CAT 2026 Opens in August: Build Your Plan B Before November

CAT 2026 registration is expected to open in early August and close around late September, with the exam expected on 29 November. None of it is official yet, and that is the first thing to hold onto. The second: the aspirants who end up stranded in January are rarely the ones who scored badly. They are the ones who bet everything on one Sunday and filed no other application.

So this page does both jobs at once. The CAT timeline as honestly as it can be stated today, and the parallel track you build alongside it: XAT, NMAT, SNAP, CMAT and the direct MBA admission without CAT routes, laid out month by month from July to January.

The two tracks at a glance

Track	Expected window (2026-27 cycle)	Status on 7 July 2026	Where it becomes official
CAT 2026 registration	Early August to late September 2026	Expected. Notification not yet out	iimcat.ac.in
CAT 2026 exam	29 November 2026	Expected, from the last-Sunday-of-November pattern	iimcat.ac.in
XAT 2027	Registration from mid-July 2026, exam expected 3 January 2027	Expected. Official site still shows the 2026 cycle (opened 10 July 2025, exam 4 January 2026)	xatonline.in
NMAT 2026	Registration from early August, testing November to December	Expected. Up to 3 attempts, confirmed on GMAC’s page	mba.com/exams/nmat
SNAP 2026	Registration August to November, three test days in December	Expected. 3 attempts and 79 test cities, confirmed on the official site	snaptest.org
CMAT 2027	One NTA exam, expected January 2027	Expected. The official page shows one cycle per admission year	cmat.nta.nic.in
Own-exam and PGDM routes	Rolling, college by college	Published on each university’s own pages	Our pillar guide maps them

Every “expected” in that table is deliberate. We checked each official site on 7 July 2026, and not one of these bodies has published its full 2026-27 calendar yet.

The CAT 2026 registration timeline, stated honestly

The IIMs publish the CAT notification in late July, going by the pattern of recent years, and registration has opened in the first week of August and run to about the third week of September. The exam lands on the last Sunday of November, which in 2026 is the 29th. Results follow in late December, and the score feeds the 2027 intake.

That is the full extent of what can honestly be said today. The registration fee, the exact closing date, the conducting IIM, the pattern, the correction window: all of it gets fixed by one document, the official notification on iimcat.ac.in. We track the notification on our deadlines page and will update this post the day it lands.

Two registration habits worth keeping from past cycles. Register early, because test-city preferences run in order of registration. And treat the form like a legal document: academic percentages and category certificates get verified at the admission stage, and a casual error in August becomes an eligibility dispute in February.

Our CAT 2026 guide covers eligibility, the colleges that accept modest percentiles, and what the score can and cannot do. This page stays on the calendar.

Why the Plan B has to run in parallel, not after

Here is the trap in the standard timeline. CAT results arrive in late December. Most top non-IIM schools, the FMS and SPJIMR and IIFT tier, close their application forms around CAT exam day itself, weeks before anyone knows a score. Apply-first, score-later is how the whole system works.

So “I’ll see my percentile and then decide” converts a decent score into a season with nothing left open. Every piece of the Plan-B track happens between August and early December, while you are busy with CAT prep. Annoying, yes. Also roughly two weekends of form-filling spread over four months.

Three of the Plan-B exams are structurally gentler than CAT anyway. NMAT gives you up to 3 attempts with a long window. SNAP gives you three test days in December. XAT happens in January, after CAT, so the same preparation carries over with a few weeks to spare. Our exam comparison helps you pick by target college. And beneath the national exams sits the direct track: universities like NMIMS, Symbiosis, IBS and Alliance admitting through their own published processes, plus AICTE’s rule that PGDM institutes may admit through any of six exams (CAT, XAT, CMAT, ATMA, MAT, GMAT) or a state CET. CAT is one door of six, not the building.

