Did PTE Core get the Academic task overhaul in 2026?

What's confirmed (from the official source)

• PTE Core remains a single ~2-hour computer test in three parts (Speaking & Writing → Reading → Listening), fully machine-scored on the 10–90 scale.
• Pearson's current 2026 score guide lists 19 task types and a total of 52–67 tasks. Older preparation material may show a different task-count range; use the current official guide.
• Core Write Email prompts ask for 80–120 words; Core Summarize Written Text requires 25–50 words and does not have the Academic one-sentence rule.
• Pearson's official "PTE changes 2025" article states the changes "only affect PTE Academic and PTE Academic UKVI" and that "PTE Core and PTE Home are not affected."
• PTE Core's scoring page confirms it is scored by computer with "no interaction with a human examiner" — the AI-plus-human marking model is a PTE Academic feature, not Core.

What's just folklore

These claims circulate on prep and AI-tool sites but aren't in the official documentation:

• "PTE Core was shortened to ~2 hours in 2026" — misleading; the current Core test is about two hours, but this was not the 2025 Academic task overhaul.
• "Two new speaking tasks / AI+human scoring in PTE Core" — false for Core; those were added to PTE Academic. ("Respond to a Situation" exists in both; "Summarize Group Discussion" is Academic-only.)