Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced)(JEE Advanced)

About the exam

About JEE Advanced

JEE Advanced is the second gate, not the first. Only the top 2,50,000 candidates from the B.E./B.Tech. paper of JEE Main may sit it, and the 2026 edition ran on 17 May with two compulsory three-hour papers. The organising IIT changes from one cycle to the next, and it writes that cycle's rules into a single brochure that does not carry forward. The marking scheme is not in that brochure at all: it reaches candidates on the exam screen itself.

The examination is run by the seven Zonal Coordinating IITs under the guidance of the Joint Admission Board, and a candidate's performance in it is the basis for admission to the Bachelors, Integrated Masters and Dual Degree programmes at every IIT. For the 2026 cycle the organising institute was IIT Roorkee, and the JEE (Advanced) 2026 Information Brochure states that the decisions of JAB 2026 "will be final in all matters related to JEE (Advanced) 2026 and admission to IITs in the academic year 2026-27".

That brochure is the whole rulebook for one cycle, and it does not carry forward. Its predecessor is the proof: the JEE (Advanced) 2025 Information Brochure carries a different Organizing Institute on its cover, IIT Kanpur, and a different Organizing Chairperson's office, at Kanpur 208016. The 2026 edition sets the eligibility criteria, the registration windows, the fee by category, the tentative city list, the rank-list qualifying percentages and the syllabus, and it says plainly that changes to any date "will ONLY be published on the official website".

Two things the brochure is careful about are worth reading before anything else. The programmes it admits into are undergraduate entry at the 10+2 level only, and Clause 2 names what falls outside it rather than leaving it to be inferred: B.Des, M.Tech, M.Sc, the joint M.Sc-PhD and M.Tech-PhD routes, M.Des and PhD all run at the same institutes "with different admission procedure and criteria not falling under the purview of JEE (Advanced)". And the institutes themselves are counted in words: "At present, there are twenty-three IITs across the country", each grouped into a zone whose Zonal Coordinating IIT actually runs the examination.

At a glance

JEE Advanced highlights

Calendar

Important dates

The 2026 calendar below is Annexure-IV of the brochure. Its first two rows, for the JEE (Main) 2026 tests and their results, carry no date at all, only a pointer to NTA's own website, and are left out here. Times are IST.

One of those dates moved. An announcement posted on the official site on 4 May 2026 at 21:00 IST records that the registration deadline "has been extended until 11:59 PM on May 5, 2026 (Tuesday) for all the eligible candidates", and the same notice repeats that a registration stays incomplete until the fee is paid, per the JEE (Advanced) 2026 announcements.

For the cycle after that, the brochure sets nothing. The one place it names JEE (Advanced) 2027 is the preparatory-course clause, which says candidates "admitted to the preparatory course in 2026 are eligible to appear for JEE (Advanced) 2027 subject to fulfilling other eligibility criteria". It names no organising institute and no schedule for that year, and the newest item in the official announcement stream, dated 16 July 2026, concerns JoSAA seat acceptance rather than a new cycle.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

An Indian national or OCI/PIO (I) candidate must clear five criteria at once, and the brochure is explicit that they apply simultaneously rather than in the alternative.

Criterion A1, performance in JEE Main. The candidate must be among the top 2,50,000 successful candidates, including all categories, in the B.E./B.Tech. paper of JEE (Main) 2026. That pool is carved up before anyone is ranked: the eligibility criteria published by IIT Roorkee set the shortlisting percentages at 10% for GEN-EWS, 27% for OBC-NCL, 15% for SC and 7.5% for ST, with the remaining 40.5% open to all, and a 5% horizontal reservation for PwD candidates inside each of those five categories.

The brochure adds a footnote to that table: the total "may be slightly greater than 2,50,000 in the presence of tied ranks / scores in any category". An OCI/PIO (I) candidate gets none of those category rows except OPEN-PwD, and has to reach the list through OPEN or OPEN-PwD.

Criterion A2, age. Candidates should have been born on or after 1 October 2001. SC, ST and PwD candidates get five years of relaxation, so the bar for them is a date of birth on or after 1 October 1996.

Criterion A3, attempts. A candidate may attempt JEE Advanced a maximum of two times, in two consecutive years. There is no third attempt and no gap year between the two.

Criterion A4, Class XII appearance. The candidate should have appeared for the Class XII or equivalent examination for the first time in either 2025 or 2026, with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics as compulsory subjects. A first appearance in 2024 or earlier disqualifies, "irrespective of the combination or number of subjects attempted/offered". The one relief is for boards that were late: Criterion A4 of the 2026 brochure keeps a board's 2024 candidates eligible if that board declared its 2023-24 results on or after 18 June 2024, though a candidate whose own result was withheld by an on-time board stays out.

