JEE Advanced 2026: Female qualifiers cross 10,000 for first time in six years; success rate rises to 23.4%

Women candidates recorded the highest success rate in the IIT JEE-Advanced entrance exam in 2026, with the number of qualifying female candidates crossing the 10,000-mark for the first time in the last six years. The Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) report for 2026, prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, the institute which conducted the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced this year, said the qualification rate among registered women candidates increased to 23.4 per cent this year from 21.7 per cent last year.

Of the 43,112 women who registered for JEE Advanced 2026, 40,562 appeared in both papers and 10,107 qualified. The report noted that one in four registered women candidates qualified this year, compared with around one in five last year.

"In 2026, 3,814 female-only seats (including female supernumerary seats) were allotted, and 37 female candidates secured seats through the gender-neutral pool," the report said.

The qualification rate among Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates also increased significantly, rising by 9.8 and 8.1 percentage points, respectively, compared with last year. In 2026, a total of 15,856 SC candidates and 6,379 ST candidates qualified, against 12,499 and 5,008, respectively, in 2025.

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JEE Advanced 2026 highlights

The top 2.5 lakh candidates in JEE Main are eligible to appear for Advanced. A total of 1,79,694 candidates appeared in both Paper 1 and Paper 2 of JEE Advanced 2026, which was held on May 17. The result was declared on June 1, and 56,880 candidates qualified.

"The qualifying criteria were relaxed to ensure at least twice the number of candidates qualify as compared to available seats in each category," the report said. The JIC report provides transparency on seating matrices, changes in branch allocations and statistical summaries of student performance.

The number of general category qualifiers declined from 16,154 in 2025 to 15,883 this year, while the qualification rate fell from 43 per cent to 39.8 per cent. The number of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) qualifiers increased from 6,291 to 6,377.

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Among OBC-NCL candidates, the qualification rate declined from 18.2 per cent to 17.5 per cent, while the number of qualifiers fell from 12,606 in 2025 to 12,385 in 2026.

JEE Advanced 2026 ranks will also be used by several institutions outside the IIT system for undergraduate admissions. These include IISc Bengaluru, IIM Lucknow, the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy, the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology.

(With PTI Inputs)