JEE Main Syllabus, Exam Pattern, Eligibility

Paper 1: 75 questions, 300 marks

All 75 are compulsory. Section B answers are entered with the mouse on an on-screen numeric keypad and rounded off to the nearest integer. Marking is +4 correct, −1 incorrect, 0 unanswered, in both sections. Earlier cycles treated the numerical section differently; it is no longer a free guess.

Paper 2A (B.Arch.): 77 questions, 400 marks

Negative marking applies to Part I and the Aptitude Test but not to the Drawing Test.

Paper 2B (B.Planning): 100 questions, 400 marks

Entirely computer based, marked +4, −1 and 0 throughout.

Duration and timing

PwD and PwBD candidates eligible for a scribe get 20 minutes per hour extra.

The NTA Score

Different shifts get different papers, so raw marks are converted to an NTA Score, a percentile, by the normalisation procedure in the bulletin's appendix: for each subject and the total, merged across all shifts of both sessions. A percentile of 99 is a position in the distribution, not 99 per cent of the marks.

Ties in Paper 1

Broken by the NTA Score in Mathematics, then Physics, then Chemistry; then the smaller proportion of incorrect to correct attempted answers overall, then in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in turn; then the same rank. For Paper 2A the order is Mathematics, the Aptitude Test, the Drawing Test, then the same accuracy criteria.

The bulletin points to a separate JEE (Main) 2026 syllabus on jeemain.nta.nic.in. Its unit headings:

Paper 1: Mathematics (14 units)

Sets, Relations and Functions; Complex Numbers and Quadratic Equations; Matrices and Determinants; Permutations and Combinations; Binomial Theorem; Sequence and Series; Limit, Continuity and Differentiability; Integral Calculus; Differential Equations; Co-ordinate Geometry; Three Dimensional Geometry; Vector Algebra; Statistics and Probability; Trigonometry.

Paper 1: Physics (20 units)

Units and Measurements; Kinematics; Laws of Motion; Work, Energy and Power; Rotational Motion; Gravitation; Properties of Solids and Liquids; Thermodynamics; Kinetic Theory of Gases; Oscillations and Waves; Electrostatics; Current Electricity; Magnetic Effects of Current and Magnetism; Electromagnetic Induction and Alternating Currents; Electromagnetic Waves; Optics; Dual Nature of Matter and Radiation; Atoms and Nuclei; Electronic Devices; Experimental Skills.

Paper 1: Chemistry (20 units)

Some Basic Concepts in Chemistry; Atomic Structure; Chemical Bonding and Molecular Structure; Chemical Thermodynamics; Solutions; Equilibrium; Redox Reactions and Electrochemistry; Chemical Kinetics; Classification of Elements and Periodicity in Properties; p-Block Elements; d- and f-Block Elements; Coordination Compounds; Purification and Characterisation of Organic Compounds; Some Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry; Hydrocarbons; Organic Compounds Containing Halogens; Organic Compounds Containing Oxygen; Organic Compounds Containing Nitrogen; Biomolecules; Principles Related to Practical Chemistry.

There is no s-block unit in the list.

Papers 2A (B.Arch.) and 2B (B.Planning)

• Part I Mathematics: the same 14 units as Paper 1.
• Part II Aptitude Test: awareness of persons, buildings and materials, visualising three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional drawings; three-dimensional perception, scale and proportion, colour, texture and contrast, and design of geometrical or abstract shapes.
• Part III, Paper 2A Drawing Test: sketching scenes from memory of urbanscape, landscape and rural life, on a drawing sheet. Bring your own pencils, geometry box, erasers, colour pencils and crayons.
• Part III, Paper 2B Planning: General Awareness, Social Sciences, Thinking Skills.

Each Paper 1 subject carries 25 questions and 100 marks, so no subject outweighs another, though Mathematics is the first tie-breaker. The Aptitude Test is 50 questions and 200 marks, half of each 400-mark Paper 2. The Class 12 subjects each paper's rank requires are under Eligibility.

