More dentists will be eligible for postgraduate admission this year. The National Dental Commission has lowered the qualifying cut-off percentile for NEET MDS 2026 by 10 percentile in every category and has asked the exam body to bring out revised results.
The decision is in a letter dated 29 September 2026 from the commission's Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Dental Education Board, signed by its Secretary, Arindam Modak. It is addressed to the Executive Director of the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) and to the Additional Director General (Medical Education) at the Directorate General of Health Services. The Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has posted the letter on reducing the NEET MDS qualifying percentile on its MDS counselling page.
The revised cut-offs
For the General category, covering UR and EWS candidates, the qualifying line drops from the 50th percentile given in the information bulletin to the 40th percentile.
For SC, ST and OBC candidates, including PwD candidates from those groups, it drops from the 40th to the 30th percentile. For UR-PwD candidates it falls from the 45th to the 35th percentile.
The cuts apply to the 2026-27 academic session. The commission cites the Dental Council of India's MDS Regulations, 2017 and the second proviso to clause 7(1) of the Master of Dental Surgery Course (1st Amendment) Regulations, 2018 as its authority. The letter asks NBEMS to publish revised results under the lower percentiles and asks MCC to act on a priority basis.
What it means for candidates
Dentists whose percentile fell between the old line and the new one were outside the eligible pool until now. Once NBEMS posts a revised result, they should check whether their status has changed from not qualified to qualified. A percentile is a position in the ranking, not a raw score, so the revised result sheet is the only reliable check.
Candidates who had already qualified gain nothing directly, but the pool chasing the remaining seats grows. Someone just inside the old cut-off may face more competition in the later rounds than they expected a week ago.
This is the second such relaxation in recent weeks. On 22 September, NBEMS posted a notice on reducing the qualifying percentile for NEET-SS 2025, the super-speciality entrance. Lower qualifying lines have become a familiar way of filling postgraduate seats that would otherwise stay empty late in counselling.
By Monday morning, the revised NEET MDS result was not yet listed among the notices on the NBEMS website. How soon it appears will decide how quickly newly eligible dentists can act. When it does, check it on natboard.edu.in with your own application details and save the PDF with its date, since counselling bodies will rely on that version.
Round 3 is already under way
The change lands in the middle of Round 3 of MCC's MDS counselling. Registration opened on 3 October and closes at 3:00 PM on 7 October, with payment open until 6:00 PM that day and choice locking until 10:00 AM on 8 October. Dalimss set out the full calendar in the MCC NEET MDS Round 3 registration report.
MCC had not issued a separate notice explaining whether candidates who qualify only under the lower percentile can join the ongoing round. Newly eligible dentists should watch the MDS page on mcc.nic.in and keep their NEET MDS login, category certificates and a working payment method ready, so they can register the same day if a window is confirmed.
State quota seats run through state counselling bodies, which will issue their own notices on how they treat the revised NBEMS list. Bihar, for example, opens Round 3 registration for its MDS seats from today, as reported in the Bihar PGDAC MDS Round 3 story.
The letter does not say how many MDS seats are vacant or how many dentists will become eligible. Those numbers, if they come, will be in MCC's seat matrix and the revised NBEMS result.
