CAT 2026 vs CAT 2025: 4 Changes and 3 That Did Not

Exam Updates

Every August a notification drops and the aspirant timeline fills with people announcing that everything has changed. Then you read the bulletin and find a fee revision, a dropdown with one more option in it, and a paper that looks exactly like last year's. The noise is annual. The changes rarely are.

This year the same thing happened. A handful of things genuinely moved between CAT 2025 and CAT 2026, mostly around the CAT registration fee and the application form, and the part everyone worried about, the paper itself, did not. Here is the honest ledger, with the confirmed items separated from the reported ones.

The Change Ledger: 4 Things That Moved

Four items moved and three stayed put. Reading them as one list is what stops a fee revision turning into a week of anxiety about the paper.

And Three Things That Did Not

• The exam pattern, including section count, question count, duration and marking.
• The eligibility criteria, which remain a bachelor's degree with the usual percentage requirement.
• The application window shape, opening in early August and closing in mid September.

Read the two lists together before you read any commentary. Most of the alarm each August comes from an item on the first list being described as though it were on a third list that does not exist, and the paper itself is what people are actually worried about.

That ratio is normal for CAT. The conducting institute changes each year, the administrative details get a small revision, and the paper stays recognisable. Treating the notification as a structural event is the reliable way to lose a fortnight of preparation to reading.

The Fee Change, Category by Category

The revision is small in absolute terms and worth knowing precisely, because the fee is non-refundable and paid once during the application.

Category	CAT 2025	CAT 2026	Change
General, EWS and NC-OBC	2,600 rupees	2,700 rupees	Up 100
SC, ST and PwBD	1,300 rupees	1,350 rupees	Up 50

The increase is the fifth consecutive small revision in recent cycles, which is worth knowing only so that a hundred rupees does not read as a signal about anything larger. It is an inflation adjustment, not a policy change.

Two practical notes. The fee covers the application regardless of how many IIM programmes you later apply to through the CAT score, and it is not refunded if your form is rejected for a document error. That second point is why the certificate section below matters more than the fee itself.

The Application Process: Five City Preferences

The most useful change for most candidates. CAT 2026 is reported to run across roughly 170 cities, and the application asks for five preferred cities from a dropdown rather than the four of previous cycles.

A fifth slot sounds minor and is not, because allotment reads the list in order and places you where capacity allows. An extra realistic option is an extra chance of avoiding an overnight journey, which is worth more than most aspirants weigh it at while filling the form in August.

• Rank by travel feasibility rather than by preference, since every city on the list is a city you might get.
• Do not fill the fifth slot with a city you could not reach by the reporting time on a Sunday.
• The order matters, so a realistic option placed fifth is weaker than the same option placed second.
• City preferences remain editable during the correction window, which is the only second chance you get.

The one caution is that more slots can encourage padding. Five realistic cities is better than five listed cities, and if you genuinely only have three you can reach, leaving the logic of the ranking clean matters more than filling every box.

Certificates: The Two Dates That Invalidate a Document

Reported changes here are narrow and consequential. An NC-OBC certificate is expected to be issued on or after 1 April 2026, and an EWS certificate is expected to be valid for 2026 and 2027 on the basis of the 2025 and 2026 financial year.

Both are the kind of detail that invalidates an otherwise complete application, and both are outside your control in timing terms, because certificates are issued by a state authority on its own schedule. If yours predates the cut-off, start the reissue immediately rather than after submitting.

1. Check the issue date on your existing certificate against the stated cut-off before you begin the form.
2. Start a reissue at once if it falls short, since state offices work to their own timelines.
3. Upload the reissued document, not the old one, even if the old one is still in the portal.
4. Verify against the official bulletin, since these dates are reported rather than something you should take from any secondary page, including this one.

Note the wording carefully. These two dates are reported by multiple aggregators and are the kind of detail that gets restated slightly differently across them, so the bulletin on the official CAT site is the only version worth acting on. If your certificate sits close to a cut-off, treat that as a reason to reissue rather than as a reason to hope.

The Exam Pattern: Unchanged, and Why That Matters

The paper is the same shape as last year. Three sections, 40 minutes each, taken in a fixed order with no movement between them, and the same mix of multiple choice and type-in-the-answer questions.

Section	Questions	Duration
VARC	24	40 minutes
DILR	22	40 minutes
Quantitative Ability	22	40 minutes
Total	68	120 minutes

What Stability Is Worth in October

An unchanged pattern means your entire back catalogue of practice stays valid. Aspirants who sat a mock series built for last year's paper are sitting a mock series built for this year's paper, and the sectional timing you have rehearsed since June is the timing you will get.

• Previous year papers remain a true rehearsal rather than an approximation.
• Sectional strategy, including how many minutes to spend on the first DILR set, carries over untouched.
• The fixed section order still means a bad VARC cannot be repaired by moving to Quant early.
• Attempt targets built on last year's difficulty remain a reasonable starting assumption.

Marking is three marks for a correct answer and one negative for an incorrect multiple choice answer, with no negative marking on type-in questions. That last detail is a strategy fact rather than an administrative one, and it is the reason a type-in question you cannot finish is still worth a guess.

Stability is genuinely good news. It means every previous year paper remains a valid rehearsal, which is why working topic-wise CAT exam previous year questions is a better use of October than reading further about the notification.

Score Validity and What It Buys You

Who the Longer Window Actually Helps

• Candidates applying to non-IIM institutes whose admission cycles run later in the year.
• Candidates who receive an offer and defer a year for work or personal reasons.
• Working professionals weighing a delayed start against a second attempt.
• Nobody sitting the exam this November with a normal admission timeline.

The CAT 2026 score is reported to remain usable until the end of December 2027, which matters mostly to two groups. Candidates applying to non-IIM institutes with later cycles, and candidates who may defer an admission year.

For everyone else it changes nothing this season, and it should not become a reason to treat the attempt as low stakes. A score valid for a longer window is still a score produced on one Sunday in November.

What a Longer Window Should Not Become

The risk is subtle. A score with a longer shelf life invites the thought that this attempt is a rehearsal, and that thought reliably costs marks. Treat validity as an administrative convenience rather than as a second chance, because the preparation you do in October is the only variable you control.

What None of This Changes About Your Preparation

Read the ledger, act on the two or three items that apply to you, and then close the tab. Every item above is administrative, and the paper you are preparing for is the paper you were already preparing for.

1. Your chapter plan. Unchanged, because the syllabus and the question count did not move.
2. Your mock schedule. Unchanged, because the sectional structure and timing did not move.
3. Your attempt strategy. Unchanged, because the marking scheme did not move.
4. Your form and travel decisions. These are the only things the ledger actually touches.

If you want the fuller reading of the notification itself, the CAT 2026 notification analysis covers it, and the CAT 2026 timeline puts the dates in order. Then go back to chapter practice for CAT preparation, which is where the percentile actually comes from.

A Short Checklist for Repeat Applicants

If you applied for CAT 2025, most of your information carries over and a few things do not. Work through this before you assume last year's form is a template.

• Your registration credentials are new. Last year's login does not carry forward.
• Your photograph should be recent, so a 2025 upload is worth replacing.
• Your category certificates may fall outside the new validity dates even though they were accepted last year.
• Your academic details will have changed if you graduated or completed a year since the last cycle.
• Your city preferences now have five slots, so last year's four need one more decision.

The nine registration mistakes piece covers the form itself in detail, and the free CAT cheatsheets and notes are the better place for your attention once the form is submitted.