last year
The Complete Stories	David Malouf	short stories	2
Rainbow’s End	Jane Harrison	play	4 · last year
Twelfth Night	William Shakespeare	play	2
Oedipus the King	Sophocles	play	3
Selected Poems	Langston Hughes	poetry	1
New and Selected Poems, Volume One	Mary Oliver	poetry	2 · last year
High Ground	Stephen Johnson (director)	film	4 · last year
Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder (director)	film	4 · last year
Requiem for a Beast	Matt Ottley	multimodal	4 · last year
We Come with This Place	Debra Dank	nonfiction	1
Born a Crime	Trevor Noah	nonfiction	4 · last year

List 1, 2027

The twenty texts set for 2027. Highlighted entries are new.

Text	Author	Form	Year on the list
Regeneration	Pat Barker	novel	2
Jane Eyre	Charlotte Brontë	novel	3
My Brilliant Career	Miles Franklin	novel	4
Chronicle of a Death Foretold	Gabriel García Márquez	novel	4
Orbital	Samantha Harvey	novel	2
Edenglassie	Melissa Lucashenko	novel	1 · new
Ghost Wall	Sarah Moss	novel	3
The Memory Police	Yōko Ogawa	novel	4
The Lottery and Other Stories	Shirley Jackson	short stories	1 · new
The Complete Stories	David Malouf	short stories	3
The One Day of the Year	Alan Seymour	play	1 · new
Twelfth Night	William Shakespeare	play	3
Oedipus the King	Sophocles	play	4
Selected Poems	Langston Hughes	poetry	2
Selected Poems 1965-2005	Mary Oliver	poetry	3 · new
The Holdovers	Alexander Payne (director)	film	1 · new
Picnic at Hanging Rock	Peter Weir (director)	film	1 · new
Gurrumul	Paul Williams (director)	multimodal	1 · new
We Come with This Place	Debra Dank	nonfiction	2
Educated	Tara Westover	nonfiction	1 · new

List 2, 2026 — mentor texts for Creating Texts

Mentor texts are read for how they are made rather than for what they argue, and each is set against a Framework idea. What Creating Texts asks for explains the difference, which is the part most often misread.

Text	Author	Framework idea	Years set
‘Gooseberries’	Anton Chekhov	Writing about country	3
Chapter 2, The Hate Race	Maxine Beneba Clarke	Writing about country	3
‘An Open Letter to the Man Who Yelled “Go Back to Africa!” at Me’	JD Dillard	Writing about country	1
‘The Conquest of Land and Dream’	Yumna Kassab	Writing about country	3
‘Split’	Cassie Lynch	Writing about country	3
‘Friday Essay: On the Sydney Mardi Gras March of 1978’	Mark Gillespie	Writing about protest	3
‘Freedom or Death’	Emmeline Pankhurst	Writing about protest	3
‘What’s the Point of Protest?’	Jonathan Parry	Writing about protest	1
‘Harrison Bergeron’	Kurt Vonnegut	Writing about protest	3
Monologue from City of Gold	Meyne Wyatt	Writing about protest	3
‘The Danger of a Single Story’	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Writing about personal journeys	3
‘The Red Plastic Chair is a Vietnamese Cultural Institution, and My Anchor’	Amy Duong	Writing about personal journeys	3
‘Dear Mrs Dunkley’	Helen Garner	Writing about personal journeys	1
‘bidngen’	Maya Hodge	Writing about personal journeys	3
Walter’s speech (end of Part 1) from The Inheritance	Matthew López	Writing about personal journeys	3
Monologue from Cyrano	Virginia Gay	Writing about play	3
‘Impromptu: Fiction for voice and piano’	Coco X Huang	Writing about play	1
‘An Open Letter to Doubting Thomas’	Chelsea Roffey	Writing about play	3
‘All That We Know of Dreaming’	Penni Russon	Writing about play	3
‘About the Boys’	Tim Winton	Writing about play	3

List 2, 2027

Text	Author	Framework idea	Years set
‘Gooseberries’	Anton Chekhov	Writing about country	4
Chapter 2, The Hate Race	Maxine Beneba Clarke	Writing about country	4
‘An Open Letter to the Man Who Yelled “Go Back to Africa!” at Me’	JD Dillard	Writing about country	2
‘The Conquest of Land and Dream’	Yumna Kassab	Writing about country	4
‘Split’	Cassie Lynch	Writing about country	4
‘Friday Essay: On the Sydney Mardi Gras March of 1978’	Mark Gillespie	Writing about protest	4
‘Freedom or Death’	Emmeline Pankhurst	Writing about protest	4
‘What’s the Point of Protest?’	Jonathan Parry	Writing about protest	2
‘Harrison Bergeron’	Kurt Vonnegut	Writing about protest	4
Monologue from City of Gold	Meyne Wyatt	Writing about protest	4
‘The Danger of a Single Story’	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Writing about personal journeys	4
‘The Red Plastic Chair is a Vietnamese Cultural Institution, and My Anchor’	Amy Duong	Writing about personal journeys	4
‘Dear Mrs Dunkley’	Helen Garner	Writing about personal journeys	2
‘bidngen’	Maya Hodge	Writing about personal journeys	4
Walter’s speech (end of Part 1) from The Inheritance	Matthew López	Writing about personal journeys	4
Monologue from Cyrano	Virginia Gay	Writing about play	4
‘Impromptu: Fiction for voice and piano’	Coco X Huang	Writing about play	2
‘An Open Letter to Doubting Thomas’	Chelsea Roffey	Writing about play	4
‘All That We Know of Dreaming’	Penni Russon	Writing about play	4
‘About the Boys’	Tim Winton	Writing about play	4

Both years are VCAA’s own lists, and every title on this page was matched verbatim against VCAA’s published document — forty titles per year, checked 2026-09-11, and re-checked on every build by npm run check:text-lists. Sources: the 2026 list and the 2027 list. VCAA material is reproduced here as a reference to what has been set; it is not republished under an open licence, and the documents above are the authority.

What this page does not tell you

Which text to choose. There is no ranking here, no difficulty rating and no claim that one text scores better than another, because the honest answer is that the text matters far less than what a student does with it. A well-read novel argued precisely beats a “better” text handled thinly, every time.

It also does not predict which 2027 texts will go in 2028. The pattern is real and it is set out, with its exceptions, on the tenure page — but a pattern is not an announcement, and VCAA has broken this one before.

There is now a further reason to hold that loosely. On 20 August 2026 VCAA opened a consultation headed “Proposal to extend the text cycle for the VCE English, VCE English as an Additional Language (EAL) and VCE Literature text lists”, with a stakeholder survey that closed on 11 September 2026 (VCE-51). The notice does not say what the cycle would become, or when — only that extending it is under consideration. Nothing on this page changes because of that, since both lists above are published and final for their years. But the four-year rhythm those lists have followed is itself now a live question, and the 2028 list will be the document that answers it.

Checked again on 16 September 2026, five days after the survey closed: VCAA has published no outcome. Its 2026 notices run to number 94, dated 3 September, and none of them since the consultation concerns the text cycle. So the proposal is closed for feedback and undecided in public, which is the ordinary state of a consultation and worth saying plainly rather than leaving a reader to wonder whether they have missed an announcement.