JEE Advanced Difficulty Level – Which IIT Will Set the Paper in 2026?

Every year, JEE Advanced evaluates a student’s concepts, speed and accuracy. As one of the toughest entrance exams, it also tests patience, reasoning ability and how well candidates perform under pressure. For 2026, IIT Roorkee is expected to conduct JEE Advanced, leading many students to ask whether the paper will be tougher and what difficulty level they should expect.

Candidates should note that the difficulty level of JEE Advanced cannot be predicted based on the conducting IIT. The organising institute does not decide the questions. IIT Roorkee will not frame or select the questions for JEE Advanced 2026, and no single IIT controls the exam pattern, difficulty level or question selection.

The overall structure, syllabus and marking scheme of JEE Advanced are finalised by the Joint Admission Board (JAB). This is why the pattern remains largely unchanged each year. Minor variations, however, do occur:

• In some years, questions involve lengthy calculations; in others, the focus shifts to multi-concept problems

• The type of questions also varies. Some years include “match the following,” while others feature paragraph-based questions.

• Certain topics in Physics, Chemistry and Maths tend to appear frequently, but trends can shift completely in any given year.
  
  

Because of these variations, students should prepare the entire JEE Advanced 2026 syllabus instead of relying on past patterns.

If JAB continues its rotation, IIT Kharagpur will conduct JEE Advanced in 2028. The institute last conducted the exam in 2021.

Difficulty level when IIT Kharagpur conducted JEE Advanced:

2006

Moderate to difficult; Chemistry was considered particularly tough.

2014

Moderate overall; Physics was average, while Maths and Chemistry were rated tough.

2021

Moderate to difficult; Chemistry and Maths were tougher than Physics.

There is no fixed answer to which IIT sets the toughest JEE Advanced paper. Many believe IIT Guwahati created the toughest paper in 2016, a year marked by high difficulty and some controversies. However, when IIT Guwahati conducted the exam again in 2023, the paper was normal and stable.

Candidates should remember that the question paper is created by experts from multiple institutes, not by the IIT conducting the exam. Therefore, the difficulty level cannot be linked to any particular organising IIT