Pablo Picasso once remarked, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction” While perhaps a touch dramatic for a syllabus update, there’s certainly a sense of dismantling the old to build the new as we approach the transition in IBDP Visual Arts.
Download New IB DP Visual Arts Syllabus map
Whether you are a November or a May school, your current DP Visual Arts students are the last cohort completing the syllabus ending in 2026, and our attention as IBDP Visual Arts teachers turns towards the significantly revised guide that launches for teaching this year, leading to the first assessment in May 2027.
Naturally, a new guide requires adjustment, leading us to review tried and trusted methods and familiar assessment practices, considering which ones to keep, change or lose. This guide seems to be a positive step towards getting students to more authentically engage with, create, and understand visual art within the Diploma Programme. It asks for a deeper integration of practice, context, and reflection.
So, How Can We Best Equip Ourselves and Our Students for These Changes?
A significant structural and philosophical shift
– The Big Picture
The shift from the 2017 guide (Last Assessment 2026) to the 2027 guide (First Teaching 2025 and First Assessment 2027) represents a significant change in approach to a more practice-based course. The 2017 curriculum felt at times like the isolating of theory from practice. The 2027 curriculum (First Teaching 2025 and First Assessment 2027) prioritises student agency, practical application, and contextual understanding through creative exploration centred around an ‘art-making as inquiry’ model.
The outgoing structure (Last Assessment 2026) – Comparative Study (EA), Process Portfolio (EA), and Exhibition (IA) – has been replaced with a new configuration. The 2027 guide moves to a model that better differentiates the HL and SL courses.
Key Changes in External Assessment
This isn’t just a minor tweak; it represents a fundamental rethinking of how students demonstrate their engagement with, creation of, and understanding of visual art.
Changes in the Assessment Components.
For the duration of the current guide (last Assessment 2026) , we’ve navigated three components:
- Part 1: Comparative Study (External Assessment, 20%)
- Part 2: Process Portfolio (External Assessment, 40%)
- Part 3: Exhibition (Internal Assessment, 40%)
This structure, consistent for both SL and HL, is retired in 2026.
New Assessment Configuration
The new guide (First Teaching 2025 and First Assessment 2027) introduces a new three-task model, maintaining three components but with significant shifts in focus, weighting, and differentiation between SL and HL. The process journal remains vital for documenting the student journey and supports the IA (Exhibition), it is not a directly submitted or weighted assessment component itself.
Breakdown of the Assessed Tasks
Task 1: Art-making Inquiries Portfolio (External Assessment)
Weighting: SL 40% / HL 30%
Common to SL & HL: This task replaces the old Process Portfolio but shifts the focus explicitly to art-making as inquiry.
What? Students curate visual and written evidence demonstrating their personal investigations, discoveries, creative strategies, and critical reflections. It must showcase work with a variety of art-making forms and creative strategies, structured around one or more lines of inquiry (including the explicit inquiry questions or generative statements).
Why? Moves away from simply showing process to demonstrating inquiry-driven practice and the development of a personal visual language through documented lines of inquiry. Visuals remain predominant as emphasised by the introduction of the word count (Max 15 screens, 3000 words).
Task 2: Connecting & Projecting (External Assessment – Differentiated)
This is where SL and HL diverge, replacing the old Comparative Study.
SL ONLY: Connections Study (EA, 20%)
What? Students select one of their own resolved Artworks (from their IA submission) and situate it. They document connections between this piece, their personal context(s), and at least two artworks by different artists, exploring cultural significance. Research is used to contextualize the student’s own practice and artwork. (Max 10 screens, 2500 words).
Why? The focus moves dramatically from primarily analysing external works (like the old CS) to using research to situate the student’s own creation within relevant contexts and artistic dialogues.
HL ONLY: Artist Project (EA, 30%)
What? A stand-alone task demanding the conception, development, creation, contextualisation, and evaluation of a new work or project. This is a substantial, independent undertaking assessed through a multi-screen PDF documenting the journey (proposal, connections, dialogues, evaluation, future development – max 12 screens, 2500 words total with specific section limits) and a short (max 3 min) video showing the realised project in context, plus a brief text.
Why? Entirely new, emphasising student agency, project management, and the full cycle of artistic creation from ideation through contextualised realisation and evaluation. It introduces new assessment criteria reflecting these stages.
