GATE 2027 site live at IIT Madras: DigiLocker mandatory, new RA paper; GOAPS still TBA

The GATE 2027 website is up. The application button is not. Indian Institute of Technology Madras is serving gate2027.iitm.ac.in as a full GATE 2027 site this morning — organising institute on the identity band, 30 test papers on the carousel, DigiLocker and a new Robotics and Automation paper in the live ticker. The Important Dates card still prints GOAPS opening as TBA. The Apply Now control is commented out in the page source. This desk is not filing “registration begins.”

GATE 2027 is the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering, conducted jointly by IISc and the IITs on behalf of the National Coordination Board, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. Scores feed postgraduate and doctoral admissions, with possible financial assistance in MoE-supported institutions, and are used by some public sector undertakings for recruitment. Qualifying does not guarantee a seat or a job. The homepage says so in the footer disclaimer.

What is live on the IIT Madras site

A homepage ticker, not an HTML comment, tells Indian nationals that “GATE 2027 Registration through DigiLocker is mandatory.” Create or update a verified DigiLocker account now, it says, and points to digilocker.gov.in. That instruction is running while the form itself is not. Waiting until GOAPS actually opens to discover an unverified locker is a self-inflicted delay.

The same ticker introduces a new test paper: Robotics and Automation (RA). The Test Papers & Syllabus page lists RA in the 30-paper table and marks it New. GATE 2027 “will be conducted for 30 test papers.” A candidate may appear in one paper or up to two; the two-paper combinations page is the rule sheet. Papers are in English. Each paper is 100 marks: 15 for General Aptitude, 85 for the paper syllabus.

Other ticker lines match the papers page. Syllabi have been revised; candidates are told to download the updated PDFs. Biotechnology (BT) has a flagged syllabus note. Textile Engineering and Fibre Science, previously a standalone TF paper, is listed as XE9 under Engineering Sciences. XE, XH and XL sectional paper codes have changed. Do not fill last year’s codes from memory.

Contact printed on the site: GATE-JAM Office, IIT Madras, Chennai – 600 036; telephone 044-22578200; helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in. Application-related query hours are given as Monday to Friday, 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

GOAPS is still TBA

The Important Dates section is labelled with an asterisk: dates are liable to change. The first registration card is “GATE Online Application Processing System (GOAPS)” with the date badge TBA. A status chip on that card reads “Open.” This desk is not treating a CSS badge on a TBA date as a live form. The Apply Now button and the “Application Portal is LIVE now” ticker item are wrapped in HTML comments. A previous “Registration Opens on 14th August 2026” line is also commented out.

What is dated: regular registration closes on 27 September 2026, without late fee. Extended registration closes on 5 October 2026, with late fee. City allotment notification is listed for 4 January 2027. Admit Card Download is TBA. Examinations are in three February 2027 weeks — 6 and 7, 13 and 14, 20 and 21. Results are listed for 19 March 2027. Score validity is given as three years on the homepage badge.

Anyone circulating a 27 August 2026 GOAPS go-live as if the form opened yesterday is ahead of the live table this desk opened on 28 August morning IST.

Fees and what not to invent

The Application Fees page publishes a table. Female, SC, ST and PwD candidates (per test paper): ₹1,000 in the regular period and ₹1,500 in the extended period. All other candidates, including foreign nationals (per test paper): ₹2,000 and ₹2,500. Two papers means twice those amounts. The same page lists modification charges once GOAPS is in use, including ₹500-per-change items and a rectification login “up to November 03, 2026.” Those rows are on the official fees page; they are not a reason to pay anyone except through GOAPS when the organising institute enables it.

Each candidate should fill only one application, the papers page says. A second paper is added inside that application from the allowed combinations. Multiple applications: only one accepted, the rest rejected without refund.

This desk fetched gate2027.iitm.ac.in directly on 28 August 2026 IST (HTTP 200, full IIT Madras GATE 2027 HTML). A separate fetch path returned 404 for the same URL; the live page, not the failed fetch, is the source. Until Apply Now is actually on the page and GOAPS has a date that is not TBA, treat locker setup and syllabus PDFs as the useful work, and treat any “registration open” forward as unverified.