CUET Exam Pattern 2026 for Science, Arts, Commerce Students

CUET Exam Pattern 2026

Understanding the latest exam pattern is very crucial for the students who are planning to appear in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET UG) in the year 2026. The National Testing Agency has released the latest CUET Exam Pattern 2026 on the official website along with the information brochure. The CUET UG 2026 exam pattern includes sections, test duration, examination style, and question paper format. 

The exam is broken into three sections: Languages, Domain Subjects, and General Tests. Each subject has a uniform number of questions, i.e. 50 questions for 5 marks each. Students who are preparing for the UG entrance Exam can check the detailed CUET UG Exam Pattern, Total Marks, Marking scheme and other details on this page.

CUET 2026 Exam Pattern

The CUET 2026 exam will be provisionally planned from the second week of May 2026, and the application process is likely to start by the mid of fenruary. Before starting the preparation, aspiring students must review the CUET UG Syllabus 2026 and Exam pattern carefully to plan their studies. CUET Paper Pattern 2026 will inform you about the sections, subjects covered, duration, number of questions, and test marking scheme.
The CUET 2026 question paper will have objective-type multiple-choice questions (MCQ).  The CUET question paper will be in English, and candidates will be able to choose from 12 regional languages.  Each question will be worth five marks, with one mark deducted for each incorrect response. 

CUET UG 2025 Exam Pattern Highlights

National Testing Agency conducts CUET Examination in a computer-based mode in 380 cities across India and 26 Cities outside India. As more than 13 lakhs of students appear in the exam each year, the exam is conducted in multiple shifts and slots. Usually, exams are held in two to three slots each day within a span of approximately 20 days. Take a look at the quick summary of the CUET 2025 Paper Pattern below.

Section-wise CUET UG 2026 Paper Pattern

As mentioned earlier, the CUET Exam pattern is broken into three sections: language paper, domain subjects, and general aptitude test. Over the last year, NTA has set the number of questions in each section equal i.e, 50 Objective-type multiple-choice questions. Check out the section-wise CUET Paper pattern in the table below.

CUET UG Exam Pattern 2026: Section-wise Breakdown

To perform well on the exam, review the section-by-section CUET exam analysis as well as the CUET exam pattern to determine your goal scores. The CUET paper is divided into three sections: language paper, domain paper, and general aptitude test. According to NTA standards, you can select a maximum of five subjects from a total of 37 subject papers throughout three sections. Check below to discover the entire CUET 2026 test pattern in a section-wise way.

Section 1- Languages

The languages offered under Section I of CUET 2026 are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Odia, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, English, Hindi, and Urdu.

Section 2- Domain-Specific Subjects

Candidates, while choosing the domain-specific subjects, can choose the CUET subjects irrespective of subjects studied in class 12th. Candidates are advised to check the brochure of the University to choose the domain-specific subjects. As per CUET exam pattern 2026, domain-specific subjects are as follows:

• Accountancy/Bookkeeping
• Agriculture
• Anthropology
• Biology
• Business Studies
• Chemistry
• Computer Science/ Informatics Practices
• Economics/ Business Economics
• Fine Arts/ Visual Arts (Sculpture/ Painting)/Commercial Arts
• Geography/Geology
• Home Science
• History
• Knowledge, Tradition and Practices of India
• Environmental Science
• Mathematics
• Physical Education/ NCC /Yoga
• Physics
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Mass Media/ Mass Communication
• Performing Arts
• Sanskrit

Section 3- General Aptitude Test

This section can be opted by candidates for discontinued subjects, Vocational/Open Eligibility/Cross Stream/any other applicable UG courses. It is an optional section that the candidate can choose as per the requirement of the participating CUET university.

CUET UG Marking Scheme

As NTA implemented the negative marking procedure, students need to be aware of the marking scheme as well. The CUET exam has a total of 250 marks. The NTA marking scheme is presented below.

• Correct response or the most appropriate answer: Five marks (+5)
• Any wrong selection marked will receive a negative one mark (-1).
• Unanswered/marked for review questions will receive zero points.
• If more than one option is discovered to be right, only those who marked any of the correct alternatives will receive five (+5) marks.
• If all options are found to be right, all individuals who attempted the question will receive five (+5) marks.
• If none of the options is accurate, a question is confirmed to be incorrect, or a question is dropped, all candidates who attempted the dropped question will receive five (+5) marks.

Medium of CUET Exam 2025

As a national-level examination, NTA conducts the examination in a total of 14 languages on the basis of the state. The CUET will be conducted in English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Candidates interested in taking the CUET UG Exam should review the necessary guidelines on exam medium selection before filing the application form. Refer to the table below to find the language-specific exam centres: