CAP 2026: The Common Admission Process Running Three IIMs, Explained

If you are applying to a newer IIM this cycle, CAP 2026 is the smaller and quieter of the two joint processes — and the better one for a borderline candidate to understand, because its announced bars come in two columns and one of them is lower. The 2026-28 documents settle its shape: three member IIMs, one offline interview, and a portal on IIM Jammu’s domain.

What CAP 2026 actually is

CAP is not an exam and not a counselling round. You take CAT 2025; the three members — IIM Bodh Gaya, IIM Jammu and IIM Sirmaur, named as the consortium in Bodh Gaya’s printed 2026-28 admission policy — share one application portal (cap2026.iimj.ac.in, hosted on IIM Jammu’s domain and linked from both other members’ official pages) and one offline Personal Interview. Bodh Gaya’s policy adds that shortlisting numbers are finalised at the CAP Directors’ meeting — so even the institutes treat the announced table as the gate, not the guarantee.

The announced Expression-of-Interest table, printed by IIM Bodh Gaya on 21 January 2026, runs per programme in Gender-Neutral (GN) and Supernumerary Girls (SNG) columns:

Programme	GN General	SNG General	GN EWS / NC-OBC	SNG EWS / NC-OBC	GN SC	SNG SC	GN/SNG ST-PwD
MBA (flagship)	90	85	75 / 75	70 / 70	60	55	38 / 35
MBA-DBM (digital business & AI)	88	83	73 / 73	68 / 68	58	53	36 / 33
MBA-HHM (hospital & healthcare)	75	70	60 / 60	55 / 55	50	45	33 / 33

Sectionals sit at 65/65/65 for General across all three programmes. The 75 GN bar on the healthcare MBA is the lowest published overall General bar we have mapped at any IIM this cycle.

Where the three IIMs stop being the same

The joint interview ends the shared part. Each campus then ranks its own list on its own print:

• IIM Bodh Gaya — CAT scaled score 50%, PI 25%, profile 25% (academics 15 banded at 70/70/60 percent, work experience 10 peaking at two-to-four years, bank-statement verification mandatory), with a Minimum Performance Requirement gating the PI. Full profile.
• IIM Sirmaur — scaled CAT 35, PI 20, academics 15, work experience 20 peaking at 23-35 months, gender 5 and a 5-point Trailblazer professional-degree score; beside it runs the female-only Supernumerary Admission Process with its own printed bars and a PI weighted 25. Full profile.
• IIM Jammu — the host of the shared portal; its own final weights are published through the CAP portal. The portal resolved and served today (21 September 2026) after ten days DNS-dead — we verified the printed fee (Rs 2,000 General/NC-OBC/EWS, Rs 1,000 SC/ST/PwD), the EOI window (21-28 January) and the full PI calendar live — but the weight table did not appear on the pages we could open, and we will not quote figures we could not read.

The consortium shrank — plan accordingly

The 2026-28 documents map a consolidation. JAP 2026 split off four IIMs (Raipur hosting Kashipur, Ranchi and Trichy) with a 95.25 General bar; Udaipur, Sambalpur, Shillong, Amritsar and Visakhapatnam each publish solo processes; and IIM Nagpur’s 2026-28 policy describes a standalone three-stage process with no CAP reference at all. IIM Ranchi’s 2025-27 criteria name Bodh Gaya as the previous cycle’s CAP coordinator — this year the portal sits on Jammu’s domain. The practical reading: the “new IIMs” are no longer one list with one bar; each process has its own gate, its own formula and its own deadlines, and the CAP gate is the friendliest of the joint ones.

Two cautions in print. First, CAP is not Maharashtra’s CAP — the state’s CET-Cell counselling rounds are a third, unrelated system, and agents exploit the shared name; our CAP-round versus management-quota page covers the Maharashtra meaning. Second, every CAP channel in print is merit-ranked — the girls’ supernumerary columns and Sirmaur’s SAP are affirmative action with announced bars, not seats for sale; anyone offering a paid CAP-IIM seat is describing a process that does not exist in writing. For the bars across every mapped campus, see MBA colleges by percentile band, and for the fallback routes below these bars, the low-CAT rescue map — or ask us directly through MBA admissions guidance.