KNM is mostly about rules, not history.
Both DUO practice exams, 80 questions, coded by two people who did not see each other work. Nearly half the questions are about how things are arranged here rather than about facts you could look up.
This is DUO practice material
KNM is set by DUO and these are the two official practice exams, with the answer key from the results screen. Two coders worked through all 80 questions separately, and every figure below counts only the items they independently agreed on. Where they disagreed, the item is left out rather than settled by one of them.
Counted from the practice exams DUO publishes at inburgeren.nl.
What the exam looks like
80 questions, both practice examsForty questions per exam, eight theme blocks, three options every time. The format does not vary at all between the two papers.
Every question comes with an image and audio, and in 78 of the 80 the image tells you nothing you need. It is there because the exam is built for people who are still reading slowly, not because it carries the answer. Read the question and the options; the picture is decoration.
In the exam
- Do not hunt the picture for clues. In 78 of the 80 questions you do not need it at all.
- Expect three options every time and no true-or-false questions. That held across all 80.
- Use the audio if reading is slow. Every question is read aloud to you, in both papers.
Where the questions are
80 questions, both practice examsEight themes, and they are nowhere near the same size. Work and institutions together are more than a third of the exam, while manners and education get six questions each.
The split held across both papers, which is what makes it worth planning around: work and income was 8 then 9, institutions 7 then 7. If study time is short, the top four themes are 52 of the 80 questions between them.
In the exam
- Put your time into work, institutions, health and government first. Those four are 52 of the 80 questions.
- Do not skip the small themes entirely. Manners and education are six questions each, which is still worth more than the margin most people pass by.
- Practise the KNM practice exam rather than reading about the themes. The questions are situations, not definitions.
What kind of knowing it asks for
79 questions both coders agreed onThis is the most useful thing we counted. Some questions test something you have to be taught; others test something you pick up by living here, and the difference decides how you study.
Nearly half the exam is regulation: which body does what, what you are entitled to, what you must arrange yourself. That is learnable in a way that "know the Netherlands" is not. The school-knowledge fifth is where history and geography sit, and those are the questions you genuinely have to memorise.
In the exam
- Memorise the history and geography. All nine of those questions test taught facts, and there is nothing to reason out.
- Reason your way through health and housing. Those questions are situations, and every one of them describes a scenario you can think through.
- Learn which body handles what. Rules and arrangements are 36 of the 79, the largest group by some way.
How the wrong answers are built
76 to 79 questions both coders agreed onThe wrong options are not nonsense. They are real institutions and real rules that happen not to apply, which is why the usual elimination tricks fail here.
Ruling out on "that does not exist" is useless here: in 77 of the 79 questions every wrong option refers to something real. A housing question will offer you the gemeente and the housing association, and both are real bodies that deal with housing. What separates them is which one handles this particular thing.
In the exam
- Stop eliminating on plausibility. In 77 of the 79 questions all three options name something that genuinely exists.
- Ask which body handles this specific thing rather than which sounds related. The commonest trap, 30 of 76, is a neighbouring concept.
- Read the situation to the end. Two thirds of the questions describe someone with a problem, and the detail that decides the answer is usually in the last line.
One measurement that found nothing
We checked whether the length of the options gives the answer away, the way it sometimes does in badly written practice material. It does not.
Correct answer is the longest option
26 of 72 questions where the options differ in length
Correct answer is the shortest option
26 of 61 questions where the options differ in length
Both sit close enough to chance that neither is worth acting on. We are including it because it is a real check that came back negative, and because option length does leak in some practice material, which is a reason to be careful about what you practise on.
What we are not claiming
Two things are missing on purpose. The correct answer sits in the first position in 35 of the 80 questions, which looks like a pattern and fails a significance test: it is what 80 items produce by chance, and it is not worth a guess. And the question-type split is left out because the two coders agreed on it only 84% of the time, against 95% or better on everything else. A number two careful readers cannot reproduce is not a finding. We publish what we counted and what it rests on, which is also how inburgeringscursus is built.
How this was counted
All 80 questions were coded on what each one asks and how its wrong answers are built. Two coders did the same set independently, and every figure here counts only the questions they agreed on, which is why the denominators differ from field to field. The one field where they did not agree closely enough is named rather than published, along with the other patterns that fell apart, on the Dutch exam research page.
Counted August 2026, from both practice exams available then.
Timo Yasamin · Founder, Inburgeringscursus
Timo started Inburgeringscursus after watching people prepare for this exam with material nobody had checked against the real thing. So he had it checked. Every figure on these pages is counted from the official exams, and the patterns that did not survive that check are published next to the ones that did.
Practise KNM
on all eight themes.
A full KNM practice exam, free, in the format the real one uses.