Criterion A5, earlier admission at an IIT. A candidate must not have been admitted to an IIT under any academic programme listed in the JoSAA Business Rules of 2025, whether or not they continued in it, and an admission cancelled after joining does not reopen the door. Two groups stay eligible. A candidate admitted to an IIT preparatory course for the first time in 2025 may appear. So may a candidate allocated a seat through JoSAA 2025 who never reported, or withdrew before the last round, or had the seat cancelled before the last round of allotment for IITs.

Foreign nationals, and OCI/PIO (F) candidates, run on a shorter list of four criteria, numbered B1 to B4 and covering age, attempts, Class XII appearance and earlier IIT admission. They are not required to write JEE Main and may register directly. The eligibility criteria for foreign national candidates and OCI/PIO (F) adds that all of them "will be considered in addition to, and not as a part of the 2,50,000 Indian national candidates who qualify for appearing in JEE (Advanced) 2026", and that the seats allotted to them are supernumerary and "limited to up to 10% of the total number of seats of the respective IIT, program-wise". Their B1 also carries a relaxation the Indian-national A2 does not: where a country makes a stint in the armed forces compulsory around Class XII, the candidate is given back the years it took, on a certificate from the competent authority.

All five criteria decide one thing: who may sit the paper. What a candidate did in Class XII is tested again later, against a different bar, in Clause 26 of the 2026 brochure, which governs admission to an IIT rather than entry to the examination: the candidate must have passed Class XII with at least five subjects and either 75% aggregate marks, 65% for SC, ST and PwD candidates, or a place in the category-wise top 20 percentile of successful candidates in their own board that year. Only five subjects count towards that aggregate, and the fifth is whichever non-PCM, non-language subject the candidate scored highest in.

Step by step

Application process and fee

Registration happens only on the online portal reached through the official website, and the brochure warns that it "will be cancelled if, at a later date, it is found that the candidate does not meet any of the eligibility criteria". The documents uploaded with it are not checked then, which is the trap: the brochure says documents "would only be verified at the stage of document verification when the candidate accepts the seat offered through JoSAA", so a wrong upload is not caught at registration but at the point a seat is being accepted.

The fee is fixed by category and by where the candidate sits the paper.

Those amounts exclude the payment gateway's service charges and processing fees, and the brochure states the fee is "non-refundable and non-transferable". Travel to the centre is at the candidate's own expense.

The upload list is set out in the brochure, and much of it is category-specific. Every candidate needs a Class X certificate carrying the date of birth or a birth certificate, the Class XII certificate, and, where the name differs from the Class X certificate, the gazette notification recording the change. A GEN-EWS or OBC-NCL certificate had to be issued on or after 1 April 2026 for the 2026 cycle, and a candidate who cannot produce one in time uploads a declaration in lieu of it instead. An SC or ST candidate uploads the caste or tribe certificate on FORM-SC/ST, with the same declaration-in-lieu fallback but no issue-date condition attached to it. PwD candidates upload a UDID certificate or the prescribed FORM-PwD; a dyslexic candidate's certificate has to say "SEVERE" for the category benefit to apply. Anyone claiming compensatory time or a scribe files a separate letter to the nearest Zonal Coordinating IIT on the prescribed form, with the disability certificate attached. Defence service candidates use FORM-DS, and a candidate from a board outside the brochure's equivalence list needs an Association of Indian Universities certificate.

A candidate who needs a scribe must ask for one during registration, not later. Scribes are drawn from a panel the zonal IIT assembles, made up of Class XI science students with Mathematics among their subjects, and candidates "will NOT be allowed to bring their own scribes". The panel is met one day before the paper, which in 2026 meant 16 May, and the chosen scribe may only read questions and key in answers.

Before the exam

Admit card and exam day

The admit card is downloaded from the official portal, and for 2026 the window opened at 17:00 on 11 May and stayed open until 14:30 on 17 May, which is the moment Paper 2 began. It carries the candidate's name, JEE Advanced roll number, JEE Main application number, photograph, signature, date of birth, correspondence address and category, plus the name and address of the allotted centre. A printout of it and an original photo identity card, one of Aadhaar, a school or college ID, a driving licence, voter ID, passport, PAN card or a notarised certificate with photograph, must both be produced, "without which, the candidate will NOT be allowed to appear for the examination".

