AP World History Units 2026: Nine Units, New Free-Response Rules
Four units each carry 12-15% of the multiple-choice section; five carry 8-10%. And from May 2027 the short answers and the long essay no longer let you pick your question.
- 55 MCQ + 3 SAQ + DBQ + LEQQuestions
- 3h 15mTime
- 9Sections
- YesWeights published
- 1-5 scale (3 = qualified)Pass mark
- $99Fee
Table of Contents
The whole paper in one bar
The AP World History: Modern course and exam description, effective fall 2026 is the exam guide College Board publishes for Advanced Placement (AP) World History: Modern, restated so you can see the shape of the paper before you read a word of the detail. The bar below is the entire syllabus: 9 sections, in the order the certifying body lists them.
- §1 Unit 1: The Global Tapestry — 8-10%
- §2 Unit 2: Networks of Exchange — 8-10%
- §3 Unit 3: Land-Based Empires — 12-15%
- §4 Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections — 12-15%
- §5 Unit 5: Revolutions — 12-15%
- §6 Unit 6: Consequences of Industrialization — 12-15%
- §7 Unit 7: Global Conflict — 8-10%
- §8 Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization — 8-10%
- §9 Unit 9: Globalization — 8-10%
Those percentages are College Board’s own, not an estimate. That matters more than it sounds: most pages ranking for this query quote weightings the certifying body never published.
The syllabus, section by section
Each block below is one section of the official outline. The bullets are the sub-objectives College Board publishes underneath it — the actual scope statement, not a summary of it.
Unit 1: The Global Tapestry
- East Asia: Song China's Confucian bureaucracy, Neo-Confucianism and commercial economy
- Dar al-Islam: new Islamic states as the Abbasid Caliphate fragmented, e.g. Seljuk, Mamluk, Delhi sultanates
- South and Southeast Asia: Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim states, e.g. Vijayanagara, Srivijaya, Khmer, Majapahit
- State building in the Americas, e.g. Maya city-states, Mexica, Inca, Cahokia
- State building in Africa, e.g. Great Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Hausa kingdoms
- Europe: decentralized monarchies, feudalism, the manorial system and the Church
- Comparing state formation across regions, c. 1200-c. 1450
Unit 2: Networks of Exchange
- The Silk Roads: luxury trade, caravanserai, credit and money economies
- The Mongol Empire and its role in trade, technology and cultural transfer
- Exchange in the Indian Ocean: monsoon knowledge, merchant diasporas, new trading states
- Trans-Saharan trade routes and the expansion of Mali
- Cultural consequences of connectivity: spread of religions, science and technology
- Environmental consequences of connectivity: new crops such as Champa rice, and the spread of plague
- Comparing economic exchange across the three networks
Unit 3: Land-Based Empires
- Expansion of land empires through gunpowder, cannons and armed trade
- The Manchu (Qing), Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid empires
- Administration: bureaucratic elites, military professionals, e.g. the Ottoman devshirme
- Revenue: tribute, tax farming and new tax-collection systems, e.g. Mughal zamindars
- Legitimizing rule through religion, art and monumental architecture
- Belief systems: the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response
- The Sunni-Shi'a split sharpened by Ottoman-Safavid rivalry; Sikhism in South Asia
- Comparing how land-based empires expanded and held power
Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections
- Technological innovations that enabled maritime exploration, 1450-1750
- Exploration: state-sponsored voyages, their causes and events
- The Columbian Exchange: crops, animals, disease and population change
- Maritime empires established: trading posts, joint-stock companies, the Atlantic slave trade
- Maritime empires maintained: mercantilism and labor systems such as encomienda and hacienda
- Internal and external challenges to state power, 1450-1750
- Changing social hierarchies, 1450-1750
- Continuity and change, 1450-1750
Unit 5: Revolutions
- The Enlightenment and its challenge to existing authority
- Nationalism and revolutions 1750-1900, e.g. American, French, Haitian, Latin American independence
- The Industrial Revolution begins and spreads beyond Britain
- Technology of the industrial age: steam power, railroads, steamships, the telegraph
- Industrialization and the state's role, e.g. Meiji Japan, Muhammad Ali's Egypt
- Economic developments and innovations in the industrial age
- Reactions to the industrial economy: labor unions, socialism and reform
- Society in the industrial age: new classes, urbanization, working conditions
- Continuity and change in the industrial age
Unit 6: Consequences of Industrialization
- Rationales for imperialism, e.g. Social Darwinism and 'civilizing' missions
- State expansion 1750-1900, including settler colonies
- Indigenous responses to state expansion, e.g. the Ghost Dance, the Xhosa cattle-killing movement
- Global economic development: demand for raw materials and new markets
