McKinsey Solve (2026): Games, Rules, and How to Prepare

Updated October 2026 · By Dr. Florian Smeritschnig, former McKinsey Senior Consultant

McKinsey Solve is McKinsey’s online, game-based screening assessment. In 2026 it runs up to three timed games back to back (Red Rock Study, Sea Wolf, and Sustainable Future Lab), and the length on your invitation, 65, 85, or 95 minutes, tells you which ones you will play.

McKinsey says no preparation is needed. That is half true. You cannot memorize answers, because every candidate gets different numbers. You can learn the formats, the interface, and a pacing plan before they count, and that is where unprepared candidates lose time.

This page is the hub for everything Solve: what it is, what McKinsey itself publishes about it, what is only rumor, and a preparation plan that links to a full guide for each game. I’m a former McKinsey Senior Consultant who evaluated candidates for the firm, and StrategyCase.com built the first dedicated McKinsey Solve preparation.

Throughout, I mark what McKinsey confirms and what comes from our test-taker reports.

Key Takeaways

• McKinsey Solve runs up to three games in 2026: Red Rock Study (35 minutes), Sea Wolf (30 minutes), and Sustainable Future Lab (20 or 30 minutes).
• Your invite length is the tell: 65 minutes means Red Rock and Sea Wolf, 85 adds the original Sustainable Future Lab, and 95 adds the rebuilt three-day version.
• McKinsey bans other apps, websites, AI tools, pre-prepared notes, screenshots, and outside help, and may ask you at random to explain your logic or take an extra task in person.
• McKinsey publishes no pass rate, cutoff, or score weighting. It reviews your Solve result together with the rest of your application.
• Preparation can’t give you answers, but it can remove the cost of meeting three unfamiliar interfaces under a clock for the first time on test day.

What Is McKinsey Solve?

Definition: McKinsey Solve is McKinsey’s online, game-based assessment for consulting applicants. Instead of asking business questions, it sets tasks inside natural-world scenarios (a wildlife study, an ocean cleanup, a research lab) and records how you work through them. McKinsey reviews the result together with the rest of your application before deciding on interviews.

McKinsey explains the design in its own words. Its director of people analytics wrote in 2017 that the assessment “doesn’t ask questions; it sets tasks”, and that watching how people complete them shows how they think, the same thing case interviewers look for whether or not a candidate reaches the right answer. The natural setting is deliberate too: a neutral environment means business knowledge gives no head start (note: the first evaluative version of the game launched in 2019 in the London office).

One Test, Five Names

You’ll see Solve under several names in guides and forum threads, most often the McKinsey Problem Solving Game or the Imbellus game. They all point to the same assessment family.

How Solve Came About

McKinsey published the history on its careers blog, which makes the timeline one of the few Solve facts you can verify. It also explains the Imbellus name: the startup built the original game with McKinsey, which is why “Imbellus McKinsey” still turns up in searches and old forum threads.

The same 2020 post states McKinsey’s design goal plainly: the team wanted a game that needed no prep and no guides to buy. Keep that in mind when you read the preparation section below.

Which Games Will You Get? Read Your Invite Length

McKinsey’s official Solve FAQ says the length of your assessment is in your invitation email. It doesn’t say which games that length means. Test-taker reports and our own simulations line up on this decoder:

Every game also opens with an untimed tutorial, which McKinsey confirms, so your real sitting runs longer than the number on the invite. Block at least two hours.

Don’t go by what a friend got last month. Both Sustainable Future Lab versions are in circulation, and the number on your own invite is the only signal that holds across offices.

Your invite length tells you which Solve games you’ll play.

Here’s what each game asks of you. Each one has a full guide; this page keeps to the essentials.

Red Rock Study (35 Minutes)

Red Rock is the closest Solve gets to a case interview on a screen. You investigate an animal population, pull the data that matters into a research journal, run the calculations, and complete a short report. Six mini-cases follow, each with its own chart or table. One 35-minute clock covers everything, which is why candidates who polish the report run out of time on the mini-cases. Our McKinsey Red Rock Study guide walks through all three stages and the six mini-cases.

Sea Wolf (30 Minutes)

Sea Wolf, also called Ocean Cleanup or Ocean Treatment, is a constrained optimization game dressed as marine biology. For each of three sites you filter a pool of microbes, build a shortlist, and commit to a treatment whose averaged attributes land inside the site’s target ranges. A perfect treatment often doesn’t exist. The skill is knowing when “good enough” is good enough and moving on. The McKinsey Sea Wolf guide covers the four phases and the per-site time budget.

Sustainable Future Lab (20 or 30 Minutes)

Sustainable Future Lab is the judgment module, and there is no math in it. The original version asks you to rank priorities and then make about 13 scenario decisions inside an environmental research team. The rebuilt version turns that into a project you run over three in-game days, with tokens to spend, researchers to assign, and confidence ratings at the end of each day.

