The 2026-2027 edition of Guide – the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s comprehensive course catalog – has been published and is now available!

Every year, school and college Guide coordinators; Lumenaries; and team members from the Office of the Registrar and Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research (DAPIR) review Guide content to make sure it is up-to-date, consistently formatted, and easy for all users to maneuver.

What’s new

The most notable difference in the 2026-2027 Guide relates to how general education requirements are shown. This was prompted by changes to UW–Madison and Universities of Wisconsin general education requirement policies as mandated by 2025 Wisconsin Act 15.

The “University General Education Requirements” and “University Degree Requirements” sections on each major’s page have become one “University Requirements” section, including information about both general education and university degree and quality of work requirements.

By default, the “University Requirements” section will highlight the Core General Education (Core GenEd) requirements that all students whose first term at UW–Madison or whose earliest post-high school college attendance at any institution is Summer 2026 or later will follow.

Students whose first term at UW–Madison or whose earliest post-high school college attendance at any institution occurred before Summer 2026 will instead refer to the archived Guide for the general education requirements that apply to them. Links to the archived Guide editions are found at the top of each Guide page and in the University Requirements section of the undergraduate major requirements tab.

Additionally, course details and course bubbles were updated to accommodate the new Core GenEd designation and to remove the mortarboard icon. These updates were made to be consistent with Course Search & Enroll, which was updated in May with Core GenEd information.

By the numbers

In total, this year’s Guide editors:

• Reviewed 1,631 unique pages;
• Processed 1,160 program proposals; and
• Processed 6,465 course proposals!

Important milestones

This year’s publication represents two significant milestones. It marks the 10-year anniversary of Guide and reflects the extensive cross-campus work required to support the implementation of Core General Education across curriculum, policy, and systems.

Over the past decade, Guide has evolved and continues to serve as a critical academic resource for students, advisors, faculty, and staff across campus.

Check it out

Visit guide.wisc.edu to check out the latest Guide publication. If you’re still seeing the 2025-2026 edition, you may need to hard refresh (CTRL + F5) or to clear your cache.