- Economic imperialism, e.g. the Opium Wars
- Causes of migration in an interconnected world
- Effects of migration: indentured labor, diasporas, exclusionary responses
- Causation in the imperial age
Unit 7: Global Conflict
- Shifting power after 1900: the fall of the Qing and Ottoman empires, the Mexican Revolution
- Causes of World War I
- Conducting World War I: total war and propaganda
- The interwar economy: the Great Depression and state responses such as the New Deal
- Unresolved tensions after World War I
- Causes of World War II
- Conducting World War II
- Mass atrocities after 1900, including the Holocaust and other genocides
- Causation in global conflict
Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization
- Setting the stage for the Cold War and decolonization
- The Cold War: superpower rivalry, alliances and proxy wars
- Effects of the Cold War, including the Non-Aligned Movement
- The spread of communism after 1900, e.g. Mao's China
- Decolonization after 1900: negotiated and violent routes to independence
- Newly independent states: borders, migration and economic policy
- Global resistance to the established order after 1900
- The end of the Cold War
- Causation in the age of the Cold War and decolonization
Unit 9: Globalization
- Advances in technology and exchange after 1900, including the Green Revolution
- Technology and disease after 1900, e.g. HIV/AIDS, malaria
- Debates about the environment after 1900, including climate change
- Economics in the global age: free-market policies and bodies such as the WTO
- Calls for reform and responses after 1900: rights movements
- Globalized culture after 1900
- Resistance to globalization after 1900
- Institutions in a globalized world, e.g. the United Nations
- Continuity and change in a globalized world
College Board labels the unit ranges 'AP Exam weighting' without naming a section, but only the 55 multiple-choice questions (55 minutes, 40% of the score) can be spread across units that way. The rest follows its own rules: three short-answer questions (40 minutes, 20%), each on a different period between 1200 and 2001; a document-based question with seven documents (60 minutes including a 15-minute reading period, 25%) drawn from anywhere in 1200-2001; and one long essay (40 minutes, 15%) spanning about half the course. Total: 3h 15m, fully digital in Bluebook. The weighted composite converts to a 1-5 score; a 3 means 'qualified'.
What the weightings really mean
A percentage in an exam guide is a promise about how many questions get drawn from a section, not about how hard those questions are. On the 55-question multiple-choice section, Unit 3: Land-Based Empires at 12-15% is worth about 7 questions and Unit 1: The Global Tapestry at 8-10% is worth about 5. No single section decides the result on its own here - the largest is 12-15% of the paper - so the result is decided by how few sections you leave weak, not by how well you master one.
The trap is treating that arithmetic as permission to skip. Weightings are the floor of what a section costs you, because the low-weight sections on almost every blueprint are the ones that supply context for questions filed under a different heading. You lose those marks in the heavy section and never find out why.
Reading the verbs in the objectives
The verb at the front of each sub-objective is the part candidates skim and examiners take literally. It sets the depth you are tested at, and it is the difference between recognising a term and being asked to choose between two answers that both look right.
| Verb | What a question at that depth looks like |
|---|---|
| Causation | Describe and explain causes and effects, then rank them: primary versus secondary causes, short- versus long-term effects. Units 6, 7 and 8 close on causation topics, and multiple-choice stems typically ask which development most directly caused, or followed from, what a source shows. |
| Comparison | Describe and explain similarities and differences between developments in different regions or periods, and judge which matter most. Units 1, 2 and 3 close on comparison topics, and every exam has at least one multiple-choice set built on paired texts. |
| Continuity / Change | Describe and explain what changed and what persisted, and how significant one development is within that pattern. Units 4, 5 and 9 close on continuity-and-change topics, and the long essay awards a point for framing your argument with one of these three reasoning processes. |
| Source / Contextualize | Explain a source's point of view, purpose, historical situation or audience, and place a development in its wider context. The DBQ awards one point for sourcing at least two of its seven documents and one for context; no multiple-choice question explicitly tests argumentation. |
AP World History is a source-analysis exam, not a recall test. Multiple-choice questions come in sets of three or four built on a shared text, image, map or chart, and the free-response task verbs climb from Identify and Describe to Explain, Compare and Evaluate. Facts you cannot use to reason about a source earn little.
