NEET UG OBC (All India) Cutoffs: 2026 vs 2025, Round by Round

1. First, the category name

MCC codes categories its own way, and the Other Backward Classes category appears as BC in the allotment data; its PwD sub-category is BC_PH. When this page says OBC, it means MCC's BC. Rows you see labelled "Open" elsewhere on the site are MCC's OP, and EWS is EW — three codes that are easy to confuse when you are reading a PDF.

Everything below is All India Quota MBBS only. State-quota OBC cutoffs are a different system run by each state authority, with its own category names, its own rounds and its own dates — a state OBC rank and an AIQ OBC rank are not comparable figures, and this page never mixes them.

2. The six published rounds, at a glance

Each row below is the whole OBC AIQ pool for one round: how many colleges reported a BC closing rank, how many BC seats were allotted, and the spread of those closing ranks. Read the median as the typical BC seat and the maximum as the softest one.

"Colleges" counts distinct institutes that printed a BC closing rank in that round; ranks are the closing rank of the last allotted BC candidate in that college. Seats are the BC allotments recorded in the same round.

The table stops at Round 3 because those are the rounds that have published a BC MBBS All India closing rank. 2025 also ran a Round 5 and a stray-vacancy round, and neither is comparable: Round 5 was a BDS and BSc Nursing round that allotted no BC MBBS seat at all, and the stray round is a vacancy round — it printed BC ranks for 68 colleges and 86 BC MBBS seats, but at a median of 26,490, looser than every round above.

3. Match the years college by college and little changes

Comparing the medians of two pools can mislead, because the pool itself changes. So we matched on identity: every college that appears in both 2025 Round 2 and 2026 Round 2 — 404 colleges — compared at the same BC slot. 27 colleges appeared in 2026 that had no BC rank in 2025, and 2 dropped out. Across the 404 matches, the median move was 115 ranks.

The distribution is the point: 401 of 404 colleges moved by less than 5,000 ranks, and 187 of them moved tighter rather than looser — so "cutoffs only ever go up" is not a rule either. Compare that with the movement inside a single year: the OBC AIQ median went from 12,509 in 2025 Round 1 to 17,144 in Round 2, a shift of about 4,600 ranks with no year change at all. The round you are looking at moves the number roughly forty times more than the year does.

Round 1 tells a slightly different story, and it is worth knowing why: matching 2025 Round 1 to 2026 Round 1 gives 389 shared colleges with a median move of 501 ranks, 291 looser against 98 tighter, and 37 colleges appearing in 2026 with no 2025 Round 1 BC rank. First rounds are noisier because new colleges join and the seat pool is still being filled.

Round 3 is the pair where the year finally shows a direction — and it is the opposite one. Match 2025 Round 3 to 2026 Round 3 and 387 colleges are shared, with a median move of 421 ranks tighter: 235 tightened against 152 loosened, and 383 of the 387 stayed inside 5,000 ranks. 43 colleges printed a Round 3 BC rank in 2026 that they had none for in 2025, the largest inflow of any round. The honest reading is that the year-over-year sign is not stable — a list built on "it will loosen next year", or on "it will tighten", is a bet on one round's weather.

A "match" is one college's BC closing rank in the same quota and branch in both rounds; the comparison uses only colleges present in both, so it is not affected by colleges joining or leaving the pool between rounds. The table repeats that match once per round.

4. The colleges that moved the most

A median of 115 ranks still hides a tail. These are the six colleges whose BC closing rank tightened hardest between 2025 Round 2 and 2026 Round 2 — remember that in a rank list, a lower closing rank means the seat got harder to win:

Change is 2026 Round 2 minus 2025 Round 2 for the same BC AIQ slot; a negative number means the seat closed at a better rank in 2026, so fewer candidates could reach it.

The other end: where OBC seats loosened instead

And the other end of the tail — the six colleges that loosened most. Four of the six are Tamil Nadu government colleges, which is a good reminder that these moves are usually local (a new college nearby, a seat-matrix change, a quieter year) rather than national:

A positive change means the seat closed at a weaker rank in 2026, so more candidates could reach it. Only three colleges in the whole 404-college set moved by 5,000 ranks or more in either direction — the headline movers are the exception, not the market.

