The National Testing Agency (NTA) is expected to release the cut-off marks for JEE Main 2026 soon. This cut-off is the minimum score needed for students to qualify for the JEE Advanced exam. Based on past trends, students can check the expected cut-off percentages for different categories. The JEE Main 2026 exam for the first session was held from January 21 to January 29, 2026.
JEE Main 2026 Expected Cut-off
The cut-off marks are decided for various categories, including General (Common Rank List), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Persons with Disabilities (PwD). The difficulty level of the exam and the performance of students who score high marks play a big role in determining the cut-off. The NTA will announce the official cut-off on its website, jeemain.nta.nic.in, along with the results.
Based on previous years, the expected cut-off percentile for the General category is likely to be between 93.5 and 95.5 . This roughly translates to a score of about 290 to 300 marks out of 300.
For reserved categories, the expected cut-off is around:
| Category | Expected Cutoff Percentile |
| General | 93.30 |
| Gen-EWS | 81.44 |
| OBC-NCL | 80.75 |
| SC | 61.35 |
| ST | 48.25 |
| UR-PwD | 0.008 |
Cut-off Trends from Previous Years
Here is a look at the cut-off marks from the last two years:
| Category | Cutoff 2025 | Cutoff 2024 |
| Unreserved (UR) | 93.10 | 93.24 |
| Gen-EWS | 80.38 | 81.33 |
| OBC-NCL | 79.43 | 79.68 |
| SC | 61.15 | 60.09 |
| ST | 47.90 | 46.70 |
| UR-PwD | 0.0079 | 0.00187 |
Students need to meet these qualifying cut-off marks to be eligible for the JEE Advanced exam, which is the next step for admission to top engineering institutes in India.
