IIM Indore will release the CAT 2026 admit card on Wednesday, 4 November, on iimcat.ac.in, twenty-five days before the Common Admission Test is held on 29 November. Candidates log in with their registration user ID and password. The hall ticket is the only document that tells a candidate which of the three sessions they write, where the centre is and what time they must report.
The card carries the name, CAT registration number, photograph, exam date, slot, reporting time and the centre address. IIM Indore, which is conducting CAT this year, has asked candidates to print the card as soon as the link goes live and carry it with the prescribed photo identity proof, because a copy on the phone screen is not accepted at the gate.
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Three Slots And A Two-Hour Paper
CAT 2026 runs in three sessions on 29 November. The first slot is from 8:30 am to 10:30 am, the second from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm and the third from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm. The paper has 68 questions split across Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability. Every correct answer earns three marks, every wrong answer costs one, and the highest raw score possible is 204.
The marking scheme punishes the last ten minutes. On a four-option question a blind guess is worth zero in expectation, because one hit in four earns three marks and the three misses cost the same. Guessing only turns profitable once an option can be eliminated, which is why accuracy on attempted questions matters more than the number attempted. Two hours for 68 questions is about 1 minute 46 seconds a question, and the section floors below mean a strong total cannot rescue one weak section.
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The IIM Admission Maths Has Changed
The larger shift is in how the IIMs convert the score. IIM Ahmedabad has revised its admission criteria for the 2027 batch and will use CAT percentiles instead of normalised CAT scores for personal interview shortlisting, with the CAT component carrying 65 per cent and the application rating 35 per cent. In the final composite score the CAT result falls to 40 per cent, the interview to 50 per cent and the Analytical Writing Test to 10 per cent. A percentile is a position rather than a mark: 99 percentile means a candidate finished ahead of 99 of every 100 test takers, so an identical raw score can travel differently across years.
IIM Bangalore has published the minimum percentiles for its 2027 round and the filter is plainly section-wise. For the general category the floor is 80 in VARC, 75 in DILR and 75 in QA, with an aggregate of 85. For NC-OBC and EWS candidates the section floors are 70, 65 and 65 with an aggregate of 75, for SC candidates 65, 60 and 60 with 70 overall, for ST candidates 55, 55 and 55 with 65 overall, and for PwD candidates 50, 50 and 50 with 60 overall. Several IIMs also add points for gender diversity at shortlisting and final selection, a detail outside the written test.
Where Else The Score Travels
CAT does not stop at the IIMs. The management departments of IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Dhanbad and IIT Kanpur accept it for their MBA programmes, and private business schools use it as their primary filter. The score stays valid until 31 December 2027. Results are expected in the first week of January 2027, after which shortlists move at individual institutes on their own criteria, because each IIM sets its own academic cutoffs and weights.
What To Check Before You Print It
A misspelt name, a blurred photograph or a centre address in the wrong city should go to the exam authorities the same day, because corrections take time and the card is the entry pass. The reporting time printed on the card is earlier than the session start, so build the travel plan around the reporting time and not the 8:30 am paper. Candidates writing the third slot should plan for a full day, since that session ends at 6:30 pm.
What To Watch Next
The calendar is fixed: card on 4 November, exam on 29 November in three sessions, results in the first week of January 2027. A CAT score remains live until the end of 2027, so one attempt can serve the 2027 and the 2028 admission cycles at institutes that accept an older score. The two things to watch are whether more IIMs follow Ahmedabad to percentile-first shortlisting, and whether Bangalore section floors hold when actual cutoffs are published after results.
