NEET UG 2026 Toppers List Out: Aryan Gupta, Panshul Bansal Share AIR 1 With 715 Marks; 11.21 Lakh Qualify

New Delhi: After a cancelled paper, a re-exam, a 10,000-objection answer key fight and a result date that slipped by six weeks, NEET UG 2026 finally has a name at the top. Two, actually.

The National Testing Agency declared the NEET UG 2026 result late on Thursday, and Aryan Gupta of Punjab and Panshul Bansal of Haryana have jointly taken All India Rank 1 with 715 out of 720 marks — the highest score in an examination that nearly 20 lakh students sat on June 21.

The result was released ahead of the medical counselling process, clearing the way for MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other undergraduate medical admissions to proceed on schedule. That timing matters more than usual this year: the entire 2026 cycle had already been pushed back by roughly two months, and most trackers were expecting the result no earlier than July 20.

Scorecards are live at neet.nta.nic.in.

The number that tells the real story: 715

For the second consecutive year, nobody scored a perfect 720.

That is not an accident, and it is not a footnote. Look at what a NEET topper has scored over the last six cycles:

715 is the exact score that topped NEET in 2022. Four years, one identical ceiling. And it sits 29 marks above last year's 686 — a jump that confirms what students walking out of centres on June 21 had said all along: the re-exam paper was more forgiving than the brutal 2025 Physics-heavy set, but not the giveaway that 2024's 720-fest turned out to be.

Read it as a signal, not a headline. NTA appears to have landed the re-exam paper in the band it wanted — hard enough that nobody aced it, fair enough that the top of the merit list is legible and tightly packed.

NEET UG 2026 AIR 1: The joint toppers

Joint AIR 1 is rare but not unprecedented — in NEET 2023, two candidates scored 720 and both were given AIR 1, with the next candidate at 716 allotted AIR 3. Expect the same structure in the 2026 merit list.

Punjab and Haryana at the top — and what that means for the Kota narrative

Here is the line no aggregator has drawn yet.

For years, the NEET topper conversation has been a Rajasthan conversation. Kota and Sikar produced Mahesh Kumar, the 2025 AIR 1 from Hanumangarh who prepared for three years at a Sikar institute, and Tanishka in 2022. Rajasthan has been the default answer.

In 2026, Rajasthan is not at AIR 1. Punjab and Haryana are.

Rajasthan is very much present — the Top 17 candidates, all scoring above 705, come from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana — but the crown has moved north-west. Combined with NTA's own data on who these top scorers are, a picture emerges that cuts directly against the drop-year-in-Kota orthodoxy.

The 138 who scored 690+: overwhelmingly first-timers, overwhelmingly 17–19

This is the most under-reported dataset in today's release.

Among the 138 candidates who scored 690 or above:

• More than 93% were appearing for NEET for the first time

• Nearly 99% were aged 17–19

• They come from 66 cities across the country

Decode that: the very top of the 2026 merit list is not a repeater's league. More than nine in ten of the highest scorers cracked it on attempt one, straight out of school. The 17–19 concentration says the same thing from the other side — these are candidates who went from Class 12 boards to a top-138 NEET rank without a gap year.

And 66 cities is not Kota-plus-Sikar. It's a national spread.

NEET UG 2026 score distribution

Sit with the 500+ row for a second. 90,780 candidates cleared 500 marks. India has roughly 1.18 lakh MBBS seats in total, of which government seats number well under half. A 500 is a strong score — and it is nowhere near a guarantee. That gap is the entire counselling season in one number.

NEET UG 2026 state and UT toppers

NTA released toppers from every State and Union Territory. Notable names:

Also per NTA:

• 17 state toppers scored 700 or above; 26 scored more than 690

• State toppers cover every North-Eastern state

• Qualified candidates emerged from all 36 States and UTs — from over 1.7 lakh in Uttar Pradesh down to 43 in Lakshadweep

The Ladakh–Lakshadweep–Andaman spread (530, 573, 606) against Punjab's 715 is the honest picture of NEET's geography: a 185-mark gulf between the best score in the country and the best score in Ladakh.

