JEE Advanced 2026 Records 10K+ Women Qualifiers after 6 Years

By: Women Entrepreneurs Review Team | Wednesday, 7 October 2026

The number of women qualifying for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced crossed 10,000 in 2026 for the first time in six years, according to a report by the Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) of IIT Roorkee, which conducted the examination this year.

Of the 43,112 women who registered for the exam, 40,562 appeared for both papers and 10,107 qualified. Their qualification rate increased to 23.4% in 2026, compared with 21.7% in 2025, showing a rise in the proportion of women candidates clearing the exam.

The top-performing woman scored 280 marks and secured an All India Rank of 77. Among the 3,814 women who received admissions, 37 secured seats through the gender-neutral pool, according to the report.

Key Highlights:

• Over 10,000 women qualified JEE Advanced 2026, marking the first time the figure has crossed this level in six years
• SC and ST qualifiers increased significantly, while the number of qualifiers from the general and OBC categories declined
• A total of 56,880 candidates qualified JEE Advanced 2026, with IIT Kharagpur receiving the highest number of seats at 1,952

The numbers of the Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates qualified increased by 9.8 percentage points from the previous year. The rise was 8.1 percentage points among the candidates belonging to the Scheduled Tribes (ST).

In 2026, 15,856 SC candidates and 6,379 ST candidates qualified. The numbers were 12,499 and 5,008 respectively last year.

The number of candidates qualified under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category also saw a hike from 6,291 to 6,377. The report shows a fall in qualifiers from the general category. 16,154 students in the general category qualified last year. This year, there were 15,883 and the rate of qualification dropped from 43% to 39.8%.

The rate of candidates qualified for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) non-creamy layer candidates dropped from 18.2% to 17.5%. The number of qualifiers fell from 12,606 to 12,385. JEE Advanced 2026 was held on May 17 in two sessions. All 1, 87,389 candidates registered for the exam and 1, 79,694 appeared for both papers. From those who showed up, 56,880 qualified.

The report adds that the final decision was taken to have the top 2,50,000 candidates, category-wise, selected from JEE (Main) 2026 to appear for the JEE Advanced test. A large number of candidates (2, 50,174) were declared as eligible due to the bunching of percentiles. The number of foreign candidates and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI)/ Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) candidates (394+2058) has been excluded from this.

"The qualifying criteria were relaxed to ensure at least twice the number of candidates qualified as compared to available seats in each category," the report said.

IIT Kharagpur has been allotted the highest number of seats at 1,952. It is followed by IIT (Banaras Hindu University) at 1,590, IIT Bombay at 1,366, IIT Roorkee at 1,357, IIT Delhi at 1,251, IIT Kanpur at 1,241, IIT Dhanbad at 1,215 and IIT Madras at 1,122.