Centres open at 07:00 IST. The main entrance closes at 09:00 for Paper 1 and 14:30 for Paper 2, and a candidate who arrives after that "will not be allowed to take the examination under any circumstances". Nobody may leave before 12:00 for Paper 1 or 17:30 for Paper 2. Frisking is compulsory and extensive, and the prohibited list runs from watches and phones through log tables, scales, calculators and pencil boxes to metal ornaments and clothes with big buttons.

One instruction is not consistent across IIT Roorkee's own documents, and it is worth knowing before the gate. Clause 20 of the 2026 brochure says that "pens, pencils, drinking water in transparent bottle, downloaded admit card and an original photo identity card are allowed to be taken inside the examination hall", and lists an eraser among the items that "will NOT be allowed inside the examination centre". The General Guidelines for Candidates published on the same site tell candidates the opposite: "Candidate must bring their own pen/pencil/eraser". The guidelines also confirm that objects of faith and woollens are allowed for candidates who report early enough to be frisked, and that room numbers are not displayed outside the centre, so staff direct candidates after scanning the admit card barcode.

A scribble pad is issued at each desk for rough work, has to be signed, and is handed back to the invigilator at the end of the paper. No second pad is given.

Structure

Exam pattern

Two papers, three hours each, both compulsory, and only the responses of candidates who appeared for both are evaluated. Each paper carries three separate sections, one each for Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, is delivered only as a computer based test, and is available in English and Hindi with the candidate free to switch language at any point, the English version prevailing in any dispute. The keyboard is disabled for the whole duration; numerical answers are typed on an on screen virtual keypad with the mouse.

Three hours is not the length of the paper for everyone in the hall. Clause 9 of the 2026 brochure gives one hour of compensatory time in each paper to PwD candidates with at least 40% impairment, and to candidates with less than 40% disability who have difficulty in writing, which moved their end times in 2026 to 13:00 IST for Paper 1 and 18:30 IST for Paper 2. The form claiming it is filed at registration, not on the day.

What the brochure does not do is tell candidates how the paper will be marked. It goes as far as "negative marks may be awarded for incorrect answers for some of the questions" and then defers: "Details of the marking scheme will be provided in the Instructions to Candidates section at the time of examination." An announcement posted on 13 March 2026 said the 2026 pattern "will remain consistent with that of previous JEE (Advanced) examinations" and pointed candidates back to the brochure, which is as close to advance notice as the cycle gets.

So the only firm description of a JEE Advanced paper is the paper itself. Inside each of those three subject sections, Paper 1 of JEE (Advanced) 2026 ran four numbered sections, and they were identical in Physics, in Chemistry and in Mathematics.

Paper 2 of JEE (Advanced) 2026 used a different shape on the same day, again repeated across all three subject parts.

The two cycles before it are published on the official archive, and neither matches. Paper 2 of JEE (Advanced) 2025 had three sections per subject rather than four, and its third section ran to eight questions for 32 marks. Paper 1 of JEE (Advanced) 2025 closed with three Matching List Sets for 12 marks where the 2026 paper used four for 16. Go back one more year and Paper 1 of JEE (Advanced) 2024 put three questions in its second section for 12 marks and six in its third for 24. The section count, the question count and the marks all moved in consecutive years, and nothing in the 2026 brochure gave advance notice of any of it: it names no question count, no total and no marking scheme anywhere.

The practical consequence is narrow and worth stating plainly: any question count or total quoted for a future JEE Advanced is a description of a past paper. The brochure's own advice follows from that, and it is about the screen rather than the syllabus. After login, candidates "are advised to go through the instructions very carefully regarding the type of questions and marking scheme".

One safeguard runs the other way. If a question has to be dropped, the brochure commits that "full marks for that question will be awarded to ALL candidates, irrespective of whether the question attracts negative marks for incorrect answers".

What to study

Syllabus

The syllabus is not a separate notification. It sits inside the brochure as Annexure-I, in four parts: Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and the Architecture Aptitude Test, each broken into named topic blocks rather than chapter references to any textbook.

The Chemistry list is ordered by branch and starts at general topics, the mole concept and stoichiometry, then states of matter, atomic structure, chemical bonding, thermodynamics, equilibrium, electrochemistry, kinetics, solid state, solutions and surface chemistry before moving into inorganic and organic blocks. Several entries are bounded rather than open: hybridisation is limited to "s, p and d orbitals only", molecular orbital energy diagrams to homonuclear diatomic species up to Ne2, and the hydrogen atom's wave function and probability density are wanted as "plots only" inside an otherwise qualitative treatment.

