After CAT Results: The IIM Registration Windows That Decide Your Interview (2026-27)

Most CAT candidates think the exam is the hard part and the rest is weather. The printed policies say otherwise: between the 29 November 2026 test and the results — first week of January 2027, tentative, per the official advertisement re-read today — sits a layer of separate registrations that quietly ends more IIM candidatures than the percentile does. This page maps that layer from the policies themselves, every one opened on 12 September 2026.

The three registration shapes

Shape one: the email invitation. IIM Kozhikode’s 2026-28 policy states that candidates meeting its minimum bars “will receive an email with instructions for online registration” — and that only completed registrations move to shortlisting, with the Stage-2 shortlist appearing around the second week of January and offers around the first week of May. IIM Udaipur prints the same architecture in starker words: candidates who clear its cut-offs “will receive an email from the Admission Office to complete the mandatory online registration”, and “candidates who fail to register within the given timeline will not be considered further.” IIM Nagpur’s policy runs the identical pattern — an email intimation, then an application form with a deadline. None of these emails goes anywhere but the address typed into the CAT form, and none of these institutes accepts a late registration because a candidate “didn’t see it.”

Shape two: the joint portals. Four IIMs — Raipur, Kashipur, Ranchi and Tiruchirappalli — share the JAP 2026 process: one registration, one joint interview round, then each campus’s own printed formula. IIM Trichy’s criteria page, re-opened today, lists the JAP PI venues (including the four member campuses), and IIM Kashipur’s admission page confirms its 2026-28 cut-offs “will be updated soon in accordance with JAP 2026 guidelines.” Three more IIMs — Bodh Gaya, Jammu and Sirmaur — share CAP 2026, with its own portal and pre-interview registration gate. One joint registration covers the member set; skipping it skips all of them at once. Our JAP 2026 and CAP 2026 explainers carry the member lists and each campus’s formula.

Shape three: the institute’s own window. IIM Rohtak runs a separate application registration outside both joint processes — last cycle’s window was tentatively late December to early January with its own fee. One disclosure belongs here: Rohtak’s policy document would not open from our network today, so those dates keep their 10 September 2026 verification rather than a fresh stamp; the pattern — a solo window straddling the result — is what to plan around, and our IIM Rohtak profile carries the dated detail.

The January doors outside the IIMs

The same weeks carry the non-IIM January windows. BIM Trichy’s 2027-29 application — open since 7 September 2026, shortlisting on CAT 2026, XAT 2027 or GMAT — closes 31 January 2027, re-read in a real browser today. XAT 2027 itself writes on 3 January 2027 for everyone registered by 6 December 2026. And SNAP’s three December sessions feed the Symbiosis institutes’ own January-February shortlists. A candidate who treats late December as downtime is, in print, closing doors.

What to do before results, all of it free

Assemble the file every policy demands: Class 10 and 12 marksheets, semester-wise graduation records, the category certificate where applicable, and work-experience proof with appointment and relieving dates — the JAP campuses print that part-time, internship and pre-graduation stints do not count, and several demand bank-verified salary proof. Register for XAT by 6 December if XLRI-tier institutes are live options. Then watch the CAT-registered email address — the invitation-registering IIMs write only there, and the cheapest seat in this entire system is the one lost to an unread inbox.

One transparency note for the record: iimcat.ac.in itself would not serve our network today (its edge blocks come and go daily), so the result timing above is read from the official CAT 2026 advertisement hosted on iimcal.ac.in rather than the portal — the same document, the same dates. When the portals move, our deadlines tracker moves the same day.