The month-by-month calendar, July to January

Month	CAT track	Plan-B track
July 2026	Notification expected late July. Shortlist target colleges now	XAT 2027 registration expected to open mid-July (the 2026 cycle opened 10 July)
August 2026	Registration expected to open early August. Register in week one for test-city choice	NMAT registration expected to open. SNAP registration expected to open. Start one Plan-B mock a fortnight
September 2026	Registration expected to close mid-to-late September	Book an NMAT slot. College forms begin opening, note each deadline as it publishes
October 2026	Form-correction window expected after closing	Quietest month, so bank it: this is when application essays and SOPs get written without panic
November 2026	Admit card expected, then the exam, expected 29 November	NMAT testing window opens. Most top non-IIM forms close around exam day. SNAP registration closes (expected, late November)
December 2026	Result expected late December	SNAP test days (three, in December). NMAT window runs to mid-December. XAT registration closes (expected: the 2026 cycle closed 11 December after an extension)
January 2027	IIM shortlists follow the result	XAT expected Sunday 3 January. CMAT 2027 expected. NMAT ran a final retake window of 13 to 17 January in the last cycle

Copy this into whatever you actually look at daily. The November row is the one people miss: your exam, the NMAT window and most college deadlines collide in the same fortnight, and everything in that fortnight had to be set up in August.

Claims doing the rounds that are simply wrong

Plan-B season brings out confident nonsense, and we found plenty while researching this post. Corrections, with the official pages to check against:

• “CMAT is held four times a year, in February, May, September and December.” No. That calendar belongs to MAT, run by AIMA. CMAT is conducted by the NTA once per admission year, and its official page shows exactly one cycle. An article that swaps these two has not read either official site.
• “SNAP is a single-attempt exam.” The SNAP website itself advertises 3 attempts across its December test days. This changed years ago, and the claim keeps circulating anyway.
• “NMAT allows only two attempts” and “NMIMS counts only your first attempt.” GMAC’s official page describes up to 3 attempts to improve your score. NMIMS publishes its own score policy on nmat.nmims.edu, and that page, not a blog, is the word on which attempt counts.
• “CAT 2026 registration closes on [exact date].” Several large sites are printing exact-day dates for the notification, admit card and result. As of 7 July 2026 there is no notification, so every one of those dates is a projection wearing a fact’s clothes. The week-level pattern is a fair guide. An exact day is not.
• The admit card date, variously “fourth week of October” or a specific November day. Same problem. The notification fixes it, and nothing published before the notification can.

You are about to pay fees and book test slots against these dates. Hold every one of them to the official page it should have come from.

What agents won’t tell you

Around September, as CAT anxiety peaks, the calls start: “secure a Plan-B seat now, pay to block it.” Here is what that pitch leaves out. Every AICTE-approved PGDM institute must admit only candidates holding a score in one of six exams or a state CET, selected strictly on merit, under Appendix-9 of the AICTE Approval Process Handbook. NMIMS states in its official caution notice that it has no management quota for any programme and that such offers should be treated as fraudulent. Symbiosis states that no donation is payable and that aspirants who approach through agents are permanently debarred. A real Plan B is a stack of applications you file yourself, to colleges and exam bodies, at published fees. Anyone selling a shortcut past that is selling the setup for a fraud.

What the parallel track costs

Real money, and worth budgeting rather than discovering. The CAT fee publishes in the notification, each Plan-B exam and each college application carries its own fee, and every one of those figures sits on an official page. We will not quote them here because the 2026-27 fees are not out yet and aggregator numbers age badly. The principle does not age: every rupee goes to an exam body or a college directly, against a receipt. For how the published routes work at real schools in one city, see our Mumbai MBA guide, and if CAT is already behind you, the missed-CAT options guide picks up from here.

Register for CAT in August week one. File the parallel applications through September and October. Then November is just an exam, not a cliff.

Not sure which one or two Plan-B exams fit your target list? Message us on WhatsApp with your graduation marks and target colleges, and we will tell you honestly, including “CAT alone is fine” if that is the truth.