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JEE Main 2026: Category-wise Candidates, Cut-offs and 100 Percentilers

By Sampath Kumar · Updated 29 Sept 2026

How many General, OBC, EWS, SC and ST candidates actually sat JEE Main in 2026, how that compares with 2025, and what each category needed to reach JEE Advanced — straight from NTA’s own result press releases.

1,538,468unique candidates appeared, 2026

+4.3%change vs 2025 (1,475,103)

250,182eligible for JEE Advanced (all lists)

26scored 100 percentile (24 in 2025)

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Category-wise candidates who appeared, 2026 vs 2025

Unique candidates who sat Paper 1 (B.E./B.Tech.) in either session, by the category they declared. The share column is each category's slice of everyone who appeared.

Category	Appeared 2025	Appeared 2026	Change	Share 2026
General	548,943	538,239	-1.9%	35.0%
EWS	153,970	180,086	+17.0%	11.7%
OBC	145,939	156,038	+6.9%	10.1%
SC	48,134	52,152	+8.3%	3.4%
ST	578,117	611,953	+5.9%	39.8%
Total	1,475,103	1,538,468	+4.3%	100%

The pool grew by 63,365 overall, but not evenly: EWS grew fastest and General was the only category to shrink. OBC is the single largest group of candidates, ahead of General — worth remembering when you read the OBC-NCL closing ranks.

Male and female candidates by category, 2026

Category	Male appeared	Female appeared	Female share 2026	Female share 2025
General	349,761	188,478	35.0%	34.5%
EWS	121,189	58,897	32.7%	32.2%
OBC	103,337	52,701	33.8%	32.8%
SC	34,787	17,365	33.3%	32.8%
ST	397,801	214,152	35.0%	34.4%
Total	1,006,875	531,593	34.6%	34.0%

Registered vs appeared: attendance by category

Category	Registered 2026	Appeared 2026	Attendance 2026	Attendance 2025
General	564,457	538,239	95.4%	95.3%
EWS	183,699	180,086	98.0%	98.0%
OBC	165,912	156,038	94.0%	94.1%
SC	55,863	52,152	93.4%	93.0%
ST	634,923	611,953	96.4%	96.3%
Total	1,604,854	1,538,468	95.9%	95.8%

PwBD candidates: 4,994 registered and 4,800 appeared in 2026 (4,540 and 4,314 in 2025).

Session 1, Session 2 and both

Candidates who appeared	2025	2026	Change
Session 1 (January)	1,258,136	1,304,653	+3.7%
Session 2 (April)	992,350	1,034,330	+4.2%
Appeared in both sessions	775,383	800,516	+3.2%
Unique candidates	1,475,103	1,538,468	+4.3%

52.0% of the 2026 candidates (800,516) sat both sessions; NTA declares the better of the two NTA scores. Session 2 in 2026 ran at 584 centres in 319 cities (15 abroad), Session 2.

Category-wise cut-off to write JEE Advanced

The top 2,50,000 Paper 1 candidates across all categories become eligible for JEE (Advanced). NTA publishes the lowest NTA score (percentile) that made it in each category and how many candidates that list holds.

Category list	Cut-off 2025	Cut-off 2026	Candidates 2025	Candidates 2026
UR-ALL	93.1023262	93.4123549	97,321	96,873
UR-PwBD	0.0079349	0.0023186	3,950	4,391
EWS-ALL	80.3830119	82.4164528	25,009	25,009
OBC-ALL	79.4313582	80.9232583	67,614	67,597
SC-ALL	61.1526933	63.9172792	37,519	37,522
ST-ALL	47.9026465	52.0174712	18,823	18,790
Total			250,236	250,182

What moved: every category's qualifying percentile went up in 2026 — UR by 0.31, EWS by 2.03, OBC by 1.49, SC by 2.76 and ST by 4.11 percentile points — while the number of seats in each list stayed almost exactly the same. More candidates, same 2.5 lakh places: the bar rose most for SC and ST.

100 percentile scorers

26 candidates scored an NTA score of 100 in 2026, against 24 in 2025. By State of Eligibility (the state where Class 12 was passed):

State	100 percentile scorers, 2026
Andhra Pradesh	5
Telangana	5
Rajasthan	4
Delhi (NCT)	3
Haryana	2
Maharashtra	2
Bihar	1
Chandigarh	1
Gujarat	1
Odisha	1
Tamil Nadu	1

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana together account for 10 of the 26. Tamil Nadu had one. Where those candidates went next is on the JEE Advanced 2026 analysis.

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Frequently asked questions

How many candidates appeared for JEE Main 2026?

1,538,468 unique candidates appeared for Paper 1 (B.E./B.Tech.) across both sessions, up from 1,475,103 in 2025, according to NTA's result press release of 20 April 2026.

How many OBC, SC, ST and EWS candidates appeared in JEE Main 2026?

General 538,239, EWS 180,086, OBC 611,953, SC 156,038 and ST 52,152 unique candidates appeared in Paper 1.

What was the JEE Main 2026 cut-off for JEE Advanced?

UR 93.4123549, EWS 82.4164528, OBC-NCL 80.9232583, SC 63.9172792, ST 52.0174712 and UR-PwBD 0.0023186 percentile.

Did the JEE Main cut-off go up in 2026?

Yes, in every category. The largest rise was ST (47.90 to 52.02) and SC (61.15 to 63.92).

How many students got 100 percentile in JEE Main 2026?

26, against 24 in 2025. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had five each, Rajasthan four.

Does a higher category cut-off mean my category is harder?

No. Each category is compared only with itself. The percentile is computed over all candidates, but the 2.5 lakh places are split category-wise, so compare your category's cut-off only with the same category's cut-off from another year.

Source and method

NTA press releases “Declaration of the Result/NTA Scores for JEE (Main) – 2026 of Paper 1” (20 April 2026) and the 2025 equivalent (18 April 2025), published on jeemain.nta.nic.in. The 2026 release is a scanned document; its figures were read from it and cross-checked against the printed totals (category columns add up to the totals shown). Percentages and changes are computed here.