Live status · Updated 19 July 2026 · Round 5 published
Round 5 — the final IIT allotment — published on Wednesday 16 July at 17:00 IST, as scheduled. Fee acceptance for Round 5 allottees closes at 17:00 IST on Sunday 20 July 2026. There is no IIT B.Tech spot round in 2026: vacant IIT seats after Round 5 do NOT roll into CSAB (which covers NITs, IIITs, GFTIs only — CSAB opens 22 July with the vacancy matrix on 28 July).
Round 5 IIT CSE snapshot (Open, Gender-Neutral): IIT Bombay AIR 67 (+1 vs R4), IIT Delhi AIR 128 (flat), IIT Madras AIR 151 (+1), IIT Kanpur AIR 283 (+7), IIT Kharagpur AIR 509 (flat). Top-tier CSE seats moved by 0–7 ranks between Round 4 and Round 5 — the "sticky at the top" pattern held all the way to the final round.
Round 5 seat allotment released Wednesday 16 July 2026 at 17:00 IST, on schedule — the 2026 IIT admissions cycle is now closed. Round 5 allottees have until 17:00 IST on Sunday 20 July to pay the acceptance fee. There is no IIT B.Tech spot round in 2026: vacant IIT seats after Round 5 do NOT roll into CSAB. If you are one of the 56,880 candidates who qualified JEE Advanced 2026 and Round 5 seated you, the next 24 hours are for locking it in — not fidgeting.
This is the canonical reference for all 23 IITs. The final Round 1 → Round 5 closing-rank progression for the top five IIT CSE seats. The full round schedule. The 2025 benchmarks for every IIT × every popular branch — not a top-10 highlight reel, the full 23-IIT list. The structural changes you should know about. The one number that summarizes 2026: top IIT CSE closing ranks moved by 0 to 7 ranks between Round 1 and the final Round 5. The pools at the top were, and remain, effectively frozen.
The round schedule, verbatim from the JoSAA 2026 Business Rules
The schedule is fixed. There is no Round 6 for IITs in 2026 — the IIT counseling now ends at Round 5, which is one round shorter than 2025. NITs and other JoSAA participating institutes continue through their own withdrawal cycle until July 20.
| Round | Date | Time (IST) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration opens | Mon, June 2 | 17:00 | Closed |
| Registration + choice locking | Wed, June 11 | 17:00 | Closed (not extendable) |
| Mock Allotment 1 | Sun, June 8 | — | Done |
| Mock Allotment 2 | Tue, June 10 | — | Done |
| Round 1 seat allocation | Sat, June 13 | 17:00 | ✅ Published |
| Round 2 seat allocation | Tue, June 30 | 17:00 | ✅ Published |
| Round 3 seat allocation | Mon, July 6 | 17:00 | ✅ Published |
| Round 4 seat allocation | Fri, July 10 | 17:00 | ✅ Published |
| Withdrawal closed (IITs) | Mon, July 14 | 17:00 | ✅ Closed |
| Round 5 (FINAL for IITs) | Thu, July 16 | 17:00 | 🔥 Just released |
| Fee acceptance deadline | Sun, July 20 | 17:00 | ⚠️ Hard deadline |
The withdrawal-deadline detail bears repeating, because the 2026 rules explicitly state: "for IITs/IISc no WITHDRAWAL will be allowed after July 14, 2026, 17:00 IST, whereas for NIT+ System WITHDRAWAL will be allowed up to July 20, 2026, 17:00 IST." Round 4 (July 10) was the last withdrawal-eligible IIT round. The withdrawal window closed on July 14 at 17:00 IST.
Round 5 closing ranks — the final IIT numbers
Round 5 sealed the 2026 IIT admissions cycle at 17:00 IST on 16 July, on schedule. The top-tier CSE closing ranks barely moved between Round 4 and Round 5 — exactly the "sticky at the top" pattern this post has been calling all season. Here is the Round 1 → Round 5 progression for the five most-watched IIT CSE seats, OPEN Gender-Neutral. Sources: Careers360 Round 5 cutoff, cross-verified against the JoSAA seat matrix at josaa.nic.in.
| IIT × Branch | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 (Final) | R1 → R5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IIT Bombay CSE | 65 | 65 | 65 | 66 | 67 | +2 (near-frozen) |
| IIT Delhi CSE | 123 | 123 | 123 | 128 | 128 | +5 |
| IIT Madras CSE | 149 | 149 | 149 | 150 | 151 | +2 |
| IIT Kanpur CSE | 276 | 276 | 276 | 276 | 283 | +7 |
| IIT Kharagpur CSE | — | 509 | 509 | 509 | 509 | Flat since R2 |
Non-CSE flagship taste: IIT Delhi Electrical Engineering eased from Round 4 CR 599 → Round 5 CR 612 (+13 ranks) per Careers360 — a bit looser at the margin, consistent with mild flow-out toward CSE-adjacent branches at other IITs. Total JoSAA 2026 seat pool across IITs + NITs + IIITs + GFTIs: 67,323 seats across 138 participating institutes.