Study it in this order, not the syllabus order
Exam guides are written to describe what a candidate must know, not to teach it. The published order is almost never the order that builds knowledge fastest. This is the sequence that front-loads the material everything else depends on.
| Order | Why here |
|---|---|
| 1. Units 1-2: c. 1200-1450 | 8-10% each, 16-20% of the multiple-choice questions together. Song China, Dar al-Islam, the Mongols and the three trade networks are the baseline every later continuity-and-change question measures against. |
| 2. Units 3-4: c. 1450-1750 | 12-15% each. Gunpowder empires on land, then maritime empires, the Columbian Exchange and new social hierarchies. Study them as a pair: Unit 3 is the comparison, Unit 4 the connection. |
| 3. Units 5-6: c. 1750-1900 | 12-15% each. With Units 3-4 these are the four heaviest units, 48-60% of the multiple-choice section. Enlightenment, revolutions and industrialization, then imperialism and migration as their consequences. |
| 4. Units 7-9: 1900-present | 8-10% each, but 24-30% together - more than Units 1-2. World wars, Cold War, decolonization and globalization. Do not leave them to the final fortnight before the 6 May 2027 exam. |
For a chronological course the published order is also the efficient one: each era is the context for the next, and contextualization is a scored skill. What the weights change is time allocation, not sequence - Units 3-6, covering 1450-1900, carry 48-60% of the multiple-choice questions.
What changed, and how to spot the next change
The May 2027 exam (Thursday 6 May) is the first under a revised free-response format, written into the course and exam description effective fall 2026. Short answers: all three are now required and all three carry a source - a secondary text, a primary text, then a non-text source. In May 2026 you answered Questions 1 and 2 and chose between 3 and 4, neither of which had a source. Long essay: one required question with a broad prompt, replacing the choice of three. Timing, section weights, the multiple-choice section, the rubrics, the unit weightings and the course content are unchanged, and College Board is releasing two updated practice exams during 2026-27. The exam has been fully digital in Bluebook since May 2025. The 2026-27 fee is $99 in the US and Canada and $129 elsewhere.
Two habits keep you from studying a retired outline. First, open the official exam guide and look for its revision date before you buy anything — courses and question banks lag a syllabus change by months, and the cheapest ones never catch up. Second, re-check it the week you book. A revision announced after you started studying is still a revision you sit.
Turn the syllabus into questions
Reading an outline tells you the shape of the paper. Answering questions tells you which sections you would actually lose marks on. Start free, then $5.99 unlocks the full AP World History bank.
App StoreGoogle PlayFree practice testAP World History exam pageFAQ
What are the AP World History units and their weightings?
Nine: Unit 1 The Global Tapestry 8-10%, Unit 2 Networks of Exchange 8-10%, Unit 3 Land-Based Empires 12-15%, Unit 4 Transoceanic Interconnections 12-15%, Unit 5 Revolutions 12-15%, Unit 6 Consequences of Industrialization 12-15%, Unit 7 Global Conflict 8-10%, Unit 8 Cold War and Decolonization 8-10%, Unit 9 Globalization 8-10%. In practice they describe the 55 multiple-choice questions. The Unit 4 opening page of the fall 2026 course description misprints its range as 12-10%; both summary tables say 12-15%.
What score do you need to pass AP World History?
There is no pass mark. Scores run 1-5: 5 extremely well qualified, 4 very well qualified, 3 qualified, 2 possibly qualified, 1 no recommendation. College Board treats 3 and above as the scores validated for credit, but each college sets its own policy. The composite weights multiple choice at 40%, short answers 20%, the DBQ 25% and the long essay 15%. Wrong multiple-choice answers cost nothing, scoring is not curved, and the cut points are not published.
Can I take the AP World History exam without taking the course?
Yes, but you cannot book it with College Board yourself. Homeschooled and independent-study students must find a school whose AP coordinator agrees to order the exam, ideally by the 13 November 2026 ordering deadline; schools set their own deadlines for outside students. The exam is on Thursday 6 May 2027, fully digital in the Bluebook app, and every free-response question is compulsory from 2027.
How much does the AP World History exam cost?
For 2026-27 the fee is $99 per exam at schools in the US, US territories, Canada and DoWEA schools, and $129 at schools everywhere else. Students with significant financial need can get a $37 College Board fee reduction, and some states add funding. Schools may charge more to cover proctoring. Exams ordered after 13 November 2026 carry a $40 late fee, and an exam ordered but not taken costs $40. You pay your school, not College Board.
Sources
Every section title, sub-objective and number on this page comes from the certifying body:
- https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-world-history-modern-course-and-exam-description.pdf
- https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-world-history-modern-course-and-exam-description-clarifications-effective-fall-2026.pdf
- https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-world-history/exam
- https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-history-exam-updates
- https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/exam-policies-guidelines/exam-fees
- https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/about-ap-scores/ap-score-scale-table
Checked October 7, 2026. Exam guides are revised without notice — confirm against College Board before you build a study plan around this page.