Task 3: Resolved Artworks (Internal assessment – differentiated for SL & HL)
This component replaces the Exhibition (IA, 40%) but represents significant refinement, especially in HL. The exhibition is no longer a requirement.
SL: Resolved Artworks (IA, 40%)
What? Creating a coherent body of work. Students submit five resolved artworks. They write a Rationale (max 700 words on up to 2 screens) articulating the artistic intentions and the technical/stylistic/conceptual choices that create coherence.
Why? (Possibly) fewer artworks required (down from 4-7), streamlining the selection. The separate ‘Exhibition Text’ is gone, its function absorbed into the Rationale.
HL: Selected Resolved Artworks (IA, 40%)
What? Creating a coherent body of work selected from their wider production. Students submit five selected resolved artworks, chosen from a documented wider body of at least eight pieces. They submit a Rationale (max 700 words on up to 3 screens, including a selection chart showing the 5 chosen and 3+ not chosen works) and five artwork texts (total 1000 words across up to 5 screens) that critically analyse and situate each selected piece within the student’s practice and a wider artistic context.
Why? Fewer artworks required (down from 8-11), but the emphasis shifts significantly to the process of selection and justification. The rationale is expanded to include visual evidence of selection, and the accompanying texts demand deeper contextual analysis for each piece, replacing the old single ‘Exhibition Text’. The link between process (documented in the process journal, reflected upon in the rationale/texts) and the final curated selection is much more explicit.
Getting a Grip on the New Assessment Objectives
Structure & nature of the assessment – The old assessment objectives were structured more like levels of thinking (knowledge -> application -> synthesis/evaluation) plus a separate skills objective. The new AOs are verbs representing actions within an integrated creative process. They are non-hierarchical and interconnected (as shown in Figure 10).
Pg 31 of Visual Arts guide (first assessment 2027)
Emphasis – The new guide places much stronger emphasis on the process of inquiry and the student acting as an artist. Verbs like investigate, generate, refine, resolve, synthesise describe this active process directly.
Context & connection – The concept of ‘situate’ is elevated to a core objective, demanding a deeper and more explicit understanding of how art relates to contexts, audiences, and other art, compared to the more general ‘knowledge of context’ in the old AO1/AO2.
Curating – This is a major shift to better reflect the role and importance of curation in contemporary art practice. Previously implied in presenting work (old AO1d) or justifying exhibition choices (old AO3), Curate is now a distinct, vital objective encompassing the selection, organisation, and presentation of all forms of evidence (process work, research, final pieces) for communication and assessment.
Integration vs. separation – Technical skills (old AO4) and knowledge (old AO1) are no longer separate objectives but are integrated within the new action verbs. For example, technical skill is developed through investigate, applied during generate, improved via refine, demonstrated in resolve, and brought together in synthesise. Knowledge is gained through investigate and applied through situate.
The shift to active verbs (generate, investigate, situate etc.) reinforces the practice-based, student-agency focus of the new curriculum and the shift towards assessing the student’s ability to engage authentically in the interconnected processes and actions inherent in contemporary visual Arts practice and inquiry.
In Summary
The 2027 guide (First Teaching 2025 and First Assessment 2027) emphasises
This new structure asks students (and us!) to engage more deeply with the why and how of their art-making, positioning them as active creators and critical thinkers situating their practice within a broader art world.
“Pablo Picasso Quotes.” BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc., 2023, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/pablo_picasso_108723. Accessed 24 Mar.
Join me in our upcoming free webinar as I explore the updates in the Visual Art Guide and their effects on teaching and learning.
What’s New in the IB DP Visual Arts Guide for 2027: Essential Updates & Expert Insights
About the Author
Antoinette Blain
Educator, Coach, and Leader in Visual and Expressive Art Education
With over 25 years of experience. Originally from London, UK, Antoinette has built up a wealth of experience and passion for inclusive, creative, and forward-thinking arts pedagogy. Her teaching and leadership experience is global, having taught in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and now Kenya at both local and world-renowned international schools, including a United World College and Aga Khan Academy. From teacher to department head, to vice principal and now coach, Antoinette has been instrumental in driving forward arts education in both the British curriculum and across all three International Baccalaureate programs (PYP, MYP, and DP) with her concept-based approaches and innovative processes. In addition, Antoinette is a certified IB workshop leader and school visitor. Antoinette is also a mother of two, avid reader, conscientious traveler, and frequent gallery-goer with a fearless drive, open mind, and sense of justice that inspires people in both her personal and professional life.