June 30, 2026, 5:00 PM IST. JoSAA Round 2 seat allotment just dropped. If you're one of the 56,880 candidates who qualified JEE Advanced 2026, you have exactly 14 days left to decide what you want for the next four years. Round 5 — the final IIT round — closes Thursday, July 16 at 17:00 IST, and the withdrawal window slams shut at 17:00 IST on Monday, July 14.
This is the canonical reference for all 23 IITs. The round dates. The Round 1 and Round 2 closing ranks already published. The 2025 benchmarks for every IIT, every popular branch — not a top-10 highlight reel, the full list. The structural changes you should know about. The one number nobody is talking about: top IIT CSE closing ranks have moved by less than 5 ranks between Round 1 and Round 2. We'll get to why.
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 | 🔥 Just released |
| Round 3 seat allocation | Mon, July 6 | 17:00 | Pending |
| Round 4 seat allocation | Fri, July 10 | 17:00 | Pending |
| Withdrawal closes (IITs) | Mon, July 14 | 17:00 | ⚠️ Hard deadline |
| Round 5 (FINAL for IITs) | Thu, July 16 | 17:00 | Pending |
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) is your last withdrawal-eligible round.
Round 2 closing ranks — what just dropped
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 is one of the most useful things to internalize before Round 3 (July 6). If you have a Round 1 seat at a top branch you actually want, your Round 3/4/5 upgrade probability is near zero. Wait if you're chasing a marginal upgrade; accept-and-don't-touch if you got what you wanted.
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: June 30, 2026. We're refreshing this post after each JoSAA round so the Round 3, 4, and final Round 5 closing ranks land here as soon as they're published. Bookmark and check back July 6, July 10, July 16.