11.21 lakh qualified — the lowest in three years

Three straight years of decline in absolute qualifiers. From 13.16 lakh to 11.21 lakh is a fall of nearly two lakh.

But here is the nuance the wire copies will miss: the pass rate barely moved. The female qualification rate was 56.8% and the male rate 55.1% — working out to roughly 56% overall, essentially identical to 2025's 55.96%.

So the merit list didn't get harder to enter. The field got smaller. Around 22.79 lakh students registered for NEET UG 2026, and more than 20 lakh appeared for the re-exam — a materially thinner turnout than 2025's 22.09 lakh. Some of that is the May-3-to-June-21 disruption. Some of it is candidates who simply did not return for a second sitting of an exam they had already mentally finished.

That is the re-exam's real cost, and it is measured in the roughly 2.8 lakh registered aspirants who did not show up.

Women outnumber men — again

More than 58% of all qualified candidates are women, and women recorded a higher qualification rate (56.8%) than men (55.1%).

This is now structural, not a blip. NEET has been majority-female at the qualification stage for years, and 2026 widens it. Whether that translates into MBBS seats is a counselling question, not a result question — but the top of the funnel is unambiguous.

NEET UG 2026 result statistics

How to download the NEET UG 2026 scorecard

1. Go to neet.nta.nic.in

2. Click the NEET UG 2026 Result link

3. Enter your Application Number, Date of Birth and Security Pin

4. Click Submit

5. Your scorecard and All India Rank appear on screen

6. Download and print — you will need it at every counselling round

Server tip: The first 4–6 hours after declaration are the worst. If the page hangs, try the direct scorecard link or retry between 2 AM and 6 AM IST. Do not refresh repeatedly — it queues you further back.

NEET UG 2026 cutoff: what the scorecard will show

NTA publishes the qualifying cutoff with the result. The percentile thresholds never change — only the mark equivalents move:

For reference, the 2025 General cutoff was 686–144 marks, down from 720–162 in 2024, with OBC/SC/ST at 143–113. With the 2026 topper at 715 — 29 marks above 2025's 686 — the mark-equivalents this year will not mirror 2025's. Check the band printed on your own scorecard. Do not use any site's "expected cutoff" table now that the official figure is live.

Critical distinction most candidates get wrong: the qualifying cutoff only makes you eligible for counselling. The admission cutoff — the score that actually gets you into a college — is set by MCC and state authorities after each seat-allotment round, and it is far higher.

What happens next: NEET UG counselling 2026

NTA has stated the result was declared in time for counselling and medical college admissions. From here:

• MCC (mcc.nic.in) conducts All India Quota counselling — 15% of government seats, plus 100% of seats at AIIMS, JIPMER, and central universities

• State authorities handle the remaining 85% — register separately, on each portal

• Expect four rounds: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3 and Stray Vacancy

 Dates are not yet notified. MCC will publish the official schedule on mcc.nic.in. Treat every "counselling starts July 21" date currently circulating as an unconfirmed projection.

AIQ Round 1 always opens before state Round 1. Missing the MCC window because you were waiting on your state's notification is the single most common — and most expensive — error of every counselling season.

Keep ready: NEET UG 2026 admit card and scorecard, Class 10 and 12 marksheets and certificates, valid photo ID, 6–8 passport photographs, category certificate (OBC-NCL / SC / ST / EWS / PwD) if claiming reservation.

NEET UG 2026 toppers list PDF

The full list published by NTA alongside the result covers:

• Top 100 All India Ranks with names, marks, state and category

• State-wise and UT-wise toppers

• Category-wise toppers (General, OBC-NCL, SC, ST, Gen-EWS, PwBD)

• Gender-wise statistics

• Category-wise cutoff marks

Available at neet.nta.nic.in.

This story is developing. AIR 2 and AIR 3 details, topper interviews and the category-wise cutoff table will be updated as NTA and the toppers confirm them.