The AAT syllabus sits in the same annexure and asks for something the other three do not. It names freehand drawing, geometrical drawing, three dimensional perception, imagination and aesthetic sensitivity, and architectural awareness, the last of which asks for "General interest and awareness of famous architectural creations" and for the places and personalities in that domain.

How to prepare

Preparation and books

Neither the brochure nor the Resources section of the official site recommends a book, a coaching programme or a test series, so the list of official preparation material is short and specific.

Two practice tests, one for Paper 1 and one for Paper 2, sit in the Resources section of the official site, and the brochure's stated purpose for them is narrow: candidates are advised to take mock tests "to attain familiarity with the CBT mode". The same section carries a video guide to filling the registration form, in English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bangla, Kannada, Marathi and Malayalam.

Past question papers are published, not just for the last few years. The JEE (Advanced) past question papers archive carries both papers for every year from 2007 onward, with Hindi versions alongside the English ones from 2019, and separate Architecture Aptitude Test papers. The final answer keys for the 2026 papers are posted on the official site as well, printed as the question paper with the answer set out under each question, which makes a paper checkable rather than merely available.

Where it is held

Exam centres

The examination is held in selected cities and towns in India and abroad, and the choice is not a single preference. At registration a candidate "has to compulsorily choose TEN (10) cities/towns", and the brochure is blunt about what that buys: efforts will be made to allot one of them, "but a different city/town may be allotted under exceptional circumstances", and requests for a change "will NOT be entertained under any circumstances".

The list in the brochure is tentative, grouped under the zonal IITs, and the final list is notified on the registration portal before registration opens rather than in the brochure itself. The 2026 tentative list ran from Panaji and Margao in the IIT Bombay zone through Leh in the IIT Delhi zone and Port Blair in the IIT Bhubaneswar zone, and the foreign centres on it were Abu Dhabi and Kathmandu.

After the exam

Answer key

The post-examination sequence is fixed in the brochure and ran to it in 2026. Candidate responses for both papers are put on the candidate portal for viewing, downloading and printing first, on 21 May 2026 at 17:00 IST for that cycle. Provisional answer keys follow, and the brochure labels them for what they are: "Provisional answer key is ONLY tentative and is subject to change."

Feedback on those keys is submitted on the candidate portal inside a fixed window, 10:00 on 25 May 2026 to 17:00 on 26 May 2026 for the last cycle. The official announcement adds that feedback "through email or any other means will not be accepted". The brochure attaches no fee to that window and never uses the word objection; what it commits to is that the final keys are displayed "after considering the candidates' feedback" and that "the marks will be awarded in accordance with the final answer key".

Scores

Result and scorecard

Results for the 2026 cycle were declared on 1 June 2026, alongside the final answer keys. Category-wise All India Ranks go on the online portal and a text message goes to the registered mobile number, but the brochure states that "individual rank cards will NOT be sent to candidates".

How the score is assembled matters more than the headline. A candidate's Physics mark is the Physics part of Paper 1 plus the Physics part of Paper 2, and Chemistry and Mathematics are computed the same way; the aggregate is the sum of the three. Ranks are prepared on that aggregate, and only candidates who sat both papers are ranked at all.

Ties are broken in a stated order rather than by lot. Higher positive marks take the higher rank first. If that fails, higher marks in Mathematics decide, then higher marks in Physics, and if the tie survives all three, "candidates will be assigned the same rank". There is no waiting list for ranking.

Scores you need

Cutoff

Two different numbers get called the JEE Advanced cutoff, and only one of them is set in advance.

The first is the qualifying bar for entering a rank list, published in the brochure before the paper is written, as a percentage rather than a mark.

A candidate has to clear the bar in every subject and in the aggregate, not one or the other, and the brochure notes that the minimum aggregate "may be lowered subsequently, if required", citing an MHRD directive dated 13 June 2018.

The second is the closing rank for a specific programme at a specific institute in a specific category, and that is settled by counselling, not by the examination. Those figures are published after each cycle as the JoSAA opening and closing ranks, searchable by round, institute type, institute, academic programme and seat type. They are the binding numbers, and no forecast of them is worth acting on.

Institutes outside the IIT system that admit on this rank set their own minimum on top. The IIST Undergraduate Admission 2026 brochure requires a General candidate to have at least 20% marks in aggregate and 5% in each of the three subjects in JEE (Advanced) 2026, which its own table puts at 72 marks in aggregate and 6 in each subject, with lower figures for EWS, OBC-NCL, SC, ST and PwD candidates.

