Twenty-six candidates out of the total 2.34 million aspirants were placed in the 100th percentile, securing a perfect score in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2026, according to the results the National Testing Agency (NTA) released on Monday. The number of students securing the perfect score has increased from last year’s 24.
Of the 2,338,983 total aspirants who took JEE (Main) this year, 1,304,653 appeared in Session 1 (held from January 21-29), and 1,034,330 appeared in Session 2 (April 2-8). A total of 800,516 candidates appeared in both sessions. All 12 aspirants who bagged a 100 NTA score in Session 1 also featured among the 26 perfect scorers in the combined results of both the sessions announced on Monday.
Among the 26 candidates with a perfect score, five each are from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, followed by four from Rajasthan, three each from Delhi (NCT) and Haryana, and two candidates are from Maharashtra. One aspirant each from Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Chandigarh also featured in the list.
“For those candidates who appeared in both the Sessions of the JEE (Main), their better score from the two sessions has been declared. There are 26 combined toppers from all the 19 shifts of Session 1 and Session 2 of JEE Main 2026,” a senior NTA official said.
The JEE Main results are based on percentile scores, calculated from raw scores after normalisation.
Results of 57 candidates have not been declared after they were found indulging in unfair means or discrepancies during identity verification, the official said.
The JEE (Main) serves as a base eligibility bar for the JEE (Advanced), the qualifying examination for entry into the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). JEE (Main) scores also form the basis for admissions to various engineering colleges such as the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs).
The qualifying percentile for JEE (Advanced) for the unreserved category increased marginally to 93.4 in 2026 from 93.1 last year. Similarly, the cut-off for the OBC non-creamy layer increased to 80.9 from 79.4 last year; for EWS, it has increased to 82.4 from 80.3 in 2025. For the SC category, the 2026 cut-off percentile is 63.9, up from 61.1 last year, while for the ST category, it has increased to 52 in 2026 from 47.9 last year.
A total of 250,182 candidates have qualified across all categories.
Delhi’s Shreyas Mishra, who bagged a perfect score in both the sessions, said his ultimate goal is to crack JEE Advanced and secure admission to IIT Bombay, preferably in computer science or electrical engineering.
“In my mock papers, my scores ranged between 260 and 280 out of 300 and never reached a perfect score. So, when I scored 300 in the first session, I was surprised, and to ensure it wasn’t a fluke, I reappeared for the test in April,” 17-year-old Mishra, a student of Kulachi Hansraj Model School in Ashok Vihar, said. “But my ultimate goal is to crack JEE Advanced, and to ensure I stay on track, apart from regular mock tests, the best option was to reappear for the Session 2 JEE Main paper.”
(With inputs from Gargi Shukla)