What happens after Round 5 — and the CSAB myth
Two hard deadlines to internalize now that Round 5 is out.
- Fee acceptance deadline: 17:00 IST, Sunday 20 July 2026. If you were allotted a Round 5 seat and want to keep it, pay the seat-acceptance fee before then. Miss it and the seat is forfeit.
- Withdrawal from Round 5 (NIT+ system only): also 17:00 IST, 20 July. For IIT allottees, withdrawal already closed on 14 July — Round 5 is freeze-only for IITs.
Now the myth: "CSAB will give me another shot at IITs." No. CSAB 2026 opens on 22 July and publishes its vacancy matrix on 28 July — but CSAB covers NITs, IIITs and GFTIs only. Vacant IIT B.Tech seats after Round 5 are not carried into CSAB, and there is no IIT B.Tech spot round in 2026. This is the single most common misconception on r/JEENEETards this week (community consensus on a 17 July megathread confirms it). If Round 5 did not give you an IIT seat, the 2026 IIT door is closed.
If you accepted a Round 5 IIT seat, next is document verification and physical joining at your campus — dates vary by IIT but typically run through late July into early August. Confirm on your institute academic office page.
Round 2 closing ranks — the mid-cycle snapshot
Here's the Round 1 → Round 2 movement on the 10 IIT × branch combinations that aggregators have explicitly published for the 2026 cycle so far. We'll keep adding rows as the remaining IITs publish their Round 2 numbers. Cross-verified against Careers360 live reporting. For the full 23-IIT picture across CSE, EE, Mechanical and Civil, scroll to the 2025 reference table below — that's the canonical version.
| IIT × Branch | OPEN GN (Round 1) | OPEN GN (Round 2) | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| IIT Bombay CSE | 65 | 65 | No change |
| IIT Delhi CSE | 123 | 123 | No change |
| IIT Madras CSE | 149 | 149 | No change |
| IIT Kanpur CSE | 276 | 276 | No change |
| IIT Kharagpur CSE | — | 509 | New data |
| IIT Roorkee CSE | — | 582 | New data |
| IIT Bombay EE | 400 | 400 | No change |
| IIT Delhi EE | 593 | 593 | No change |
| IIT Madras EE | — | 742 | New data |
| IIT Kanpur EE | — | 1,151 | New data |
Why top IIT CSE didn't move: when an IIT Bombay CSE seat opens up between rounds, it requires an AIR-65-or-better candidate to withdraw. No one with a top-65 rank withdraws from IIT Bombay CSE. The branches that DO shift across rounds are the marginal ones — Round 1 of an IIT BHU Electrical or a Roorkee Mechanical can move 50–200 ranks because there's a real upgrade pool. The seats at the very top are sticky as glue.
This turned out to be the season's single most useful frame. Candidates who held a Round 1 seat at a top branch they actually wanted saw Round 3/4/5 upgrade probability at near zero. Round 5 confirmed it: IIT Bombay CSE moved 65 → 67 across five rounds. IIT Delhi CSE moved 123 → 128. The top pools were sticky as glue all the way through.
IIT Kanpur CSE — the only full category breakdown we have so far
Among the Round 1 reports, IIT Kanpur's CSE was the most fully reported across all categories, useful as a benchmark for what category-relative ranks look like at a top-4 IIT:
| Category | Round 1 closing rank |
|---|---|
| OPEN (Gender-Neutral) | 276 |
| OPEN (Female-Only supernumerary) | 1,223 |
| OBC-NCL | 155 |
| SC | 86 |
| ST | 43 |
The Female-Only quota at IIT Kanpur CSE (closing at 1,223) sits roughly 4.4× the Gender-Neutral rank — a typical spread for top branches under the ~20% female supernumerary policy the Ministry of Education established in 2017 and which the 2026 Business Rules carry forward.
