CSIR NET Application Form 2026: Dates, Fees, Photo Rules, Checklist

You fill it online only, at csirnet.nta.nic.in, in four steps. Register with your own email address and mobile number. Complete the form and uploads using the application number you receive. Pay the fee. Download the confirmation page. Your candidature is confirmed only when NTA receives the fee (bulletin, pages 5 to 8).

CSIR NET here means the Joint CSIR-UGC NET (National Eligibility Test). It decides eligibility for the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), Assistant Professor posts and PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) admission. Sign-in runs through Meri Pehchaan, the government's single sign-on service. NTA does not accept forms or corrections sent by post, fax, WhatsApp, email or hand.

NTA marks these dates as tentative. Your admit card states your own date, shift and centre (bulletin, page 4).

Ten checks decide whether a form is safe to submit. Each has a pass and a fail, and the sections after them explain the rules behind the numbers.

Are your email address and mobile number your own?

Pass: both are yours and you can open that inbox today, because NTA sends every message only to them. Fail: a friend's, a café's or an address you no longer check.

Do your names and date of birth match your marksheet?

Pass: your name, parents' names and date of birth match your marksheet and certificates letter for letter. Fail: expanded initials, a spelling variant or a different date.

Is your Master's percentage high enough?

Pass: at least 55% for General and General-EWS (Economically Weaker Section) candidates, or at least 50% for OBC-NCL (Other Backward Classes, non-creamy layer), SC (Scheduled Castes), ST (Scheduled Tribes), PwD (persons with disabilities), PwBD (persons with benchmark disabilities) and Third Gender candidates, with no rounding up. If your result is awaited, your attestation form must also be ready. Fail: 54.9% as a General candidate.

Are you inside the JRF age limit?

Pass: born on or after 1 December 1996, or on or after 1 December 1991 if a full 5 years' relaxation applies to you. Fail: born before 1 December 1996 and no relaxation applies.

Does your community appear on the Central List before you choose OBC-NCL?

Pass: you find your community on the Central List of Other Backward Classes at ncbc.nic.in and hold the certificate. Fail: your community appears on a state list only. Skip this check if you are not claiming OBC-NCL.

Is your photograph within 10 to 200 KB?

Pass: JPG or JPEG, 10 to 200 KB, in colour on a white background, with 80% of the face visible including ears and no mask. Fail: another format, a size outside the range or a face too small.

Is your signature within 10 to 50 KB?

Pass: JPG or JPEG, 10 to 50 KB and clearly legible. Fail: a size outside the range or an illegible signature.

Are your certificate PDFs within 50 to 300 KB?

Pass: each certificate you need is a PDF of 50 to 300 KB. That covers the category certificate, the result-awaited attestation form and the disability or UDID (Unique Disability ID) certificate. Fail: any one of them outside that range.

Are your four exam cities in the right state?

Pass: four cities in priority order, all in the state of your permanent or present address and all reachable. Fail: a city outside that state.

Do you hold proof of payment and the confirmation page?

Pass: the fee matches your category, you have saved the transaction number and proof, downloaded the confirmation page and written down the application number. Fail: no confirmation page after payment, which sends you to the payment steps further down.

The fee is ₹1,150 for General candidates, ₹600 for General-EWS and OBC-NCL, and ₹325 for SC, ST, PwD, PwBD and Third Gender candidates. The late window adds ₹500, and the payment gateway adds its own charge (bulletin, page 4).

The late totals are the fee plus ₹500, our addition.

The charges below come from the bulletin's Annexure I (page 36). UPI costs nothing on either gateway.

• State Bank of India (SBI) gateway: debit cards cost nothing, a domestic credit card costs 0.80% plus GST (Goods and Services Tax) with a ₹11 minimum, and net banking costs ₹5 plus GST.
• Canara Bank gateway: RuPay debit cards cost nothing. Visa and Mastercard debit cards cost 0.40% plus GST up to ₹2,000 and 0.85% plus GST above that. A domestic credit card costs 1.10% plus GST. Net banking costs ₹13 plus GST, or ₹17 plus GST from HDFC, ICICI, SBI or Axis accounts.

