My Unfiltered Thoughts on the May 2026 IB Business Exams

Official marking is already well underway, and somehow I completely forgot to sit down and write about the May 2026 IB Business exams.

What actually reminded me was my DP Coordinator mentioning that we needed to complete the official IB exam review survey. I honestly think this is one of the most important things teachers can do after the exam session. The IB really does take teacher feedback into account when reviewing papers and refining future exams, so if you haven’t completed the survey yet, definitely make the time to do it.

For reference, my students sat the Time Zone 2 exams (European time zones), so some of these questions may be different from what your students experienced.

Without further ado, here are my unfiltered thoughts on this year’s papers.

Paper 1

Overall, I thought Paper 1 was fairly straightforward.

That being said, there always seems to be one completely random element thrown into the case study. This year, apparently, we were all expected to discuss a plastic clothes hanger business as an additional revenue stream. I don’t think many teachers predicted that one.

I do think the very first question may have caused some issues for students because it focused on employee share ownership schemes, which has traditionally been a topic students struggle to explain clearly and accurately.

I also found it interesting that there were two 6-mark questions on the paper. Thankfully, both were fairly accessible topics: the benefits of USPs and the advantages and disadvantages of mass production. These are topics most students should have felt reasonably confident answering.

Section B also felt manageable overall. One question focused on creating the clothes hangers, while the other examined the strategic alliance to recycle e-waste for a bank. Neither question felt overly surprising or inaccessible.

Paper 2 SL

Paper 2 SL continued the trend of being quite calculation heavy, but I thought the paper itself was fair.

The first case study focused on investment appraisal, while Question 2 was based on the profit and loss account. Overall, I thought the questions themselves were reasonable and accessible for prepared students.

Section B again leaned heavily into calculations, with 6 out of the 10 available marks tied to ratio calculations. This seems to continue the IB’s emphasis on quantitative skills within Paper 2.

The final case study included mean and median calculations alongside questions related to differentiation strategies. Again, nothing felt wildly unexpected, but students who were weaker with calculations may have found the paper more demanding.

Paper 2 HL

Paper 2 HL felt more varied in both topic coverage and difficulty.

Case study 1 included a mixture of calculations, including cost-to-buy versus cost-to-make calculations. There was also a question on absorption costing that many students found difficult. I’ll be very interested to see the official markscheme because I suspect there will be a range of acceptable approaches.

Case study 2 focused on the balance sheet and depreciation, while the final Section A case study examined budgets. Students didn’t need to fully construct a budget, but they did need to calculate several missing figures.

Section B included something I personally haven’t seen before in this format: a question asking students to complete a BCG matrix. Some of my students were initially thrown off by this, although once they settled into it, the task itself wasn’t especially difficult.

I also thought the final case study was one of the more challenging parts of the paper. Topics included digital Taylorism, TQM, and the importance of developing new products. These are areas where students really needed both strong subject knowledge and the ability to apply concepts carefully to the case study.

As always, the 10-mark questions rewarded students who actively integrated data from the tables into their responses. This remains one of the biggest differences between average and top-scoring answers.

Paper 3

Paper 3 focused on a coffee bean producer.

Initially, I thought the explanation of exactly what the producer did was slightly confusing, but my students said they mostly understood it once they worked through the sources. The supporting materials focused on market share in coffee bean production, changing coffee prices over time, and information about a large producer buying up all the coffee from Country Y.

Overall, the questions themselves felt very standard and predictable. Thankfully, there was nothing completely unexpected like last year when students were suddenly told they couldn’t use Maslow.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought this year’s exams were fair. There were definitely a few unusual or difficult moments, but nothing that felt completely unreasonable for well-prepared students.

I’d genuinely love to hear how the exams went in your center and what your students thought of the papers. And if you teach in a different time zone, please tell me what appeared on your exams because I’m endlessly curious about how the papers compare across time zones.

Reach out and let me know how things went at your school!