Getting a seat

Counselling and seat allotment

Seats at the IITs, NITs, IIITs and other Government Funded Technical Institutes are offered through one common online process run by the Joint Seat Allocation Authority, and the brochure defers to JoSAA's own business rules and schedule for the mechanics. The scale of that pool is stated by the authority itself: the JoSAA 2026 admissions portal records that it managed seat allocation for 138 institutes for the academic year 2026-27, being 23 IITs, IISc Bengaluru, 31 NITs, IIEST Shibpur, 26 IIITs and 56 Other-Government Funded Technical Institutes.

For IIT and IISc candidates the process is shorter than the full JoSAA calendar suggests. The JoSAA 2026 Schedule of Events puts the first seat allocation on 13 June 2026 and marks the fifth allocation, on 16 July 2026, as the "FINAL ROUND of seat allocation for IITs/IISc". The last date to withdraw a seat or exit the process for IITs and IISc fell on 14 July 2026, ahead of that final allocation, so the exit decision had to be taken without seeing the last round.

Two provisions sit underneath the allotment and change who gets a seat. Female supernumerary seats are created so that every IIT reaches "at least 20% female enrolment" in its undergraduate programmes, with the count per programme decided by each institute. And where seats reserved for SC, ST and PwD candidates stay vacant, they are filled through one-year preparatory courses on relaxed criteria; a candidate who passes is offered direct admission the following year to the course already allotted, and may still appear in the next JEE Advanced.

Where it is accepted

Participating institutes

Every one of the twenty-three IITs admits through JEE Advanced, and the brochure's zone table marks seven of them, IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay, as the Zonal Coordinating IITs that actually conduct the examination.

Programme availability is narrower than the institute list. B.Arch is offered at IIT (BHU) Varanasi, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Roorkee only, and a candidate wanting it has to pass the Architecture Aptitude Test on top of qualifying. Mining Engineering and Mining Machinery courses admit female candidates at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, IIT Kharagpur and IIT (BHU) Varanasi, which Clause 30 of the 2026 brochure sets against Section 46 (1) of the Mines Act, 1952. PwD candidates with locomotor disability and colour blindness cannot opt for B.S. in Applied Geology or Exploration Geophysics.

Outside the IITs the brochure is deliberately careful, and it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. It says that "in addition to IITs, certain other institutes also admit students using JEE (Advanced) rank" and that "in the past, some centrally funded institutes (listed below) which used JEE (Advanced) ranks include" IISc Bengaluru; the IISERs at Berhampur, Bhopal, Kolkata, Mohali, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Tirupati; IIST Thiruvananthapuram; RGIPT Rae Bareli; and IIPE Visakhapatnam. It then tells candidates to "contact these institutes directly for additional information regarding admission", which is the brochure declining to speak for them for the current year.

For 2026 one of them was confirmed by name. An official announcement dated 26 January 2026 records that admission to the B.Tech programmes of IISc Bengaluru for the academic year 2026-27 "shall be made through Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) 2026 using JEE (Advanced) 2026 ranks".

The others do not all work that way, and assuming they do is how a deadline gets missed. IIST runs its own application: its 2026 brochure sets registration from 26 May 2026 to 10 June 2026, publishes its own admission rank list on 12 June 2026, and prepares that list from JEE Advanced aggregate marks with its own tie-break rules and a separate registration fee. A JEE Advanced rank alone puts nobody on it.

Get help

Contact

Grievances go to the organising institute in writing, and the brochure is firm that a query must be sent "only at the addresses given in Annexure-V" and that the Organizing Chairperson's decision on it "shall be final". For the 2026 cycle the contact details in the 2026 brochure gave that office as the Organizing Chairperson, JEE (Advanced) 2026, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, reachable at orgjee@iitr.ac.in.

Anything specific to a candidate's own registration, admit card or centre goes to the chairperson of the zone the candidate belongs to.

Registration problems have a separate route. Through the 2026 registration window the official site sent candidates with a new issue to a Registration Related Issues page rather than to email, with the responses posted back on that same page. Once counselling starts the addressee changes again: the JoSAA portal names josaa@iitr.ac.in for queries about IIT and IISc admission.

Source

Official links

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Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Total marks, question count, and marking scheme change every year by design – read from each cycle's official bulletin. Organizing IIT, qualifying count, age cutoff, dates, cutoffs, answer keys, results are all 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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