The passing year is the year the result was first declared 'pass'. NTA's example: Physics, Chemistry and Biology passed in 2023, then Mathematics passed in 2024, gives a passing year of 2023, so not eligible for 2026. An improvement attempt does not count as the first.

Qualifying examinations

The 10+2 final of any recognised Central or State board; Intermediate or two-year Pre-University; the two-year course of the Joint Services Wing of the National Defence Academy; the NIOS Senior Secondary examination with at least five subjects; any examination recognised by the Association of Indian Universities as equivalent; the Higher Secondary Certificate Vocational examination; an AICTE or State board diploma of at least three years; GCE Advanced level, the Cambridge High School Certificate or the International Baccalaureate Diploma; and BOSSE, Sikkim. Where Class 12 is not a public examination, the candidate must have passed at least one public board or pre-university examination earlier.

State code of eligibility

The State from which you passed Class 12, not your native place or residence. A candidate studying in New Delhi while living in Noida has the code of Delhi. Improvement from another State does not move it; NIOS candidates take the State of the study centre; Indian nationals passing from Nepal or Bhutan take the State of their passport address; OCI candidates passing abroad get All India quota seats but not Home State quota seats. It decides Home State quota in State colleges.

The board marks condition

For the NIT+ system through JoSAA or CSAB, a candidate must have passed Class 12 with five subjects and either 75 per cent aggregate (65 per cent for SC, ST and PwD) or a place in the category-wise top 20 percentile of their own board. No JEE rank substitutes for it.

JEE (Advanced) needs a place among the top 2,50,000 successful candidates in Paper 1, all categories included.

PwD and PwBD candidates

Extra time of 20 minutes per hour for those eligible for a scribe; details fetched automatically from the UDID portal; and certificate formats in the bulletin, including one for a person with a specified disability under Section 2(s) of the RPwD Act 2016 but not Section 2(r), that is below 40 per cent disability with difficulty writing.

NTA conducts the examination only, and entertains no grievance or RTI on any institute's qualification criteria.

1. Sit one session or both.
2. Raw marks become NTA Scores, per subject and in total, by the published normalisation procedure.
3. The NTA Scores of all shifts of both sessions are merged; for a candidate who sat both, the better Total NTA Score is taken.
4. Ties are broken by Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, then accuracy (see Exam pattern).
5. The All India Rank and All India category rank are declared, with the status of eligibility for JEE (Advanced): the top 2,50,000 in Paper 1.

Where the seat comes from

Not from NTA. Seats in the NIT+ system are allotted by the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) and the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB), on the JEE rank plus the Class 12 marks condition. They reserve the right to change their eligibility and allocation rules at any time, and a State admitting to its own colleges may prepare a separate rank list on criteria it decides. The IITs admit through JEE (Advanced), conducted separately; see jeeadv.ac.in.

JEE (Main) is an admission test, so no pay attaches to it. A Paper 1 rank leads to B.E. and B.Tech. seats in the NITs, IIEST Shibpur, the IIITs and other Government Funded Technical Institutions through JoSAA and CSAB, and to State institutions that adopt it; Paper 2A to B.Arch. and Paper 2B to B.Planning. Some institutions outside JoSAA and CSAB also admit on JEE (Main) scores on their own terms, and the IITs admit through JEE (Advanced).

Online on jeemain.nta.nic.in, per session, paying by card, net banking or UPI. Fee for a single paper:

A higher fee applies for more than one paper. The application asks for the paper, examination cities (restricted to the States of your present and permanent addresses), qualification details, a scanned ID if not verifying through Aadhaar, and, for candidates sitting Class 12 that year, the board roll, registration or enrolment number. Fill that in: NTA used it with CBSE in 2026 to avoid scheduling JEE papers against board papers.

The correction window, like the answer key challenge and the result date, is announced on the website, not fixed in the bulletin.

Dealing with NTA

• Write by email with your name, application number, address and phone; anonymous queries and those from "representatives" are not answered.
• The score card uses the name on your Class 10 certificate; fix any mismatch early.
• Records are kept 90 days after the result, grievances must be raised within 30 days, and disputes lie in Delhi and New Delhi only.

