New Delhi. August 2: The Central Government has rolled out a sweeping set of candidate-friendly reforms for the NEET-PG 2026 examination, bringing structural changes to test administration, centre allocation, and medical counselling. Scheduled for August 30, the entrance test will host 2,73,183 registered candidates—marking a 12.5 percent increase in applicant volume from the previous year—under a standardized single-shift structure designed to eliminate difficulty variations.
Under the revised framework, candidates will receive notification of their allotted test city nearly three weeks before the exam date, granting ample time to organize logistics and lodging. Centre assignments will prioritize the applicant’s state of correspondence, discarding the former first-come, first-served allocation system to better accommodate local travel constraints.
Key technical and operational directives were reinforced during administrative reviews led by leadership. Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda maintained that all partner agencies must ensure a smooth, transparent, and technology-driven process. He asserted that robust technical defenses, including controlled digital decryption at start time and biometric authentication, will protect the credibility of the test.
The test format itself has been optimized, offering 180 multiple-choice questions within a 210-minute timeframe. To further streamline the trajectory into medical colleges, counselling rules have been updated so that candidates requesting seat upgrades no longer need to report in person between rounds, while institutional authorities have been instructed to treat weekends and holidays as working days during the admission timeline.
