The National Testing Agency (NTA) declared the result of NEET (UG) 2026 on Thursday, keeping the medical admission and counselling calendar on track. Close to 20 lakh candidates had appeared for the exam on June 21 across 5,440 centres in 551 cities in India and 14 cities abroad, of which 11.21 lakh have qualified for undergraduate medical, dental, AYUSH and allied programmes.
Candidates can check their scorecards on the official website, neet.nta.nic.in, where NTA has also published the full list of top rankers, state toppers, category-wise toppers and cutoff marks.
Highest Scorers and Top Rankers
Punjab’s Aryan Gupta and Haryana’s Panshul Bansal jointly topped the exam with 715 marks out of 720. In total, 138 candidates crossed the 690-mark threshold, with over 93 percent of them attempting NEET UG for the first time and 99 percent falling in the 17-19 age group. These top rankers came from 66 cities, with the 17 candidates who scored above 705 spread across eight states — Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
The broader score distribution shows 19 candidates scored above 700, 1,492 scored 650 or more, 10,160 crossed 600, and 90,780 candidates scored above 500.
State-Wise Toppers
Qualified candidates came from all 36 states and union territories, ranging from over 1.7 lakh qualifiers in Uttar Pradesh to just 43 in Lakshadweep. Among the state toppers named by NTA were Jigmet Yangchan Lamo from Ladakh (530 marks), Dhruv Tripathi from Andaman and Nicobar Islands (606 marks), and Fahmida Anees from Lakshadweep (573 marks). Every north-eastern state also had a representative topper. Seventeen state toppers scored 700 or above, while 26 scored above 690.
Category-Wise Qualified Candidates
- General: 2.91 lakh
- OBC-NCL: 5.12 lakh
- SC: 1.59 lakh
- ST: 63,716
- Gen-EWS: 95,026
- PwBD: 3,666
- PwD: 303
NTA has published category-wise cutoff marks and percentiles alongside the result.
Women Outperform in Both Numbers and Qualification Rate
More than 58 percent of all qualified candidates are women. Women also cleared the exam at a marginally higher rate than men, with 56.8 percent of women who appeared qualifying, compared to 55.1 percent of men.
Exam Held in 13 Languages
NEET UG 2026 was conducted in Hindi, English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
How NTA Sped Up the Result Process
NTA said it re-engineered its process this year, running stages in parallel rather than sequentially and de-linking the OMR sheet challenge from the answer key release. The timeline:
- June 25-28: Provisional answer key published and challenge window open
- July 13-15: Scanned OMR sheets and recorded responses shown to candidates
- July 16: Final answer key published and result declared
Counselling and Candidate Advisory
Counselling for the All India Quota in MBBS/BDS will be conducted by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), while state quota seats will be handled by respective state authorities. NTA has clarified that its own role ends at declaring results and issuing All India Ranks — merit lists, domicile determination and counselling fall under admitting/state authorities.
Candidates have been advised to rely only on official portals — neet.nta.nic.in, mcc.nic.in and state counselling websites — and to stay alert against fraudulent calls or messages offering admission or seat-blocking services. Suspicious communication can be reported at neetug2026@nta.ac.in or 011-40759000.