The National Testing Agency, an autonomous body registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860 and working under the Department of Higher Education, conducts the examination. Admission is by others:

JEE (Main) 2026, Paper 1

A little over 16 lakh individuals, 8.6 lakh of them in both sessions. Of the unique registrants, 5,56,793 were women and 4,994 PwBD. Session 2 attendance was 93.11 per cent (91.49 to 93.90 across shifts), at 584 centres in 319 cities, including 15 outside India: Manama, Doha City, Muscat, Riyadh, Sharjah, Singapore, Kuwait, Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu, Abu Dhabi, West Java, Washington, Lagos, Munich and Dammam. The paper was offered in 13 languages: Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The Indian city list runs to eight pages as Appendix VI of the bulletin.

You choose examination cities in the application, and since 2026 only within the States of your present and permanent addresses. The city intimation slip comes two to three weeks ahead; the admit card with the actual centre, 3 to 4 days ahead.

NTA's Session 2 press release lists the security in place: jammers and CCTV watched with AI-based video analytics from a central control room; AI face comparison, OTP-based Aadhaar e-KYC and live photo comparison at application; and manual frisking, with separate enclosures for women.

On the day

1. Visit the centre beforehand to know the route.
2. Report well before the gate closes. If you did not register through Aadhaar, report at least one hour before gate closing for biometrics.
3. After frisking, go to the registration desk for Aadhaar authentication and a photograph.
4. Take the seat and console assigned, well before the start.

Paper 2A's Drawing Test is on paper; everything else is on the computer.

The 2026 session dates are in the overview. NTA does move dates and says why: for Session 2 of 2026 it revised centres for aspirants in the Middle East because of the conflict there, rescheduled candidates who asked to avoid 5 April for Easter, and worked with CBSE to avoid clashes with Class 12 board papers.

After the result, you have 30 days to raise a grievance; records are kept for 90 days. Every notice appears under Public Notices on jeemain.nta.nic.in and on nta.ac.in.

Two documents, both downloaded from jeemain.nta.nic.in with your login. The city intimation slip comes two to three weeks before, giving the city (first week of January and second week of March in 2026). The admit card, 3 to 4 days before, gives the centre, date and shift. For Session 2 of 2026, admit cards for the 2 and 4 April papers came on 29 March 2026 and the rest on 1 April 2026.

If you did not register through Aadhaar, report at least one hour before gate closing for biometrics, an hour earlier than everyone else. If your date clashes with a Class 12 board paper, a religious observance or a conflict-affected region, NTA has accommodated all three.

1. Display of the question paper you attempted, the provisional answer keys and your recorded responses, with a window to challenge the keys. Dates are announced on the website.
2. Final answer keys, per paper and session.
3. The result and NTA Scores, by 12 February for Session 1 and by 20 April for Session 2 in 2026.

For Session 2 of 2026 the final keys came on 20 April 2026 and the result the same day, with the result press release giving the attendance figures, the JEE (Advanced) cut-offs and the 26 candidates who scored an NTA Score of 100. Score cards are on jeemain.nta.nic.in.

The bulletin has a clause on re-evaluation; in practice the check is the answer key challenge, before the result. Grievances must be raised within 30 days, records go after 90 days, and jurisdiction is Delhi and New Delhi only.

NTA publishes one cut-off: the NTA Score percentile for JEE (Advanced) eligibility, with the result. For 2026:

Those add to about 2,50,000: the cut-off falls wherever the two and a half lakh places run out, shared across categories in reservation proportion. The gap between UR and ST is arithmetic, not standard; and the PwBD floor of 0.0023186 means effectively every PwBD candidate who appeared was within the quota.

Institute and branch closing ranks are published by JoSAA and CSAB after each allocation round, not by NTA. The Class 12 condition of 75 per cent or the top 20 percentile is a separate gate.

Section B has negative marking

The 15 numerical-value questions in Paper 1 are marked +4, −1, 0, exactly like Section A. Anyone working from older material will treat them as free guesses. Practise entering answers on a virtual keypad and rounding to the nearest integer.

