GATE Qualifying Marks 2026: Official Cutoff for Every Paper

The GATE qualifying marks are the lowest marks out of 100 that earn you a scorecard in your paper, and they change every year. For GATE 2026 they ran from 25 to 40 in the General category, depending on the paper. This guide gives the official GATE cutoff 2026 for every paper and category, shows how the number is calculated, and explains why it is not the cutoff that decides your seat or job.

Key takeaways

• The qualifying mark is the threshold for a scorecard. It is set separately for each paper after the exam, from that paper's own marks.
• For the General category it equals the mean plus one standard deviation of all candidates' marks, held between 25 and 40.
• OBC-NCL and EWS candidates need nine-tenths of the General figure. SC, ST and PwD candidates need two-thirds of it.
• In GATE 2026, CS needed 30, CE 28.7, EE 27.7, EC 26.4, DA 26.4 and ME 25.2 in the General category.
• Admission and PSU cutoffs are separate numbers, set later by each institute or recruiter, and are much higher.
• The GATE 2027 figures will appear with the result on 19 March 2027. Until then nobody knows them.

Three numbers people call "the cutoff"

Start with the words, because most confusion comes from one word doing three jobs.

The qualifying mark is set by the organising institute. Reach it and you qualify, which means you receive a GATE scorecard. Miss it and you do not.

The admission cutoff is the score or rank at which a particular programme stopped admitting in a particular round. Each IIT, NIT or other institute produces its own after counselling.

The PSU cutoff is the shortlisting line a public sector recruiter draws for its own interview or group discussion. It comes from that recruiter's notification and nowhere else.

This guide is about the first number. The other two are covered in M.Tech admission through COAP and CCMT and PSU recruitment through GATE.

How the qualifying mark is calculated

The GATE 2027 information brochure gives the rule. For the General category, take the mean of all candidates' marks in the paper and add one standard deviation. If that sum falls below 25, the qualifying mark is 25. If it rises above 40, it is 40.

Here $\mu$ is the mean and $\sigma$ is the standard deviation of the marks of everyone who appeared for that paper. The other categories follow fixed ratios:

A worked example with made-up numbers

Suppose a paper ends with a mean of 17.3 marks and a standard deviation of 10.9. The sum is 28.2, which sits inside the band, so the General qualifying mark is 28.2.

• OBC-NCL and EWS: $0.9 \times 28.2 = 25.38$, printed as 25.3.
• SC, ST and PwD: $\displaystyle \tfrac{2}{3} \times 28.2 = 18.8$.

Now take an easy paper with a mean of 31 and a deviation of 14. The sum is 45, so the cap applies and the mark is 40. A hard paper with a mean of 12 and a deviation of 9 gives 21, so the floor applies and the mark is 25.

Trap: The official tables cut figures to one decimal place instead of rounding them. That is why a General mark of 25 shows an SC/ST/PwD mark of 16.6, not 16.7. Do not "correct" the official number.

In one line: The qualifying mark is the paper's mean plus one standard deviation, clamped between 25 and 40, then scaled by 0.9 or two-thirds for reserved categories.

Official GATE 2026 qualifying marks, every paper

These figures are copied from the cut-off page published by IIT Guwahati, the organising institute of GATE 2026. They are marks out of 100.

Notice how many papers sit exactly on 25 or 40. Those are papers where $\mu + \sigma$ fell outside the band and the floor or cap took over.

How 2026 compares with 2025

A single year tells you little, so set it beside the year before. The 2025 figures come from the official cut-off page of IIT Roorkee, which organised GATE 2025. General category only.

Look at ME and IN. The ME mark fell by more than ten marks in one year, and IN rose by more than fourteen. Nothing about those subjects changed that much. The papers did, and so did how candidates handled them.

Remember: A qualifying mark is a fact about one paper in one year. It is not a trend you can extend into 2027.

Why the qualifying mark is the floor, not your target

Qualifying gives you a scorecard. The brochure says plainly that qualifying in GATE does not guarantee admission, a scholarship or a job.

Seats and jobs go in order of score or rank. Your marks are converted into a GATE score out of 1000, and the qualifying mark is the anchor that maps to a score of 350. How the GATE score is calculated and normalised walks through that mapping. If you scrape past the qualifying mark, your score sits near 350, far below where most admission and recruitment lines fall.

So set your target from the other end. Pick the programmes or recruiters you want. Read the closing figures they publish. Then work back to the marks you need. For CS candidates, GATE CSE qualifying marks and cutoffs adds the 2024 to 2026 CS figures with candidate counts.

When the GATE 2027 figures will appear

GATE 2027 is organised by IIT Madras. The papers run on 6 to 7, 13 to 14 and 20 to 21 February 2027, and the result is scheduled for 19 March 2027; the full calendar is in GATE 2027 exam dates. The qualifying marks for every paper are published with the result.

Until then, ignore any page that claims to know the 2027 figure. The formula needs the 2027 mean and standard deviation, which do not exist yet. Check the current notification on the official GATE 2027 website for the final word.

The figures above tell you what scraping through looks like. To aim well past it, each GATE 2027 book on this site works through its own paper's past questions with worked solutions and full-length mocks; see the books for every branch.

GATE Guide is an independent site and is not connected to IIT Madras, IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee or the GATE office.

Quick revision

1. The qualifying mark decides who gets a scorecard. Nothing more.
2. General qualifying mark: mean plus one standard deviation, never below 25, never above 40.
3. OBC-NCL and EWS need nine-tenths of the General mark. SC, ST and PwD need two-thirds.
4. GATE 2026 General marks: CS 30, CE 28.7, EE 27.7, EC 26.4, DA 26.4, ME 25.2.
5. Official tables cut to one decimal place, so two-thirds of 25 prints as 16.6.
6. Year-to-year swings can exceed ten marks in one paper. Do not forecast from them.
7. Admission and PSU cutoffs are separate numbers set later by each institute or recruiter.
8. GATE 2027 qualifying marks come with the result on 19 March 2027.