Match Day
Match Day 2026
Friday, March 20
Watch video replay »
Match Day is an annual, nationwide event when graduating medical students across the country find out which specialties, and which hospitals or care centers, they have matched to for their residency training.
WashU Medicine celebrates Match Day 2026! Watch as our graduating class experiences the magic of discovering where they’re headed for residency. Video by Huy Mach/WashU Medicine. See the story and photos from 2026 »
Match Day is the culmination of years of medical school and months of applications and interviews. WashU Medicine students are supported and encouraged along their journeys, as each seeks to find their best match. Here, students get a world-class medical education that fully prepares them for the challenges and rigors of residency training.
Weeks before the Match, students across the country submit their preferred residency programs to the National Resident Matching Program, which uses an algorithm to make the assignments. When Match Day arrives, graduating medical students gather with classmates, family members and mentors to open the envelopes revealing where they will train to become surgeons, pediatricians, neurologists or physicians in other specialties.
Year after year, the Match process becomes more competitive as a greater number of medical students compete for a limited number of residency spots. And year after year, WashU Medicine students are highly successful in obtaining their chosen residency positions at top university-affiliated hospitals and medical centers across the country — including right here on our Washington University Medical Campus at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Finding the best fit
Career counseling dean Kathryn Diemer, MD, meets with students early and often to facilitate a successful match, guiding students toward necessary clinical, service and research experiences, and helping them network. “The better we are,” she says, “the better our match results and, importantly, the happier our students.”
Match Day photos and stories
For many medical students and their families, Match Day is an occasion as momentous as a wedding — a life event forever etched in their memories, shared with the classmates and loved ones who supported their journey to becoming doctors. Click below to see our past Match Day celebrations.
Match Day coverage by year