What's actually different in 2026
Three structural changes you should know about before locking your choices.
1. IISc Bengaluru is now in JoSAA. The 2026 Business Rules document literally puts it in the title: "BUSINESS RULES for JOINT SEAT ALLOCATION for the ACADEMIC PROGRAMS offered by the IITs, IISc, NITs, IIEST, IIITs, and OtherGFTIs for the academic year 2026-27" — bold mine. If research is your trajectory, IISc's UG seats are now in your JoSAA choice basket, not a separate KVPY-flavored ladder.
2. 666 new IIT seats year-over-year. Careers360 reports total IIT seats rose from 18,160 in 2025 to 18,826 in 2026 — a 7.11% increase. Total JoSAA pool across IITs + NITs + IIITs + GFTIs grew to 67,323 seats (+4,470). Within the IIT slice, 3,104 of those seats are female supernumerary, on top of 64,219 regular seats.
3. Several IITs added new BTech branches. Per Careers360: IIT Delhi added Energy Engineering and Design. IIT Hyderabad added AI, IC Design and Technology, Biomedical Engineering, and Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. IIT Mandi added General Engineering, Materials Science, and Microelectronics and VLSI. IIT Indore added Space Sciences and Engineering. IIT Ropar added Digital Agriculture. IIT Patna added Cyber Security.
Quietly: OCI/PIO(I) candidates who completed Class XII abroad are no longer eligible for Home State quota seats — only Other State or All India quota.
2025 reference — closing ranks across all 23 IITs
This is the canonical view. All 23 IITs, not the top 10. 2025 JoSAA Round 6 final closing ranks, OPEN Gender-Neutral category, pulled from our canonical jee_cutoffs dataset which mirrors the official JoSAA OR-CR archive. CSE, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil — the four branches every borderline candidate runs the math on. Sorted by CSE closing rank ascending, so you can read it top-to-bottom by how tight the campus is.
| IIT | CSE | EE | Mech | Civil |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bombay | 66 | 418 | 1,766 | 4,095 |
| Delhi | 125 | 591 | 1,862 | 4,228 |
| Madras | 171 | 741 | 2,354 | 5,629 |
| Kanpur | 270 | 1,112 | 2,635 | 5,790 |
| Kharagpur | 450 | 1,885 | 3,599 | 7,079 |
| Roorkee | 535 | 2,006 | 3,702 | 6,361 |
| Hyderabad | 667 | 1,781 | 4,218 | 7,945 |
| Guwahati | 699 | — | 4,381 | 7,921 |
| BHU (Varanasi) | 1,350 | 3,493 | 6,525 | 9,145 |
| Indore | 1,628 | 3,673 | 6,741 | 9,821 |
| Gandhinagar | 1,872 | 3,826 | 6,359 | 9,864 |
| Ropar | 2,357 | 5,705 | 8,009 | 10,645 |
| Jodhpur | 2,844 | 6,166 | 8,980 | 12,239* |
| Mandi | 3,087 | 6,474 | 9,194 | 12,346 |
| Patna | 3,215 | — | 10,032 | 13,158 |
| Dhanbad (ISM) | 3,348 | 6,854 | 9,340 | 12,350 |
| Bhubaneswar | 3,785 | 7,242 | 10,078 | 13,957 |
| Tirupati | 4,620 | 8,163 | 10,553 | 14,599 |
| Goa | 5,626 | 8,874 | 11,363 | — |
| Palakkad | 5,736 | 9,210 | 11,216 | 14,852 |
| Jammu | 5,988 | 9,528 | 12,326 | 15,217 |
| Dharwad | 6,242 | — | 12,206 | — |
| Bhilai | 6,384 | 9,824 | 12,428 | — |
* IIT Jodhpur's civil branch is officially named Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. Em-dashes indicate the branch is not offered at that IIT in 2025 (e.g., IIT Goa and IIT Dharwad do not currently run Civil; IIT Guwahati's Electrical seats are under different program codes).
The trend read. IIT Madras CSE moved from 159 (2024) to 171 (2025) to 149 (2026 Round 1). IIT Bombay CSE held in the 65–68 range across three years. Shiksha's 2025 trend piece noted that mid-tier IITs (BHU, Guwahati, Hyderabad) saw relaxed cutoffs in 2025 vs 2024 — the data above confirms it: BHU CSE landed at 1,350 in 2025, more relaxed than the 1,489 some early-cycle aggregators reported. The top tightens marginally, the middle loosens marginally. Both effects sit within rank-noise at the 1–10 rank level.
