22.79 lakh students have registered for NEET 2026. India’s MBBS seat count has hit 1,29,026, an all-time high. Both numbers get thrown around in headlines, but they need context to be useful.
The seat count
The NMC’s final seat matrix for 2025-26 puts total MBBS seats at 1,29,026, up from 1,17,750 the previous year. That’s roughly 11,000 new seats, one of the largest single-year increases in recent years.
Much of this came through the central government’s CSS scheme, which funded new Government Medical Colleges in 19 states. This isn’t just private colleges padding the total. Districts that had no medical college two years ago now have one.
Karnataka leads the country with 13,944 MBBS seats. Eight government GMCs each received 50 additional seats, adding 400 new government seats to the state pool. Several private colleges also expanded, bringing the state’s overall increase to nearly 1,000 seats.
Maharashtra sits fourth nationally at 12,824 seats. The NMC approved four new colleges in the state, and existing district GMCs at places like Bhandara, Gadchiroli, and Hingoli (all three inaugurated in 2024) now contribute to the seat pool for the first time.
The government has signalled further expansion, but no confirmed numbers exist beyond the current NMC matrix. Additional seats for 2026-27, if any, will show up when the next matrix is published, typically as counselling season begins.
Who’s actually sitting the exam
Registrations barely moved: 22.79 lakh this year versus 22.76 lakh in 2025. The number that matters more is attendance.
Last year, about 22.09 lakh of the 22.76 lakh registered actually wrote the exam, roughly 97%. NTA has said that 99% of NEET 2026 candidates received their first-choice exam city. Fewer logistical barriers should push attendance a little higher. At 98%, approximately 22.33 lakh students will be in exam halls on May 3. That’s about 24,000 more than last year. A small absolute increase, but every extra test-taker is one more person competing for the same seats.
What the ratio looks like
At 98% attendance and a 56% qualification rate (more on why that number is fixed in our separate piece on the percentile system), about 12.5 lakh students will be competing for 1.29 lakh seats. That’s roughly 9.7 qualified candidates per seat, an improvement over last year’s approximately 10.5 to 1. The 11,000 extra seats are doing the work, not any change in the candidate pool.
What paper difficulty actually does
A tough paper (like 2025, where the top score was 686 out of 720) spreads out scores and makes rank gaps between colleges larger. Gaining or losing 10 marks might move you 5,000 ranks. An easy paper (like 2024, where multiple students hit 720) compresses the top end. Scores cluster, and a single question can separate a top government college from a mid-tier private one.
Neither scenario changes how many people qualify. Both change which specific college you can reach at your rank. Students preparing for NEET 2026 are better off building a preference list that covers a range of outcomes rather than banking on the paper being easy or hard.
The government seat gap
The overall 9.7 to 1 ratio hides a sharper divide. Of 1.29 lakh total seats, government colleges account for roughly 59,000 to 63,000, depending on how central institutions and ESIC colleges are counted. The rest are at private and deemed universities where annual fees run ₹15 to 50 lakh or higher.
For families who can only consider government colleges, the effective competition is roughly 1 seat for every 20 qualified candidates. The new GMCs in Maharashtra and Karnataka chip away at this, but the imbalance between demand and affordable supply remains wide.
Under All India Quota, both Karnataka and Maharashtra contribute a large share of seats to the national pool, so the expansion benefits AIQ aspirants too. If you’re deciding between state and AIQ counselling, the new district GMCs are worth factoring in; they often have more favourable cutoffs under state quota than under AIQ.
What to do with this information
Run your expected or actual rank through the neet2seat prediction tool to see which colleges were reachable at that rank last year. Build your preference list with the AI Choice Filler, and include colleges across a range, not just your top picks. The new seats improve odds at the margins, and margins are where counselling outcomes are decided.
Data sources: NMC MBBS Seat Matrix 2025-26 (published Dec 3, 2025), NTA NEET UG 2026 registration bulletin, Times of India (April 28, 2026).