Guide

Graduation ceremony in Argentina: guest allowance per graduate and the door

By SOMOS DER · October 30, 2026 · 7 min read

At a graduation ceremony (an acto de colación, in Argentina) the door has two closed lists: the graduates, defined by the faculty, and the guests, built from a fixed allowance per graduate. It works with a named pass for every graduate and every guest, a deadline for submitting guests, different arrival times for graduates and guests, and a single entry per person. The allowance per graduate is an organizational rule checked when the list is built; at the door, you only verify that each QR code is valid and used once.

Two lists, two owners

The graduates list is not built by whoever organizes the ceremony: it comes from the academic office. As an example, the guide for graduation ceremonies of the Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (Resolution 435/2024 of its Higher Council) states that the Study Directorates send the list of graduates to the area that organizes the ceremony, and makes clear that attending is voluntary for the graduate. In other words: there is an official list, and not everyone on it will come.

The guest list, on the other hand, comes from each graduate. That is where the allowance appears. Universities and schools usually set how many guests each graduate can bring, because the hall has a capacity and the ceremony cannot exceed it. A private university in Buenos Aires puts it in writing in its graduation intent form: three guest tickets per graduate, no exceptions, named and non-transferable, with a deadline to register them and no changes afterwards. It adds that guests enter in order of arrival, subject to the hall's capacity. Allowance, name, deadline and capacity: that is the base of any graduation door.

What PASE does and what is method

• Feature: a unique, random, non-transferable QR code per person, sent by email with the badge in PDF; one registration link per type (graduate, guest, authorities, staff), so nobody lands in the wrong category; time slots with a capacity each, which can be "invitation only", with their own link; at the door, VALID, DUPLICATE or NOT AUTHORIZED on the spot; a live report by type and by hour.
• Method: the guest allowance per graduate. PASE does not keep count of how many guests each graduate brought; that count is done when the list is built, before the passes are issued.

Step 1: one pass per graduate, from the official list

Each graduate on the list receives the "graduate" link and registers with their name and email, so they have their own QR code and badge. Since attending is voluntary, registration also tells you who confirmed: the gap between the official list and the registrations is the people you need to write to and defines how many graduate seats are set up.

Step 2: one invitation per guest, with a deadline

For guests, the method that works best is that each graduate sends, before a deadline, the names and emails of their guests, within the allowance. The organization reviews that spreadsheet (this is where the allowance is checked: if someone sends five names with an allowance of three, they are asked to choose), and only then does each guest receive an invitation to register and get a named QR code.

So that nobody signs up outside the list, guest registration goes into an "invitation only" slot: it is not shown open on the landing page and can only be reached through its own link. The slot's capacity works as an overall ceiling: if you set it to the hall's guest capacity, the slot closes by itself when it fills up and the landing page shows "Full". That ceiling protects the hall; the fair split between graduates is protected by the spreadsheet.

If families are coming from abroad, the landing page and the QR email show in English when the browser is in English, and a link with ?lang=en forces it. See international guests: registration and the door.

Step 3: named guests, not "+1"

The temptation is to give each graduate one QR code that is valid for several people. It is a bad idea: entry then depends on the whole group arriving together, and the report no longer says how many people came in. Every guest gets their name and their own QR code, even if the graduate receives it and forwards it to their grandmother. If someone has no email, the PDF badge is printed and handed over on paper; PASE prints badges in several sizes.

Ask only for what you need. Argentina's data protection law, Law 25,326, requires data to be adequate, relevant and not excessive for the purpose it was collected for (Article 4), and requires telling people beforehand, expressly and clearly, what it is for and who is responsible (Article 6). To invite someone to their grandson's graduation, name and email are enough: you do not need every aunt's ID number. More in our note on attendee data and Law 25,326.

Step 4: staggered entry, graduates first

Graduates have to be there earlier: they take their seats, rehearse going up to the stage, sometimes get dressed on site. The university quoted above asks them to arrive at least two hours before the start. Guests, instead, all arrive in the last half hour, which is when the queue forms.

That is why it pays to separate types and times. Graduates and guests are different types, and with the permissions matrix you can let graduates into the reserved section and guests only into the audience seating. If the ceremony is split into several sessions on the same day (by degree or by faculty), each one is a slot with its own time, and that time travels to the pass, the email and the PDF: the guest knows when to be there without anyone repeating it on WhatsApp.

Audience entry is one-time: if a guest's QR code has already gone in, the screen says DUPLICATE, even if two scanners read it at the same moment. If the ceremony has a break, or people step out for photos and come back, that check-in point can be set to re-entry mode.

Step 5: the guest who is not on the list

The uncle who did not sign up always shows up. The answer is decided beforehand by the faculty, not by the operator: if there is room after the registered guests are in, he can enter with a manual registration; if not, he cannot. What matters is that it is written down and that someone with authority to decide stands beside the queue. And if someone lost the email, the pass recovery page resends the QR code in a minute.

At the end, the report says how many graduates and guests came in, by hour and by door (reports are in Spanish). For the next ceremony, it is the number that lets you check whether the allowance per graduate was set right.

The allowance is checked in the spreadsheet, the hall is protected by the slot, and the door only has to read one QR code per person.

Frequently asked questions