The second-gen IIT read. If you're sitting between AIR 3,000 and AIR 14,000, the second-gen IITs (Jodhpur, Mandi, Patna, Ropar, Indore, BHU, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar) are now the relevant conversation. CSE at IIT Jodhpur (2,844) and CSE at IIT Mandi (3,087) are now in the same conversation class as Mechanical at IIT Bombay (1,766) and Electrical at IIT Delhi (591). The brand discount on second-gen IITs has compressed faster than most outside-IIT counselors realize — read the table left-to-right and the gap to "old IIT non-CSE" is now small enough that branch matters more than vintage.
The JEE Advanced 2026 controversy you may have missed
On June 10–11, 2026, viral social-media posts claimed JEE Advanced 2026 had been compromised — manipulated rank lists, inter-paper mark anomalies, the works. IIT Roorkee, which conducted the exam, issued a public rebuttal: "no evidence of cheating, malpractice, data manipulation, or any compromise of the examination process has been found … inaccurate and fabricated data purportedly showing candidate ranks, total marks, and inter-paper mark differentials for JEE (Advanced) 2026 are being widely circulated."
Business Standard and Careers360 both carried the institute's statement. Verdict from three outlets: the viral data was fabricated; the official result stands.
What the community is actually saying this week
The JoSAA Megathreads on r/JEENEETards and r/Btechtards are running hot. From the JoSAA Round 2 Megathread (8 upvotes, 70 comments, posted today):
"Round 1 & 2 --> No seat allotted 🤡"
u/Powerful_Law8746 (16 upvotes). Reinforced by u/Uenoyama_Ritsuka_: "Round 1: IIIT Diu / Round 2: No Seat Allocated / Wtf 😭" and u/aapkipyaari: "Withdraw kr diya 🥀✌️"
The "I'll take core branch and do tech on the side" rationalization, which 9 out of 10 borderline JoSAA candidates use to justify their second choice, got dunked on by r/Btechtards last week (214 upvotes, 51 comments): "everything is a canon event, one should give up trying" — u/upburntwick. Sibling top comment: "Core vale ro rhe, cs vale ro rhe jab so rhe hain to fayda kiska ho rha hai😭😭".
And on the tier-3 narrative that any IIT tag equals automatic placement, from a 231-upvote post on June 26: "the bottom 30-40% at IITs dont deserve to get placed either, there are so many people who smoke, drink and party for the entirety of their college years" — u/AntComprehensive5476 (128 upvotes on the comment).
What to actually do this week if you're undecided
Three rules of thumb, based on the data above.
- If you got a Round 1 seat at a top branch you wanted — IIT Bombay CSE, IIT Delhi CSE, IIT Madras CSE — your upgrade probability across Round 3, 4, and 5 is near zero. Round 2 confirmed that. Don't withdraw, don't fidget, accept and move on to packing.
- If you got a Round 1 seat in a marginal branch but a top IIT — IIT Bombay Mech, IIT Delhi Civil — and you actually want CSE somewhere else (IIT Hyderabad, IIT BHU, Guwahati), this is the round to make the swap. Withdrawal closes July 14. Don't sleep on it.
- If your Round 1 was an IIIT/NIT and you're hoping to upgrade to an IIT — the Round 2 numbers gave you better visibility than ever into which IIT branches are reachable from your rank. Compare against the all-23 reference table above. The mid-tier IITs (BHU, Guwahati, Hyderabad) saw slight cutoff relaxation in 2025; the second-gen IITs (Jodhpur, Mandi, Patna) are tighter than they were two years ago.
One last thing nobody tells you about JoSAA: the "withdraw" button is one-way. Once you exit, you cannot re-enter the IIT counseling. The CSAB Special Round in August is for NIT system, not IITs. Treat the July 14 deadline like the SEBI deadline it deserves to be.
You haven't even reached your campus yet, but you already know which one is yours. If you got your IIT, we make merch for it. T-shirts, hoodies, varsity jackets — for all 23 IITs that just admitted you. Browse the shop →
By Arun Raghav S, Co-founder, IITian Vibes · B.Tech, IIT Jodhpur. Last updated: July 19, 2026 — Round 5 (final IIT allotment) numbers now integrated. The 2026 IIT admissions cycle is now closed. This post remains the canonical Round 1 → Round 5 progression reference for 2026 planning and for 2027 aspirants building historical intuition.