Italy's school-leaving examination brings with it anxiety, sleepless nights and, as every year, an extraordinary collection of memorable mistakes. Once again in 2026, the Skuola.net Observatory has gathered the most amusing "gems" slipped out by students and exam committees during written and oral assessments. What was the result? A strange combination of pop culture, historical inaccuracies, and pure stage fright improvisation.
Leading the rankings is the short circuit between literature and television.
The protagonist of "The Late Mattia Pascal" became, for one student, "The Late Mattia Bazar", while others confused him with Hollywood actor Pedro Pascal. Alessandro Manzoni was renamed Alberto—perhaps through a fusion with television presenter Alberto Angela—but was best remembered as "the one who sings L'Essenziale", confusing him with singer Marco Mengoni. Meanwhile, Gabriele D'Annunzio lost his reputation as an aesthete and was demoted to simply being a "beautician". The plot then takes on increasingly harsh and dystopian overtones: the 19th-century Siccardi Laws have been transformed into the "Siffredi Laws", and the Seven Years' War has become the "War of the Seven Dwarves." The link between video games and dictatorships is equally evident, with one student assuming that Adolf Hitler wrote Minecraft (rather than Mein Kampf) and another believing that laws in Italy are established by the "Prisoners' Chamber". General knowledge fared no better: astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was dubbed the "leader of ISIS" (rather than the ISS), the Earth took on the shape of a "diamond", and individuals in Paris strolled among "bungalows." The peak, however, occurred during the art oral examination. When a professor, attempting to assist the applicant, stated, "If I say Pablo...", the student confidently exclaimed, "Escobar!", entirely forgetting about the unfortunate Picasso.