CAT 2026 Exam Pattern

The CAT 2026 exam will have three timed sections with a total duration of 120 minutes. While the conducting IIM does not officially lock the question count in advance, the expected pattern is based on CAT 2025 which included 68 questions distributed as follows:

• Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC): 24 questions
• Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR): 22 questions
• Quantitative Aptitude (QA): 22 questions

IIM Indore officially released the CAT 2026 notification, Press Release, and Information Bulletin on July 26, 2026. The exam is being conducted by IIM Indore's Prof. Aditya Billore under the leadership of IIM Indore Director Prof. Himanshu Rai.
The bulletin explicitly confirms the overall exam duration of 120 minutes divided into three strict 40-minute sectional blocks for VARC, DILR, and QA.
The official Information Bulletin does not specify the total number of questions or the marking scheme per section for CAT Exam 2026. Conducting IIMs intentionally leave the exact question count flexible until the exam day or until the official practice mock test is released on the CAT website.

This page keeps two kinds of information apart. One is what CAT 2026 has officially mentioned. The other is what only the last four years of the exam can suggest. This page marks that as pattern, never as promise. For the fixed dates, fee and eligibility that sit around this exam pattern, see the CAT 2026 overview. For the topic-by-topic detail behind each section named below, the fuller breakdown lives on the CAT 2026 syllabus.

These four figures are the entire set of exam-pattern facts. The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin and Press Release state them outright. Treat this as a closed list, not a starting point. Everything else commonly quoted about CAT's pattern is pattern data from earlier cycles. The question count is the biggest example. It covers that pattern data further down, with its own years attached.

One structural rule sits underneath all four numbers above. Once a section's 40 minutes start, a candidate works only inside that section until the clock ends. There is no option to preview or return to another section. That rule is confirmed for CAT 2026, not inferred from older cycles.

The order itself, VARC then DILR then QA, is fixed by IIM Indore. A candidate cannot change it on exam day. A candidate cannot borrow time across sections either. Finishing VARC in 30 minutes does not add 10 minutes to DILR. Each 40-minute block closes on its own, regardless of how much of it a candidate used. Both the order and this no-carryover rule are confirmed directly for CAT 2026, not carried forward from older cycles.

A pattern across the last four cycles exists instead. It has been cross-checked across secondary sources and is consistent enough to be useful. Read it as a pattern, not as a 2026 fact.

This is a secondary-source consensus for each of those four years. It is not an official count independently re-verified against each year's own bulletin. It is certainly not a confirmed figure for CAT 2026. If the marking scheme below carries over unchanged onto a 68-question paper, the arithmetic works out to 204 total marks. That is 68 multiplied by 3. That 204 is a calculation from pattern figures, not a published total. It moves the moment the question count does.

CAT 2026 gives every candidate exactly 40 minutes per section: VARC, then DILR, then QA. The clock resets at each section boundary. Nothing carries over from a section finished early. The Information Bulletin states this limit directly. It applies identically to every candidate and every test city.

The 5% PwBD reservation itself is confirmed for CAT 2026 admissions. The specific minutes of compensatory time added to each section still rest on pattern, not on the bulletin's own wording.

The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin and Press Release do not restate a marking scheme this cycle. The table below is a recent-cycle pattern, not an official 2026 rule.

This exact scheme, +3/-1 on MCQs and +3/0 on TITA, held across CAT 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. None of those four cycles had a documented change, per secondary-source pattern data. That consistency is a reasonable basis for expecting the same scheme in CAT 2026. But expectation is not the same as confirmation. It will not present it as one.

These groupings come from patterns across released CAT papers, not from an official syllabus document. CAT has historically not published a fixed, topic-wise syllabus of its own. The CAT 2026 syllabus page carries the complete topic-by-topic weightage. It also shows how each area has trended across recent papers. This section is a pointer to it, not a substitute for it.

Across four recent cycles, the question count moved exactly once, between CAT 2023 and CAT 2024, and only inside DILR. VARC and QA have not changed at all in this window. That single move proves the point. Nothing about the question count is fixed by rule for any CAT year, CAT 2026 included. That is why it keeps refusing to state one as settled.

The CAT 2026 Information Bulletin confirms three things that have not changed across the same four years. These are the 120-minute duration, the 3-section fixed order, and the 40-minute, no-switching sectional structure. The stable part of the pattern is officially fixed. The part that has moved before is exactly the part left unstated for 2026.