Round 3: the tail is just as steep, and it points the other way

Run the identical comparison on the newest round and the earliest names are the same — Medical College, Kolkata and Bangalore Medical College are again the two biggest movers — but the year as a whole reverted, which is exactly why the median is the number to carry and the tail is not:

The loosest Round 3 movers are just as local as the Round 2 ones — five of the six are Tamil Nadu government colleges, the same state cluster, one round later:

Same construction as the Round 2 tables above, one round later: one row per college present in both 2025 Round 3 and 2026 Round 3 at the same BC AIQ slot, ranked by the size of the move.

5. What this means for your choice list

1. Quote the round, not the year. The gap between Round 1 and Round 2 of the same year is about 4,400–4,600 ranks at the median; the gap between the same round in two years is about 115. A list built on a Round 1 number is optimistic for later rounds.
2. Use the newest published round for the pool you are actually in. State-quota OBC ranks do not move with AIQ ones, so set the pool toggle in Cutoff Search before you trust any comparison on this page.
3. Check the college, not the state average. The movers above are individual colleges; a state median says nothing about whether your target college tightened.
4. Treat a 5,000-rank year move as the exception it is — three colleges out of 404 in the Round 2 match, four out of 387 in Round 3. Building a list around "it will loosen next year" is a bet on the tail.
5. Re-derive the list as each round publishes. Start from the College Predictor for your rank and category, then keep the order in the Choice Builder so an update is a reorder rather than a rebuild.

One number to carry away: the OBC AIQ median closing rank was 17,526 in 2026 Round 2, against 17,144 in 2025 Round 2 — a year move of 382 ranks, smaller than the movement between any two rounds of the same year. The newest round does not tell the same story: 2026 Round 3 closed at a median of 18,683 against 19,225 in 2025 Round 3, 542 ranks tighter than the year before. Use last year's number as a starting point, never as a verdict.

6. OBC cutoff movement: the questions we are asked most

Did OBC cutoffs get harder in 2026?

Only marginally, and not in one direction. Matching every college that appears in both 2025 Round 2 and 2026 Round 2 at the same BC slot — 404 colleges — the median move was 115 ranks: 187 of them tightened, 217 loosened, and 401 of the 404 moved by less than 5,000 ranks. Run the same match on Round 3 and the year moves the other way: 387 colleges, a median of 421 ranks tighter, 235 tightened against 152 loosened. "Cutoffs only ever go up" is not a rule.

What is the OBC (BC) cutoff rank for AIQ MBBS in 2026?

In 2026 Round 3, 430 colleges printed a BC closing rank, 2,025 BC seats were allotted, the toughest closing rank was 688 and the median was 18,683 — 1,157 ranks looser than Round 2. Comparing Round 1 with Round 2 of the same year moves the median by 4,432 ranks, against a matched year-over-year move of 115: the round you quote changes the number about forty times more than the year does.

Why does the OBC cutoff differ from the General category cutoff?

Because they are separate slots with separate seat pools. MCC prints the Other Backward Classes category as BC (its PwD sub-category is BC_PH), while "General" appears as OP and EWS as EW. A BC seat at a college has its own closing rank, decided by the last BC candidate allotted there — never by the Open closing rank.

Can I use a state-quota OBC rank to predict an AIQ OBC seat?

No. Everything on this page is All India Quota MBBS only. State-quota OBC counselling is run by each state authority with its own category names, rounds and dates, and a state OBC rank is not comparable with an AIQ OBC rank. Set the pool toggle in Cutoff Search to the pool you are actually in before you compare anything.

Should I build my OBC choice list on last year's closing rank?

Use the newest published round for your pool rather than last year's number for the same round. Individual colleges still move hard — Medical College, Kolkata tightened by 10,167 ranks between the two Round 2s and by 11,384 between the two Round 3s — so check your own target colleges, treat a 5,000-rank year move as the exception it is (three colleges out of 404 in the Round 2 match), and re-derive the list as each round publishes, starting from the College Predictor and keeping the order in the Choice Builder.