Short answer: reported Task 2 questions for this window cluster into a familiar set of themes — education and work, technology and AI, environment, government spending, health, crime and punishment, media, and globalisation — asked through five question types.
The topic is the easy half. The question type is what decides whether your essay answers the question, and it is what you should prepare.
How this forecast is made — and what it is not
Unlike Speaking Part 2, Task 2 has no published rotation, and IELTS does not release its question bank.
What exists is candidate recall — people posting the prompt they were given after the test — aggregated by teacher blogs and practice sites.
This page collates what those public sources report for the current window and, more usefully, tells you what the pattern behind them is.
The honest limits are the same as for any forecast. Reports are self-selected and skew towards questions candidates found memorable or difficult.
The bank varies by market and by date.
And a Task 2 prompt is rarely reproduced word for word in recall, so what is really being reported is a theme plus a question type, which is exactly how you should read the table below.
This is a rehearsal list, not a prediction — anyone offering you the exact question is guessing.
Reported themes for September–December 2026
| Theme | Typical framings reported |
|---|---|
| Technology and AI | AI in schoolwork and assessment; screen time; whether technology isolates people |
| Education and work | Distance learning; practical subjects such as growing food in primary school; whether success should be measured by earnings |
| Environment | Car-free days to cut pollution; shrinking green space in cities; individual versus government responsibility |
| Government and spending | Public funding for artists; whether a single global government would help; spending priorities |
| Crime and punishment | Whether breaking the law should always carry the same penalty; prevention versus punishment |
| Health | Discouraging unhealthy activity; public health campaigns versus personal choice |
| Media and culture | National versus international news; advertising; cultural preservation |
| Work and society | Employee dress codes; remote work and its long-term effects; work-life balance |
Nothing on that list should surprise anyone who has read a Cambridge book. Task 2 asks about public life, and public life has a stable set of arguments.
What has shifted recently is the prominence of AI and remote work, which now appear across several themes at once — an education question, a work question and a technology question can all turn out to be about the same thing.
The question type matters more than the theme
Here is the part most forecast pages skip. Two candidates can be given the same topic and write completely different essays, because the instruction differs:
| Question type | What the essay must do |
|---|---|
| Opinion (agree / disagree) | Take one clear position and hold it to the last line |
| Discussion (both views) | Give both sides genuine weight, then state your own view |
| Advantages and disadvantages | Weigh, and say which outweighs which if asked |
| Problem and solution | Diagnose causes, then propose solutions that address those causes |
| Two-part question | Answer both parts — the most common way a strong essay loses marks |
Task Response is a quarter of your Writing band, and it is assessed against the instruction, not the topic.
An essay that discusses both views when it was asked for an opinion, or that answers only the first half of a two-part question, is capped well below what its language would otherwise earn.
In my experience marking, that single mismatch is the most common reason a fluent, well-organised essay comes back at 6.0 instead of 7.0.
Reported questions this year lean towards discussion and two-part framings rather than the classic agree/disagree, which makes this worth drilling.
Our Band 8 Writing Trainer is built around exactly this: one guided path per essay type, with the traps, the paragraph blueprint and an annotated model, and marking on the paragraph you actually write.
If you would rather work from finished examples, the Task 2 sample library pairs Band 9 and Band 6.5 answers to the same prompt so you can see what the difference is made of.
How to use a theme forecast properly
Do not memorise essays. Examiners recognise pre-learned material, and a memorised essay attached to a question it does not quite fit scores worse than an honest attempt written on the day.
Prepare ideas and language per theme instead.
For each row in the table above, know two arguments for, two against, one concrete example, and the six or eight words that let you discuss it precisely — "congestion charge", "subsidy", "curriculum", "deterrent".
That is a couple of hours of work across the whole list, it transfers to any framing, and it fixes the real problem: most candidates lose time in the exam not because they cannot write, but because they do not know what they think about the topic.
Then write to time. Forty minutes, 250 words minimum, no dictionary.
Check the result against the four official criteria with the AI Writing Checker, and read our guide to essay length rules before you decide 240 words is close enough — it is not.
When this page changes
We refresh this page through the window as reports accumulate, and replace it at the turn of the year. The themes move slowly; the framings move faster.
If your test is months away, work the themes — they will still be here.