New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Thursday declared the result of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), NEET (UG) 2026, clearing the way for medical college counselling to proceed on schedule.
Of the nearly 20 lakh candidates who appeared for the exam on June 21 at 5,440 centres in 551 cities across India and 14 cities abroad, 11.21 lakh have qualified for admission to undergraduate medical, dental, AYUSH and allied health courses.
Candidates can check their scores at neet.nta.nic.in, where NTA has also released the full list of top rankers, state toppers, category-wise toppers and cutoff marks.
Punjab’s Aryan Gupta and Haryana’s Panshul Bansal jointly topped the exam with 715 out of 720 marks. NTA said 138 candidates scored above 690, more than 93 percent of whom were first-time NEET takers, and 99 percent were aged between 17 and 19.
Qualified candidates were recorded from all 36 states and union territories, with Uttar Pradesh leading at over 1.7 lakh qualifiers and Lakshadweep recording the lowest at 43. State toppers included Jigmet Yangchan Lamo of Ladakh (530 marks), Dhruv Tripathi of Andaman and Nicobar Islands (606 marks), and Fahmida Anees of Lakshadweep (573 marks).
Category-wise, 2.91 lakh candidates qualified under General, 5.12 lakh under OBC-NCL, 1.59 lakh under SC, 63,716 under ST, 95,026 under Gen-EWS, 3,666 under PwBD and 303 under PwD.
Women accounted for more than 58 percent of all qualified candidates. NTA data showed 56.8 percent of women who appeared cleared the exam, against 55.1 percent of men.
The exam was conducted in 13 languages — Hindi, English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
NTA said the result was declared on time this year after it restructured its process, running stages in parallel and de-linking the OMR challenge from the answer key release. The provisional answer key was published on June 25, with a challenge window open till June 28. Scanned OMR sheets were shown to candidates from July 13 to 15, and the final answer key was released alongside the result on July 16.
Counselling for the All India Quota in MBBS and BDS courses will be conducted by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), while state quota admissions will be handled by respective state authorities. NTA clarified its role ends with the declaration of results and issuance of All India Ranks, with merit lists, domicile matters and counselling falling under the admitting authorities.
The agency also cautioned candidates against fraudulent calls or messages offering admission or seat-blocking services, and asked them to rely only on official websites — neet.nta.nic.in, mcc.nic.in and state counselling portals. Suspicious communication can be reported to neetug2026@nta.ac.in or 011-40759000.
