New Delhi: Women candidates achieved the highest success rate in the IIT JEE-Advanced entrance exam in 2026, with the number of qualifying candidates crossing the 10,000 mark for the first time in the last six years, according to official data.
The Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) report for 2026 by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, which conducted the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced this year, noted that the qualification rate among registered women candidates rose to 23.4 per cent this year, compared to 21.7 per cent last year.
Of the 43,112 women registered for JEE Advanced 2026, 40,562 appeared in both papers while 10,107 qualified, crossing the 10,000-mark for the first time. One in four registered women candidates qualified this year, compared with roughly one in five last year.
“In 2026, 3,814 female-only seats (including female supernumerary seats) were allotted, and 37 female candidates secured seats through the gender-neutral pool,” the report said.
The qualification rate for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates also rose sharply by 9.8 and 8.1 percentage points, respectively, since last year.
A total of 15,856 SC candidates and 6,379 ST candidates qualified in 2026, compared to 12,499 and 5,008, respectively, in 2025.
The top 2.5 lakh candidates in JEE (Main) are eligible to appear for JEE (Advanced).
A total of 1,79,694 candidates appeared in both papers 1 and 2 in JEE (Advanced) 2026, held on May 17. The result was declared on June 1, with 56,880 candidates qualifying.
“The qualifying criteria were relaxed to ensure at least twice the number of candidates qualify as compared to available seats in each category,” the report said.
Compiled annually by the organising IIT, the JIC report provides critical transparency regarding seating matrices, branch allocation shifts and statistical summaries of student performances.
The number of general category qualifiers fell from 16,154 in 2025 to 15,883 this year, with the qualification rate declining from 43 pc to 39.8 pc. The Economically Weaker Section (EWS) qualifiers rose from 6,291 to 6,377.
For OBC-NCL candidates, the qualification rate declined from 18.2 per cent to 17.5 per cent, while the number of qualifiers fell from 12,606 to 12,385.
JEE Advanced 2026 ranks will also be used by several institutions outside the IIT system for undergraduate admissions, including IISc Bengaluru, IIM Lucknow, the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy, the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology.
