NEET-SS: groups, eligibility, pattern and qualifying percentile

Which cycle this describes

The most recent NEET-SS bulletin published by NBEMS is for NEET-SS 2025, whose examination was held on 26 and 27 December 2025. This page records how that examination worked. When the NEET-SS 2026 bulletin is published, the page will be updated to it. Seat allotment after NEET-SS is on the SS counselling page.

The NMC’s Post-Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 require candidates to secure the minimum eligible score in NEET-SS to pursue a super-specialty course (Section 4.1).

NEET-SS 2025 dates

Eligibility

• A recognised MD, MS or DNB degree or provisional pass certificate — or an equivalent recognised qualification — in a feeder specialty for the course sought, or the expectation of holding it by the cut-off date (31 January 2026 for the 2025 cycle). Requests from candidates qualifying after that date are rejected.
• Registration with the NMC or a State Medical Council, with proof at the test centre.
• Foreign nationals, including OCI cardholders, may appear without NMC registration. The NMC may grant temporary registration for the course and institution, subject to registration in their own country.
• Already in a super-specialty course? Candidates pursuing or who have joined a DM, MCh or DrNB through NEET-SS are not eligible for DrNB super-specialty admission through NEET-SS for the entire prescribed duration of the course they joined, even if they resign.
• FCPS qualifications of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mumbai are not equivalent to MD or MS (Ministry of Health letter of 30 April 2021) and do not by themselves make a candidate eligible.

The feeder specialties for each DM and MCh course are listed in Annexure 7 of PGMER-23 and in the bulletin’s own annexure. For example, DM Cardiology accepts MD/DNB General Medicine, Paediatrics or Respiratory Medicine; MCh Urology accepts MS/DNB General Surgery.

Question-paper groups

NEET-SS is a group-based examination. Every DM, MCh and DrNB course offered is placed in one of 15 groups, and all courses in a group share one question paper.

• 13 groups have a primary feeder broad specialty. Their papers ask questions from the whole of that specialty at PG exit level: Medical, Surgical, Paediatric, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Orthopaedics, ENT, Radiodiagnosis, Anaesthesiology, Respiratory Medicine, Psychiatry, Pathology, Microbiology and Pharmacology.
• 2 groups — Critical Care Medicine and Medical Oncology — ask questions from the super-specialty subject itself, following an NBEMS notice of 11 October 2024 issued on the NMC’s directions.

A candidate may sit as many groups as their PG qualification is a feeder for, paying the fee for each. An MD Paediatrics holder, for example, may sit both the Medical and the Paediatric groups.

The paper

Qualifying

Candidates at or above the 50th percentile in their question-paper group are declared qualified in that group. Score cards are downloadable from the NBEMS website for six months after upload.