If you’re appearing for NEET 2026 and planning to apply under Karnataka or Maharashtra state quota, the seat picture has changed since last year. Both states added government MBBS seats for 2025-26, and some of those seats are in colleges that are brand new.
Karnataka: 400 new government seats across 8 GMCs
Karnataka now has the most MBBS seats of any state in India at 13,944 (per the NMC’s final seat matrix, December 2025).
Eight government medical colleges each received 50 additional seats:
| College | Previous | Now | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mysore Medical College | 200 | 250 | +50 |
| Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences | 150 | 200 | +50 |
| Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences | 150 | 200 | +50 |
| Hassan Institute of Medical Sciences | 150 | 200 | +50 |
| Raichur Institute of Medical Sciences | 150 | 200 | +50 |
| Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences, Bellary | 200 | 250 | +50 |
| Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College, Bengaluru | 150 | 200 | +50 |
| Chikkaballapur Institute of Medical Sciences | 100 | 150 | +50 |
Several private colleges also expanded. Farookh Academy of Medical Education in Mysuru is the only entirely new college in the state this cycle, with 100 seats.
Two proposed new GMCs in Ramanagara and Kanakapura did not receive NMC approval this round. If they come through in a future cycle, they would add another 200 to 250 government seats.
For Karnataka state-quota aspirants, 400 extra government seats shifts counselling cutoffs at the margin. District GMCs like Chikkaballapur, Raichur, and Gulbarga typically see more accessible closing ranks than the established colleges in Bangalore and Mysore. Fifty additional seats at each of those colleges pushes the cutoff outward, which matters most for students in the mid-rank range where a few hundred positions decide the outcome.
Maharashtra: three brand-new GMCs, plus established colleges
Maharashtra has 12,824 MBBS seats for 2025-26, fourth nationally behind Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
Three government medical colleges started admissions in 2024 and are now part of the counselling pool for the first time at scale:
- GMC Bhandara (100 seats), inaugurated October 2024
- GMC Hingoli (100 seats), inaugurated 2024
- GMC Gadchiroli (100 seats), inaugurated 2024
These are genuinely new institutions in districts that previously had no government medical college. GMC Baramati (100 seats), established in 2019, is also still relatively early in its counselling history.
Other district GMCs have been around longer but continue to offer realistic options for mid-rank candidates:
| College | Seats | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GMC Chandrapur | 150 | Established |
| GMC Gondia | 150 | Established |
| GMC Jalgaon | 150 | Established |
| GMC Latur | 150 | Founded 2002 |
| GMC Amravati | 100 | Established |
For Maharashtra state-quota aspirants, the three new GMCs expand geographic access in Vidarbha and Marathwada. A student from eastern Maharashtra no longer needs to score high enough for GMC Nagpur; Bhandara, Gadchiroli, and Hingoli are closer to home. New colleges in their first couple of counselling cycles tend to have less established reputations, which means cutoffs are often more accessible than their location and infrastructure would suggest. That gap narrows as the college matures.
How this connects to AIQ
Under All India Quota, 15% of seats in government colleges from both states feed into the national pool. More state government seats means a proportionally larger AIQ allocation. If you’re applying under AIQ and targeting colleges in either state, the expanded seat counts mean a few more AIQ seats at colleges that weren’t previously in the mix.
Use the neet2seat college explorer to check specific colleges and their historical cutoffs across state quota and AIQ.
Data sources: NMC MBBS Seat Matrix 2025-26 (final, Dec 3, 2025), Medical Dialogues, Edufever.