CAT 2026 Cutoff: Category-Wise Marks & Percentile

IIM Ahmedabad has published a CAT 2026-linked admission cutoff. IIM Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode and Indore have not published one yet, as of 14 September 2026. That gap, one confirmed cutoff against five not-yet-published ones, is the real starting point for It, not a single headline number.

As of 14 September 2026, IIM Ahmedabad is the only IIM among these six with a published cutoff. That cutoff is tied to CAT 2026, for its 2027-29 batch. The other five are still running on cutoffs from the CAT-2025-linked cycle before this one. Their own official sites have simply not been updated for the new cycle yet. Nobody is withholding these numbers. They have not been written yet.

its cutoff range works differently from a typical year-to-year range. One institute's figure, IIM Ahmedabad's, is fixed, sourced and dated. The other five show last cycle's number, clearly marked as such. Every table below carries its own cycle label for exactly this reason. That way, a 2025-linked figure is never mistaken for a 2026-linked one.

Six IIMs checked, one confirmed CAT 2026 answer. Here is what actually stands today, before the tables go category by category.

A few things follow from that alert, and they matter more than any single number here:

• IIM Ahmedabad's figure is a real, checkable number, dated and sourced to its own admission policy PDF. Treat it that way, not as a rough estimate.
• The other five numbers are not interchangeable with a CAT 2026 figure just because they look similar. A cutoff can carry the exact same shape year to year and still belong to a different cycle entirely.
• A still-pending cutoff at Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode or Indore says nothing about where that institute's own bar will land. It may move up, down or stay flat once the institute does publish. That number simply is not written yet.

For CAT 2026's dates, pattern and eligibility in full, the CAT 2026 overview covers the whole exam. This page stays narrowly on what a percentile is actually worth.

IIM Ahmedabad's table below is the only fully sourced answer to "what percentile do I need." The second table, for the other five IIMs, is reference data from an earlier cycle. It is kept here only because it is the closest real number available today, not because it is this year's cutoff.

IIM Ahmedabad, PGP 2027-29 (CAT-2026-linked), OFFICIAL, published September 2026

Cycle: CAT 2026, feeding the 2027-29 batch. Source: IIM Ahmedabad's own PGP 2027-29 Admission Policy PDF, dated September 2026.

IIM Ahmedabad does not shortlist on percentile alone past that floor. Its own policy states the formula directly: Composite Score = 0.35 x normalized Application Rating + 0.65 x (normalized CAT-2026 percentile / 100). Clearing the cutoff percentile gets a candidate into the pool being scored. It does not, by itself, decide the shortlist.

IIM Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore: current published cutoff, CAT-2025-linked cycle, not yet updated for CAT 2026

None of these five columns is a CAT 2026 figure. Each is that institute's current, still-running cutoff from the cycle before this one. It is restated here only as the closest real reference point until its 2027-29 policy appears.

Read this table institute by institute, not row by row. The five do not group their own categories the same way. Lucknow publishes one combined figure across EWS and NC-OBC. Indore publishes one combined figure across General and EWS. That means an EWS applicant at Indore is really reading the General row, not a separate number. Calcutta states its figures as floors, in its own published wording: "actual cutoffs are higher." So the "or higher" entries above are a minimum, not the cutoff itself. Bangalore's own official page does not carry SC, ST or PwBD overall figures at all. That is a gap in the source, not a zero. It should not be read as "no cutoff" for those categories.

CAT 2026's own Information Bulletin sets reservation at 15% SC, 7.5% ST and 27% NC-OBC. It also sets aside up to 10% EWS and 5% PwBD. A reservation percentage and a cutoff percentile are different numbers. One shows how many seats are set aside. The other shows the score threshold within that category. IIM Ahmedabad is the only IIM that has attached a CAT-2026 percentile threshold to each of its own categories so far.

General and EWS sit together on IIM Ahmedabad's list at 95 overall, the highest of the four tiers it publishes. That single figure applies to General and EWS candidates identically at IIM Ahmedabad. Not every IIM does this the same way. IIM Bangalore, for instance, keeps its EWS floor a full ten points under its General floor, 75 against 85.

