IIT Madras, Bombay and Delhi corner 408 of top 500 JEE Advanced ranks

The JEE Advanced 2026 rankings reveal a striking concentration of India's highest-performing engineering aspirants among three IIT zones, with IIT Madras, IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi together accounting for 408 of the top 500 candidates.

That means 81.6% of the top 500 Common Rank List came from just three of the seven IIT zones. IIT Madras leads the list with 174 candidates in the top 500, followed by IIT Bombay with 120 and IIT Delhi with 114. The remaining four zones together account for just 92 candidates.

IIT Roorkee has 46 candidates in the top 500, while IIT Bhubaneswar has 23, IIT Kanpur 16 and IIT Guwahati seven.

The concentration is visible from the top 100

The dominance of the three leading zones begins right at the top of the rankings.

Among the top 100, IIT Madras, Bombay and Delhi together account for 87 candidates. Their combined share rises to 168 among the top 200, 245 among the top 300 and 329 among the top 400.

By the time the list reaches the top 500, the three zones account for 408 candidates.

The concentration is even sharper among the top 10. IIT Delhi has five candidates, IIT Madras three and IIT Bombay two. No candidate from the other four zones features in the top 10.

IIT Madras leads the top 500

IIT Madras not only dominates the top 500 but also has the largest number of qualified candidates overall, with 14,294.

IIT Bombay has 12,389 qualified candidates, followed by IIT Delhi with 10,697.

Among the top 500, Madras has 174 candidates, compared with 120 from Bombay and 114 from Delhi.

The top-ranked candidates from the three zones also feature prominently. Shubham Kumar of the IIT Delhi zone secured AIR 1, while Mohit Shekher Shukla of the IIT Madras zone secured AIR 4 and B Jayakrishna Srinivas of the IIT Bombay zone secured AIR 6.

Four zones account for just 92 of the top 500

The gap between the three leading zones and the remaining four is substantial.

IIT Roorkee has 46 candidates in the top 500 from a total of 5,637 qualified candidates. IIT Bhubaneswar has 23 among 5,428 qualified candidates, while IIT Kanpur has 16 from 5,552 qualified candidates.

IIT Guwahati has the smallest representation, with seven candidates among the top 500 out of 2,883 qualified candidates.

Overall, 56,880 candidates qualified for JEE Advanced 2026. But the distribution changes dramatically at the highest end of the merit list.

The numbers show that while candidates from all seven IIT zones made it to the qualifying pool, the country's highest ranks were heavily concentrated in the Madras, Bombay and Delhi zones, which together produced more than four out of every five candidates in the top 500.

Zone-wise distribution of top 500 candidates