Guess with the arithmetic in mind

A blind guess among four options is worth +0.25 on average; with one option eliminated, +0.67; with two, +1.5. Four wrong answers cancel one right one. But after the three subject scores, the next tie-breaker is your ratio of incorrect to correct attempts, so volume guessing has a cost the mark sheet does not show.

Mathematics counts twice

Equal marks, but Mathematics is the first tie-breaker in Papers 1 and 2A.

Use both sessions

Only the better total counts. In 2026, 8.61 lakh of the 16.05 lakh unique candidates sat both. Treat January as a real attempt, so April can be planned around the board examinations.

Practise on the real papers

NTA publishes the actual Session 2 question papers and the final answer keys; see Sample papers. Sit them at 180 minutes, on screen: 75 questions is 2 minutes 24 seconds each. Track your accuracy ratio alongside the score. Material that treats Section B as penalty-free, offers a choice of five from ten in it, or quotes a cut-off in marks is not built on the current paper.

Do not neglect the board examination

For an NIT seat you need 75 per cent in five subjects (65 for SC, ST and PwD) or the top 20 percentile of your board, and the right subject combination. A rank does not open that gate.

Paper 2A and 2B

The Aptitude Test is 200 of 400 marks and nothing in Paper 1 preparation covers it. The Drawing Test has no negative marking, so never leave either of its two questions blank.

Avoidable losses

• Register through Aadhaar, or report an hour before gate closing.
• Give your Class 12 board roll number in the application.
• Make sure your Class 10 name matches; the score card uses it.
• Watch the website for the correction window.

NTA publishes the actual JEE (Main) question papers. For Session 2 of 2026, the B.E./B.Tech. papers for every shift are on jeemain.nta.nic.in: 2 Apr, shift 1, shift 2, 4 Apr, shift 1, shift 2, 5 Apr, shift 1, shift 2, 6 Apr, shift 1, shift 2, 8 Apr, shift 2. They sit under the Question Papers menu on the home page.

Final answer keys for each session are published on the Public Notices page alongside the result, and the JEE (Main) 2026 syllabus is on the same site.

Who conducts JEE (Main)?

The National Testing Agency, since 2019, for the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education.

How many times a year is it held?

Twice, in January and April. Sit one or both; the better Total NTA Score counts, not the better subject scores.

What is the Paper 1 pattern?

75 questions, 300 marks, 3 hours: 20 MCQs and 5 numerical-value questions in each of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, all compulsory, marked +4, −1, 0 in both sections.

What is an NTA Score?

A percentile normalised across shifts. 99 means a position in the distribution, not 99 per cent of the marks.

Is there an age limit, and which Class 12 years qualify?

No age limit. Class 12 passed in 2024 or 2025, or appearing in 2026; passed in 2023 or earlier is not eligible. The passing year is the year you first passed, so a later improvement does not change it.

What decides my State code of eligibility?

The State you passed Class 12 from, not where you live.

What is the fee?

Per session, one paper, centre in India: ₹1,000 General male; ₹900 Gen-EWS or OBC-NCL male; ₹800 General, Gen-EWS or OBC-NCL female; ₹500 SC, ST, PwD, PwBD and third gender.

How do I qualify for JEE (Advanced), and what was the 2026 cut-off?

Be in the top 2,50,000 in Paper 1. In 2026: UR 93.4123549, EWS 82.4164528, OBC 80.9232583, SC 63.9172792, ST 52.0174712, UR-PwBD down to 0.0023186.

Is a JEE rank enough for an NIT seat?

No. You also need 75 per cent in five Class 12 subjects (65 for SC, ST and PwD) or the top 20 percentile of your board, and the right subject combination.

Are previous papers available?

Yes. NTA publishes the question papers for each shift of Session 2 of 2026, and the final answer keys for both sessions, on jeemain.nta.nic.in.

I did not register through Aadhaar. Does that matter?

Yes: report at least one hour before gate closing for biometrics.

How many sat JEE (Main) 2026?

16,04,854 unique candidates registered for Paper 1 and 15,38,468 appeared; 8,61,343 registered for both sessions. 26 scored an NTA Score of 100.