Our worked example for a General candidate paying ₹1,150, assuming GST at 18% (the bulletin says only "plus GST"):

• SBI credit card: 0.80% of ₹1,150 is ₹9.20, below the ₹11 minimum. So ₹11 plus 18% GST is ₹12.98, and the total is about ₹1,163.
• Canara credit card: 1.10% of ₹1,150 is ₹12.65. Plus 18% GST is ₹14.93, and the total is about ₹1,165.
• Canara Visa or Mastercard debit card: 0.40% of ₹1,150 is ₹4.60. Plus 18% GST is ₹5.43, and the total is about ₹1,155.
• UPI: ₹1,150.

We would pay by UPI.

You can apply with a Master's degree at 55% (General, General-EWS) or 50% (OBC-NCL, SC, ST, PwD, PwBD, Third Gender), without rounding off. You can also apply in the final year or with the result awaited, but admission is provisional (bulletin, pages 15 to 17).

A result-awaited candidate must finish the Master's with the required marks within two years of the NET result. For "Admission to PhD only" the limit is one year. You upload the attestation form (Annexure XI), signed and stamped by your head of department.

The JRF age limit is 30 as on 1 December 2026. Up to 5 years' relaxation applies to OBC-NCL, SC, ST, PwD, PwBD and Third Gender candidates and to women. Research experience and armed-forces service also count, and total relaxation never exceeds 5 years. The birth dates in the checklist are our calculation from those rules: 30 on 1 December 2026 means born on or after 1 December 1996, and 5 years' relaxation moves that back to 1 December 1991.

Assistant Professor and PhD-only applications have no upper age limit. If you are over the JRF limit with no relaxation, you can still apply for those two. A four-year bachelor's degree qualifies with 75% aggregate (5% relaxation for reserved categories) for JRF and PhD, but not for Assistant Professor.

NTA does not verify eligibility when you apply. If ineligibility is found at any stage, your candidature is cancelled.

The photograph must be a colour passport-size JPG or JPEG of 10 to 200 KB, and the signature a JPG or JPEG of 10 to 50 KB. Certificates go in as PDFs of 50 to 300 KB (bulletin, pages 6 and 7).

You also take a live photograph inside the form, with your webcam or by scanning the on-screen QR code with a phone. Use a light background and good lighting, with 80% of the face visible.

Apart from the colour, background and face-visibility rules above, size and format are the only technical limits. The bulletin sets no pixel dimensions, so ignore resizer tools that insist on one. Check the file size in your file properties before uploading. If a file is too large, re-export it at lower quality rather than cropping, because a cropped face can fall below the 80% visibility rule.

You choose four exam cities in priority order, limited to the state of your permanent or present address. NTA tries to allot them in your order but can allot another city, merge cities with few candidates, and its allotment is final (bulletin, page 24).

Candidates must report two hours before the exam starts. We would therefore choose by travel time on exam morning rather than by city size: a city you can reach the evening before beats a larger one you cannot.

Mathematical Sciences is subject code 704: one 180-minute CBT of 200 marks in three parts (bulletin, pages 4 and 18).

That gives 15 × 2 + 25 × 3 + 20 × 4.75 = 200 marks. A Part C question can have more than one correct option, and you get credit only for identifying all of them. Our CSIR NET Mathematical Sciences syllabus guide covers what each part tests, and our CSIR NET Maths cut-off page has a target-score worksheet for deciding what to aim for.

You get one correction window (10 to 12 November 2026, as of October 2026) and can edit only the fields NTA enables. NTA publishes the list of editable fields when the window opens. After it closes, no change is entertained at any stage (bulletin, page 9).

If you paid but have no confirmation page, follow the bulletin's order (page 7):

1. Check the payment status with your bank or the gateway, using the helpline details in Annexure I.
2. If the bank says it failed, pay again before the deadline.
3. If the bank says it succeeded, contact NTA so the confirmation page is regenerated: 011-40759000, 011-69227700 or csirnet@nta.ac.in.

Duplicate payments are refunded by NTA after reconciliation, through the same payment mode. Keep the transaction number, bank reference number and a screenshot.

Once the form is in, the work is the paper itself. We teach CSIR NET Mathematics in live and recorded batches, and our live or recorded classes guide helps you choose between them. Our live batch includes daily live classes with recordings, Sunil Bansal's (SB Sir's) handwritten class notes, previous-year-question (PYQ) discussions, mock tests and weekly doubt sessions.

As of October 2026, the CSIR-NET Dec 2026 Live Batch costs ₹11,999 one-time or ₹3,999.67 a month for 3 months, with a ₹999 demo plan. Our free mathematics study content includes demo classes and a PDF drive.