Common Admission Test(CAT)

About the exam

About CAT

The Indian Institutes of Management will hold CAT 2026 on Sunday, November 29, 2026, and registration closes at 5:00 p.m. on September 15, 2026. Both dates come from the CAT 2026 Information Bulletin, the document the IIMs publish and then hold candidates to. It settles the fee, the three eligibility routes and the certificate deadlines, and it is silent on the exam pattern.

CAT is the computer-based test the IIMs use to shortlist for their MBA and PGP programmes, and it is a shortlisting instrument rather than an admission decision. The bulletin is blunt about this: "mere fulfilment of the minimum eligibility criteria will not ensure consideration for shortlisting by IIMs", and each IIM is "independent to mandate their own eligibility criteria (including academic cut-offs and relative weights) and follow different selection processes" (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

Twenty-two IIMs take CAT scores for their PGP and MBA programmes, and the same score feeds Fellow Programme in Management and doctoral admissions at most of them. Institutions outside the IIM system also use it: the bulletin notes that listed non-IIM member institutions may use CAT 2026 scores, while stating that the IIMs have no role in how those institutions select (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

The convening responsibility rotates among the institutes, and the bulletin does not name which one is carrying CAT 2026. What it does say is that any dispute over CAT 2026 falls within the jurisdiction of the courts of Indore, and the CAT 2026 advertisement is published on IIM Indore's own PGP admissions page.

At a glance

CAT highlights

Calendar

Important dates

Four stages of the CAT 2026 cycle are fixed in the bulletin. Everything else about the calendar is announced separately by individual IIMs for their own shortlisting rounds.

The result date is given as a likelihood rather than a fixed date: scorecards are expected "by the First week of January, 2027" (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). Treat that as the IIMs' own estimate, because it is written as one.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

A candidate must hold a bachelor's degree with at least 50% marks or the equivalent CGPA, and the threshold drops to 45% for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Persons with Benchmark Disabilities candidates. The degree has to come from a university incorporated by an Act of Parliament or a State legislature, a deemed university under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956, or an institution whose qualification the Ministry of Education recognises as equivalent (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

A completed professional qualification is a route in its own right, and it is the one most often missed. The bulletin accepts CA, CS, ICWA (CMA) or Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of India at the same percentage thresholds, alongside a completed bachelor's degree and final-year study as the three qualifying conditions (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

Final-year students can apply, and so can candidates who have completed their degree requirements and are awaiting results. Admission for them is provisional: they have to produce a certificate from their Principal or Registrar stating that all degree requirements were completed on the date the certificate was issued.

The percentage itself is calculated the way the awarding university calculates it. Where a university confirms it has no scheme for converting CGPA into marks, the bulletin sets the fallback: divide the CGPA by the maximum possible CGPA and multiply the result by 100 (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

Reservation follows the statutory pattern: 15% of seats for SC candidates, 7.5% for ST, 27% for non-creamy-layer OBC, up to 10% for EWS and 5% for Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

Two certificate dates matter and catch people out every year. An NC-OBC certificate for CAT 2026 must be issued on or after April 1, 2026, and an EWS certificate must be valid for 2026-27 and assessed for the financial year 2025-26 (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). A candidate who applied for a fresh certificate on or after April 1, 2026 but has not received it may still apply, by uploading a single PDF containing the official undertaking form, the older certificate and proof that the fresh application was submitted. The bulletin warns that failing to upload the complete set may result in disqualification from the entire admission process.

Step by step

Application process and fee

Registration runs on the CAT website, the only address the bulletin gives for it. The fee is Rs 2700 for all candidates except those in the SC, ST and PwBD categories, who pay Rs 1350 (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). It is paid once however many IIMs a candidate applies to, and the bulletin states that fees once paid are not refunded in any circumstances. SC, ST and PwBD candidates upload their category certificate during registration.

One step inside the form decides where a candidate sits the exam: five test cities have to be chosen in order of preference from a drop-down. Allotment happens after registration closes, and a candidate who cannot be placed in any of the five is given a nearby city instead.

Category cannot be changed after registration. That is stated flatly in the bulletin, and it is the reason the certificate dates above are worth checking before paying rather than after.

Before the exam

Admit card and exam day

Admit cards are downloaded from the CAT website between November 4 and November 29, 2026 (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). The admit card is also where the exact test centre appears; registration only settles the city, not the venue within it.

The IIMs keep an explicit right to add, remove, change or cancel any test centre or city, and to change the test time and date. A centre named on an admit card in early November is therefore not a guarantee for the end of the month, which is the practical reason to re-check before travelling rather than printing once and forgetting it.

Structure

Exam pattern

CAT 2026 is computer-based and runs in three sessions on a single day. It has three sections: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability. Negative marking applies to the multiple-choice questions and not to the type-in-the-answer ones, which is what makes the marking uneven across a paper.

The information bulletin itself publishes none of this. It does not give the section-by-section question count, the sectional time limit or the marking scheme, and it does not name the three sections at all.

What to study

Syllabus

The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin prescribes no syllabus. It does not list a single topic, and it does not name the three sections (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

In practice the ground is school-level quantitative aptitude, reading comprehension and verbal reasoning, and data interpretation and logical reasoning puzzles. Because the boundary is set by past papers rather than by a document, past papers are the only honest guide to scope.

How to prepare

Preparation and books

The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin names no preparation material at all: no reading list, no recommended test series and no official practice paper. Expertie does not fill that gap with recommendations it cannot check against an official syllabus, because no official syllabus exists to check them against.

With no prescribed topic list, the scope a candidate prepares for is the one past papers demonstrate. The thresholds worth planning around are the ones individual IIMs publish in their admission policies, rather than any figure attached to the exam itself.

Where it is held

Exam centres

CAT 2026 will be conducted in centres spread across approximately 170 test cities (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). The bulletin gives that number as approximate and does not fix the city list in the document itself: the list goes up on the CAT website, and the specific centre is named only on the admit card.

The five-preference mechanism at registration is the only influence a candidate has over location, and it is a preference rather than a choice, since allotment depends on availability.

After the exam

Answer key

The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin does not describe an answer key, a candidate response sheet or an objection window. It contains no material on any of the three. The CAT website is the only address the bulletin names for CAT 2026 information, so it is where any announcement would appear.

Scores

Result and scorecard

Scorecards are published on the CAT website, and candidates may also be told individually by SMS. The bulletin puts the declaration at "the First week of January, 2027", and states one hard deadline that matters more than the release date: a CAT 2026 score is valid only until December 31, 2027, and the scorecard stays accessible only until then, after which the IIMs will not entertain queries about issuing it (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

That validity window is the reason to download and keep the scorecard rather than relying on the portal, particularly for candidates who plan to apply in a later cycle.

Scores you need

Cutoff

There is no single CAT cutoff to publish. Each IIM sets its own academic cut-offs and relative weights, and the bulletin states that meeting the minimum eligibility does not secure a shortlist (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). The number that decides a candidate's fate belongs to the institute, not to the exam.

The binding numbers are in each IIM's published admission policy for the relevant batch, which is where the sectional and overall percentile minimums, the category-wise relaxations and the weight given to past academic performance actually appear. IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Indore both publish theirs as a document for each incoming batch.

Getting a seat

Counselling and seat allotment

CAT has no common counselling and no central seat allotment. Nothing equivalent to JoSAA exists here, and this is the single most common misunderstanding carried over from engineering admissions.

After the result, each institute shortlists from its own applicant pool and decides its own admissions, though some run their interview stage jointly with other IIMs. No seat is allotted centrally, because each IIM is "independent to mandate their own eligibility criteria (including academic cut-offs and relative weights) and follow different selection processes" (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

At IIM Ahmedabad the process is the CAT score followed by an analytical writing test and personal interviews, with selection resting on exam score, past academic performance and performance in that writing test and interview (IIM Ahmedabad MBA admissions). A candidate therefore tracks each institute separately after the result, and a shortlist from one says nothing about another.

Where it is accepted

Participating institutes

The IIMs at Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Bodh Gaya, Calcutta, Guwahati, Indore, Jammu, Kashipur, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Sambalpur, Shillong, Sirmaur, Tiruchirappalli, Udaipur and Visakhapatnam all use CAT 2026 for their management programmes (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin).

The programmes differ more than the common test suggests. Alongside the flagship two-year programmes, the bulletin lists specialised degrees that also admit on CAT, among them IIM Amritsar's M.Sc. in Data Science and Management, IIM Bodh Gaya's MBA in Hospital and Healthcare Management, IIM Sirmaur's MBA in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Management and IIM Udaipur's MBA in Global Supply Chain Management. Most of the same institutes admit to Fellow Programme in Management and doctoral places on the same score.

The bulletin adds a warning worth repeating: separate advertisements may appear for programmes other than the PGP, so a candidate targeting one of these should read that institute's own advertisement for eligibility and process rather than assuming the common rules apply.

Get help

Contact

The CAT help desk number published in the information bulletin is 1800 210 0175 (CAT 2026 Information Bulletin). Programme-specific questions go to the individual IIM instead: the bulletin tells candidates to read the concerned IIM's own advertisement for eligibility and admission process before applying.

Source

Official links

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Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Exact dates, the conducting IIM, registration windows, answer keys, cutoffs, percentiles, results are per-cycle. Anything per-cycle here is stated for the cycle it names and is taken from the conducting body's own notification; confirm it on the official website before acting on it. Expertie does not conduct any exam, process applications or charge fees.

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