CAT Exam 2026  Official Dates – Complete Details

Summary

The official CAT 2026 notification has been released, confirming that IIM Indore will conduct the examination in computer-based mode on 29 November 2026. Registration will officially begin on 3 August 2026 at 10:00 AM IST and close on 15 September 2026 at 5:00 PM IST. The CAT 2026 admit card will be released on 4 November 2026.

Around 4.5 lakh candidates are expected to appear for CAT 2026. The examination is a gateway to the 21 IIMs and several other leading business schools, including FMS Delhi, SPJIMR Mumbai, MDI Gurgaon, IIFT, IIT management departments and Great Lakes Institute of Management.

The CAT 2026 exam will have a duration of 120 minutes, with 40 minutes allotted to each section, and will be conducted across more than 170 test cities. The official application fee is ₹2,600 for General, EWS and OBC candidates, while SC, ST and PwD candidates must pay ₹1,300. Applications can be submitted through the official website, iimcat.ac.in

The conducting IIM rotates annually. IIM Kozhikode ran CAT 2025, and IIM Indore is next in the informal rotation. The conducting institute matters less than aspirants assume, since the paper is set by a committee, not a single campus.

https://cdn.digialm.com/per/g06/pub/32842/EForms/image/CAT2026/CAT_2026_Press_Release_26-07-2026.pdf

You need a bachelor’s degree in any discipline with at least 50% marks, or 45% for SC, ST and PwD candidates. There is no age limit, no cap on attempts, and no work experience requirement. Final-year students can apply and are admitted provisionally.

A few eligibility details trip people up every year:

• Percentage is calculated the way your university calculates it. The IIMs do not round off. A 49.6% aggregate stays 49.6% and does not become 50%.
• CGPA conversion follows your university’s official formula. If your institute has no conversion rule, the IIMs divide your CGPA by the maximum possible CGPA and multiply by 100.
• Professional qualifications count. CA, CS and CMA holders are eligible with the required percentage, even without a conventional degree.
• Final-year candidates must produce a certificate from their principal or registrar confirming they have cleared all requirements at the time of admission.
• Distance and open university degrees are accepted if the institution is UGC- or AICTE-recognised.

• Scheduled Caste (SC): 15% reservation.
• Scheduled Tribe (ST): 7.5% reservation.
• Non-Creamy Layer Other Backward Classes (NC-OBC): 27% reservation.
• Economically Weaker Sections (EWS): Up to 10% reservation.
• Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD): 5% reservation.

Candidates applying under the NC-OBC category must submit a certificate issued on or after April 1, 2026. Similarly, EWS candidates must upload a valid certificate for the 2026–27 financial year. Candidates who have applied for a new NC-OBC or EWS certificate but have not yet received it may submit an undertaking along with the prescribed supporting documents during registration.

No request for a change in category will be accepted after the CAT 2026 registration process is completed. While reservation provides eligibility under the respective category, candidates must still satisfy the minimum academic requirements and selection criteria prescribed by the participating IIMs for admission.

In addition to MBA and Post Graduate Programmes (PGP), CAT 2026 scores are also accepted by several Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) for admission to Fellow Programmes in Management (FPM), which are doctoral-level research programmes equivalent to a PhD in Management. These programmes are designed for candidates interested in academic careers, research, consulting, and policy-making across various management disciplines. Candidates should note that each IIM has its own eligibility criteria, admission process, and selection requirements for FPM admissions.

Registration is entirely online at iimcat.ac.in, and the whole process takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes if your documents are ready beforehand. The expected fee is around ₹2,600 for general, EWS and NC-OBC candidates and ₹1,300 for SC, ST and PwD candidates.

The steps run in this order:

1. Create an account using a valid email ID and mobile number, then verify via OTP.
2. Log in with the system-generated user ID and set your password.
3. Fill in personal, academic and work experience details.
4. Select the IIM programmes you want to be considered for.
5. Choose up to six test cities in order of preference.
6. Upload a recent photograph and scanned signature in the prescribed format.
7. Pay the fee online and submit.

Keep the confirmation page. Also, treat the city preference seriously. Allotment is on a first-come basis in practice, so registering in the first fortnight materially improves your odds of getting a nearby centre.

The sectional lock is the single most underrated feature of this exam. You cannot revisit VARC once its 40 minutes expire, which means a slow start in section one cannot be repaired later. This is why selection strategy, deciding within 90 seconds whether a DILR set is worth attempting, separates a 95 percentile from a 99.

Arithmetic alone has dominated the QA section in recent years, so percentages, ratios, time and work, and profit and loss deserve disproportionate attention.

If you are still weighing whether an MBA is the right route at all, it is worth comparing the two-year IIM path against shorter, industry-linked programmes, the kind Digital Nest runs, before you commit two years and several lakh rupees.

Thinking beyond a single exam result?

An MBA is one route into management, and it is not the only one. Employers increasingly hire on demonstrated skill, live campaign experience and portfolio depth rather than on a degree alone, which is why industry-integrated programmes have grown so quickly alongside traditional B-schools.

Digital Nest was built around exactly that shift. Positioned as a startup-integrated business school in Hyderabad, it runs a twelve-month postgraduate programme in digital marketing where learners work inside a functioning startup instead of a lecture hall and backs it with structured placement support across a network of more than 100 hiring companies.

Whichever route you pick, decide it deliberately rather than by default. Watch iimcat.ac.in for the CAT 2026 notification, and if you want to compare a skills-first management pathway against the traditional MBA before you commit, talk to a career expert and get a clear-eyed view of both.