I don’t feel time pressure on Red Rock or Sea Wolf anymore. I’ve played both more times than I can count. I still feel it on the rebuilt Sustainable Future Lab. I had to rush its third day. The Sustainable Future Lab guide covers both versions and the three-day loop in detail.

Older Games You May Read About

Older guides describe an Ecosystem Building game and other retired scenarios. Test-takers in 2026 never report them. If your invite length matches the decoder above, prepare for the three current games first.

McKinsey’s Official Solve Rules

McKinsey publishes its rules in three places: its Solve page, the Solve FAQ PDF (August 2025 edition), and its careers FAQ. Here is what they say, in one table.

What Changed in McKinsey’s FAQ Between 2024 and 2025

McKinsey rewrote its Solve FAQ in August 2025. Comparing the 2024 edition with the August 2025 edition shows what changed.

The direction is clear. McKinsey has tightened its stance on outside help, and AI tools are now named in writing.

Is McKinsey Solve Proctored?

McKinsey’s published FAQ lists no webcam requirement. Its stated safeguards are different. Solve gives every candidate different parameters and data combinations, so a shared answer sheet is useless. And McKinsey may ask you, at random, to take an additional task in person or to explain the logic you used.

That second rule is the practical one. If you can’t walk a recruiter through how you reached a choice, don’t submit it. If your own invitation asks for a camera or other setup, follow the invitation.

How McKinsey Solve Is Scored: Confirmed vs. Guesswork

Most Solve guides present scoring details with more confidence than the evidence allows. Here is the honest split.

What this means for you is simpler than any scoring theory. Finish every game, work in a deliberate order, and make choices you could explain afterward. That covers both what McKinsey confirms and what the “process score” reports describe.

It’s also the same lens I use when I evaluate candidates in a McKinsey case interview: how someone gets to an answer tells me more than the answer itself. Solve applies that idea to a game.

Separate what McKinsey publishes from what the prep industry repeats.

What Is the McKinsey Solve Pass Rate?

McKinsey doesn’t publish a Solve pass rate. Every figure you’ll find online, including the “80% fail” line some guides repeat, is an estimate built from candidate reports.

A single number would mislead you anyway, for two reasons McKinsey states itself:

• Your result isn’t judged alone. The recruiter decides “based on multiple factors,” with Solve weighed alongside your application and any other assessments.
• The process varies. McKinsey says its recruitment process and timeline differ by role and location.

So “is Solve hard?” has a better answer than a percentage. The tasks themselves are learnable. What makes Solve hard is meeting three unfamiliar interfaces under a clock, with no pause button and no second attempt in the same application. Those are exactly the parts preparation can fix.

From my own experience, I have seen many candidates with average resumes and a top 10% Solve score receive a rejection, whereas stellar resumes and average Solve scores continue to land interview invites.

Where Solve Sits in the McKinsey Process

For most consulting applicants, Solve comes after the resume screen and before any interview. McKinsey’s careers blog tells applicants not to be surprised by an invitation to play during the assessment process.

1. Application and resume screen
2. McKinsey Solve, taken online at home
3. First-round interviews: a McKinsey case interview plus the Personal Experience Interview (McKinsey PEI)
4. Final-round interviews: more cases and PEI
5. Offer

Your recruiter confirms the exact steps and timing for your role and office. McKinsey says this directly in its careers FAQ.

How Long Until You Hear Back?

McKinsey publishes no timeline for Solve results, and timing differs by role and office. Your recruiter is the right person to ask.

What If You Don’t Pass?

McKinsey’s careers FAQ lists no general waiting period before you can reapply, and none specific to Solve. It does confirm one rule: if you aren’t selected for an internship, you can still apply for full-time roles in your campus’s full-time window. Our guide to reapplication rules after a consulting rejection compares McKinsey’s position with BCG’s and Bain’s.

Can You Prepare for McKinsey Solve?

Yes, as long as you’re clear about what preparation can and can’t do.

What it can’t do: give you answers. McKinsey’s FAQ says no two candidates get the same parameters and data. Anyone selling an answer key is selling a version of the game you won’t see.

What it can do: take away the cost of seeing everything for the first time and helping you get familiar with the types of problems you are working on. McKinsey’s own careers blog shows that cost. One of the two new hires it profiled about Solve said that at the start, “I got so in my head that the instructions didn’t sink in.” The other described setting a few generic steps and a time limit for each one once the game began.

Both passed without preparing, and plenty of candidates do. But nerves in the first minutes and a self-made pacing plan are exactly what you can sort out before test day instead of during it. That’s the gap between McKinsey’s “no preparation is needed” and what actually helps: familiarity with the process, tasks, and interface, not answers.

If you have worked on a similar problem with the same interface 10 times, you will automatically be much faster and more accurate the 11th time you deal with it.

