Extracted Data Points

  • Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2026 including Indian Forest Service (Preliminary) Examination 2026 conducted on 24 May 2026
  • Examination held at 2,072 venues across 83 examination centers (cities)
  • Total applicants: 8,19,732 candidates
  • Actual appeared: 5.49 lakh candidates (67% appearance rate)
  • Comparison with 2025: 9.5 lakh applicants, 5.8 lakh appeared (61% appearance rate)
  • First-time implementation of real-time face authentication technology at all venues
  • Technology developed indigenously through NeGD of MeitY
  • Examination held in two sessions: General Studies (Paper-I) from 09:30 AM to 11:30 AM, CSAT (Paper-II) from 02:30 PM to 04:30 PM
  • Delhi center: Highest applications with 70,885 candidates across 144 venues
  • Hyderabad center: 44,209 candidates at 100 venues
  • Patna center: 39,147 candidates across 79 venues
  • Kargil: Least applications with 98 candidates at one venue
  • Port Blair: 270 candidates at one venue
  • Leh (Ladakh): 308 candidates across two venues
  • Three new examination centers added at Bhubaneswar, Kanpur, and Meerut
  • Dropdown option introduced for candidates to indicate preferred nearby cities
  • Provisional answer key to be released soon after examination
  • Representations accepted until 6:00 PM on May 31, 2026 (7th day from exam)
  • Final answer key released only after declaration of final result
  • PwBD/PwD candidates: 11,224 total
  • Persons with Benchmark Disability (40% or more disability) and Persons with Disability (less than 40% disability)
  • Compensatory Time of twenty minutes per hour given for specific disability categories
  • All venues equipped with drinking water, power backup, medical assistance, shaded waiting areas, sanitation facilities
  • Accessibility support provided for PwBD candidates
  • Mobile signal jammers deployed at all examination venues