NC-OBC clears at 90 overall at IIM Ahmedabad, five points under General/EWS. That five-point gap is IIM Ahmedabad's own confirmed number for CAT 2026. Treat it as specific to this one institute. It is not a spacing every IIM will repeat once its own 2027-29 policy is out.

SC clears at 85 overall, and ST at 75, each with its own sectional floor covered in the next section. Both figures come off IIM Ahmedabad's own PGP 2027-29 Admission Policy PDF, dated September 2026. That is the same document behind every other IIM Ahmedabad number here.

PwBD is where the confirmed data runs out. IIM Ahmedabad's own published policy does not carry a separate PwBD percentile row alongside General, NC-OBC, SC and ST. That is a genuine gap in the source, not proof that no PwBD cutoff exists. A PwBD applicant to IIM Ahmedabad should check the admission policy's own PwBD clause directly. Do not borrow one of the four listed figures instead.

These category floors carry through admission at every other CAT-accepting institute, not just the six checked here. The CAT 2026 colleges page covers admission criteria college by college.

CAT 2026 is scored, and shortlisted, section by section as well as overall. Every IIM below sets its own floor for VARC, DILR and QA individually, on top of the overall percentile. Clearing the overall number alone does not guarantee a candidate clears every section.

IIM Ahmedabad's own table is worth a second look here. General/EWS candidates need 85 in VARC and 85 in DILR, but only 75 in QA, a ten-point gap. That same ten-point gap between QA and the other two sections repeats exactly across NC-OBC (80/80/70), SC (75/75/65) and ST (65/65/55). That pattern is IIM Ahmedabad's own confirmed number, not a hint that QA is "easier." It just means the institute accepts a wider relative miss there than in VARC or DILR, for every category it publishes.

IIM Ahmedabad, PGP 2027-29, CAT-2026-linked, OFFICIAL, September 2026.

The other five institutes each publish their own sectional detail too, still on the CAT-2025-linked cycle. None of the figures below should be read as a CAT 2026 sectional cutoff.

Score and percentile answer two different questions. Every cutoff on it is written in percentile, never raw score, for exactly that reason.

Normalization exists because CAT does not run as one paper for everyone. IIM Indore, this year's conducting institute, sets three sessions across CAT 2026's single exam day. Percentile is what corrects for one session's paper landing harder or easier than another's.

A specific CAT 2026 score-to-percentile table does not exist yet. It cannot exist until the exam is actually held on 29 November 2026 and the results are processed. Anyone offering a precise 2026 score-to-percentile chart today is offering a guess, not a published figure. The CAT 2026 result page covers exactly how that percentile gets calculated once scores are in, session by session.

Clearing a cutoff percentile is what leads to a placement outcome. Here is a quick look at what a candidate actually gets after clearing IIM Ahmedabad's or another top IIM's cutoff. This comes before the page sends you on to the full list.

None of these placement figures change what percentile gets a candidate in. They are the reason clearing the cutoff is worth the effort in the first place. IIM Indore's own total course fee for the same 2026-28 batch runs to Rs 25,15,800. That is a real cost figure, worth reading against whichever institute's cutoff a candidate is actually chasing.

🏫CAT 2026 CollegesNIRF rank, fees, admission criteria and placements for every CAT-accepting college.See the full list📋CAT 2026 OverviewDates, eligibility, pattern and the full exam picture in one place.Start here

There is no multi-year cutoff trend to show here, and it will not invent one. What this brief actually has is one confirmed CAT 2026 number, at IIM Ahmedabad. It also has one prior-cycle number per institute for the other five. This is not a run of several years side by side. This section can only speak honestly about timing, not about whether cutoffs will move up or down.

Once those five institutes do publish, this same three-way split, published, inferable and not yet knowable, does not disappear. It just moves. Whichever IIM updates next shifts from the "not published" column into the "published" one. The rest stay exactly where they are until their own turn comes.