There’s one more reason to start early. Solve tests skills that also matter in the case interview: picking the data that matters, quick calculations, reading charts, and committing to a decision with incomplete information. Time spent on those pays off twice.

How to Prepare for McKinsey Solve: A 7-Day Plan

This plan assumes about a week between your invite and its deadline. If you have more time, stretch Days 2 to 5 rather than adding more full runs.

Step 1: Decode Your Invite and the Rules

Match your invite length to the decoder above. Then read McKinsey’s rules once, properly. The tech check runs when you open your link, so don’t leave it to the last hour before your deadline.

Step 2: Learn Each Game’s Mechanics

Read the full guide for each game you’ll play. You’re learning what each screen asks of you, where the time goes, and which mistakes cost the most. One hour per game is enough.

Step 3: Play Under the Clock, Then Debrief

Play each game once under real time limits, then review it. Don’t only look at the outcome. Ask where you hesitated, where you went back and forth, and where the clock got away from you.

A handful of runs with a proper debrief beats a dozen without one. Repetition without reflection makes you faster at your current approach, including its mistakes.

Step 4: Rehearse the Full Run With Pacing Checkpoints

Play everything back to back at your invite length. Use fixed checkpoints so no game eats the next one’s time. These match the splits in each game guide:

Know these by heart as each game begins.

If you want to rehearse on realistic versions of the games, the StrategyCase McKinsey Solve Game Simulations cover Red Rock, Sea Wolf, and Sustainable Future Lab, with a debrief after every game. They’re designed by a game designer, with my input, and tuned using 600+ test-taker feedback reports since launch. There’s a free demo if you want to try it before deciding.

For the math and chart side of Red Rock, our consulting chart drills build the reading speed the mini-cases need.

McKinsey Solve Test-Day Checklist

• Book a quiet slot. McKinsey suggests a time when you won’t be disturbed. Two hours, phone in another room.
• Use one PC or Mac and one screen. Close every other application before you open the link.
• Keep paper and a pen. Notes you take during Solve are fine; pre-prepared notes are not. Discard your notes afterward, as McKinsey asks.
• Use the tutorials. They’re untimed. Learn where everything sits before the clock starts.
• Write your checkpoints down at the start of each game.
• Use the in-game calculator. Other apps, websites, and AI tools are banned.
• Contact support immediately if anything breaks: gbil-support@mckinsey.com or the live chat. Support can only add time or reset your link if you report the problem while it happens.
• Reset between games. Each game starts fresh. Don’t carry a bad Red Rock into Sea Wolf.

Six Mistakes That Cost Candidates on Solve

1. Hunting for an answer key. Every candidate gets different numbers. Prepare for the mechanics, not for someone else’s solution.
2. Clicking through the tutorials. They’re the only untimed minutes you get. Use them.
3. Perfecting the first part of a game. Polishing the Red Rock report, or chasing a perfect Site 1 in Sea Wolf, strands the later items that count as much.
4. Preparing for the wrong Sustainable Future Lab. A 95-minute invite means the rebuilt three-day version. Practicing only the 13-question format leaves you learning the new interface on the clock.
5. Making choices you can’t explain. McKinsey can ask you to walk through your logic. Clicking until something fits is a weak approach and a risk.

After Solve Comes the Case Interview

Solve is a separate workstream from your case preparation. Case practice won’t teach you Sea Wolf’s interface, and Solve practice won’t teach you to structure a problem out loud with an interviewer.

But the thinking overlaps, and the interviews are where the offer is decided. If you pass Solve, the case interview is your next step, so start preparing for it now rather than after your result. The free Case Interview Foundations course is the place to start: 40+ videos, 7+ hours of instruction, and 200+ pages of reading on the skills McKinsey’s case interviews test.

McKinsey Solve FAQ

Related Guides

• Consulting assessment tests by firm: every major firm’s online screen in one place.
• The McKinsey application process: where Solve sits from application to offer.
• BCG online assessment: BCG’s screens, if you’re applying to both firms.
• How long to prepare for consulting interviews: plan your runway before the Solve invite lands.

Your Next Step

McKinsey Solve rewards candidates who arrive already knowing the games. Three things to do this week:

1. Read your invite length and match it to the decoder, so you prepare for the right Sustainable Future Lab.
2. Play each game under the clock and debrief it before you attempt a full run.
3. Start your case preparation now, because the interview follows quickly if you pass.

The fastest way to see what Solve feels like is to play it. Try the free StrategyCase McKinsey Solve demo, then run the full simulations at your invite length before the real one counts.

About the Author: Dr. Florian Smeritschnig is the founder of StrategyCase.com and a former McKinsey Senior Consultant. He has written the first Solve game guide, already at the end of 2019. Since 2020 he has delivered 2,200+ mock interviews and coaching sessions, and his clients have secured 700+ consulting offers, 340 of them at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. He is the author of three books on consulting interviews and careers, including The 1%: Conquer Your Consulting Case Interview.