CTET December 2026: Exam on 12-13 December Confirmed

CTET December 2026: The Exam Is on 12–13 December — Here Is Everything That Follows From That

CBSE has settled the question that dragged through the year. A public notice dated 14 September 2026 confirms the 22nd edition of the Central Teacher Eligibility Test will be held on 12 and 13 December 2026, superseding the earlier September scheduling. Two follow-on dates from the same official framework matter just as much: your examination city and allotted date will appear on the CTET portal 15 days before the exam, and the admit card with your actual centre will be downloadable two days before. Everything else about this cycle — who could apply, what the papers test, what qualifying means — is set out below.

What CTET is, and what it is not

CTET is the eligibility test a teacher needs before applying to teach Classes 1–8 in central government schools (KVS, NVS and similar), and many states and private schools accept or require it too. CBSE conducts it; NCTE sets the minimum qualifications behind it. Clearing CTET makes you eligible to apply for teaching posts — it is not a job, not a shortlist, and not an appointment. The certificate's validity is now lifetime, so a qualification earned this December never expires.

There are two papers. Paper I qualifies you for Classes 1–5 (primary), Paper II for Classes 6–8 (upper primary). You could apply for one or both. Each paper is 150 multiple-choice questions carrying 150 marks, with no negative marking, and the qualifying bar is 60% — 90 marks out of 150 for general candidates; state and recruiting-body rules govern any relaxation applied at the hiring stage.

Who was eligible to apply

Following NCTE's notified qualifications, Paper I candidates needed Senior Secondary with at least 50% marks plus a 2-year Diploma in Elementary Education (or the 45% route under the NCTE 2002 regulations, or a 4-year B.El.Ed., or a Diploma in Education (Special Education), or graduation with D.El.Ed.) — including final-year students of those courses. One route is closed and still widely misunderstood: B.Ed. alone no longer qualifies anyone for Paper I, after the Supreme Court quashed NCTE's 2018 notification in August 2023. Paper II routes are graduation-based: graduation with D.El.Ed., or at least 50% in graduation/post-graduation with B.Ed., or the integrated B.El.Ed./B.A.Ed./B.Sc.Ed. routes, B.Ed. (Special Education), or post-graduation with at least 55% plus the integrated B.Ed.–M.Ed. Reserved-category candidates get the standard relaxation of up to 5% in qualifying marks under NCTE norms. There is no upper age limit for CTET.

Applications ran online at ctet.nic.in — the application window opened on 11 May 2026 (the date HaryanaJobs' CTET 2026 dates table, opened 2026-10-20, gives for both the notification and the apply-online start; this file's Flags record CBSE's public notice as dated 8 May 2026, so treat 8 May as the notice date and 11 May as the window opening, and verify both against the bulletin PDF before publication), with a later reopened window for candidates who had missed the first one, which is precisely why the exam slid to December. The fee was ₹1,000 for one paper and ₹1,200 for both for General/OBC candidates, and ₹500/₹600 for SC/ST/differently-abled candidates (GST/bank charges extra).

The two documents you now need to watch for

City/date intimation (15 days before the exam — which, counted back from 12 December, falls about 27–28 November 2026; that calendar date is derived from CBSE's 15-day rule, not a date CBSE has itself announced): this tells you which of the two days and which city you are allotted. Note what CBSE's notification framework says plainly: city allotment is made by CBSE and requests to change it are not entertained — plan travel around what you are given, not what you hoped for.

Admit card (two days before your exam day): this carries the actual centre address, reporting time and instructions. Download it the moment it is available, read the centre location properly, and carry a printed copy with a valid photo ID on exam day. Candidates routinely lose marks — and occasionally entry — to turning up at a centre in the right city but the wrong building, on the strength of the city slip alone. The city slip is not an admit card.

How the result and certificate work

After the exam, CBSE publishes the provisional answer key and invites challenges before declaring results on ctet.nic.in. Your eligibility certificate and marks statement are issued digitally through DigiLocker — create your DigiLocker account with the mobile number you registered with, because that is where the certificate the recruiting bodies will verify actually lives. Keep the admit card, confirmation page and application number until the certificate is safely downloaded; every stage of a teaching recruitment two years from now can ask for them.

Exam pattern in full: every section, both papers

Each paper lasts 2 hours 30 minutes for its 150 questions — one minute per question on average, with no negative marking. The section split is where preparation should start, because the weights are not equal in Paper II:

Paper I (Classes 1–5):

Paper II (Classes 6–8):

Two facts in these tables drive your whole strategy. First, Child Development and Pedagogy is 30 marks in both papers — a fifth of the total, drawn from a bounded syllabus, and the section candidates most often under-prepare because it feels like "theory." Second, with no negative marking, an unattempted question is a guaranteed zero while a reasoned guess cannot hurt you: the qualifying bar is 90 of 150, so leaving 15 questions blank means you must score 90 of the remaining 135 (67%) instead of 90 of 150 (60%). Attempt everything; spend the saved time on the 60-mark specialisation in Paper II, which alone is 40% of that paper.

For the record, this cycle's already-closed calendar also included a correction window on 15–18 June 2026 after the first application window — worth knowing only because it shows CBSE's rhythm if a future window opens for you in the next cycle.

Your last seven weeks: a preparation countdown to 12 December

From late October, the roughly seven weeks to 12 December divide cleanly against the pattern above:

• Weeks 1–3 (to mid-November): Child Development and Pedagogy plus your weaker language, daily. CDP's 30 marks are the highest-yield block in either paper, and its concepts (stages of development, learning theories, inclusive education) repeat across years' papers.
• Weeks 4–5: your Paper II specialisation (or Mathematics and EVS for Paper I) under timed conditions — full 150-question papers inside 2 hours 30 minutes, not section drills, because pacing at one minute per question is a trainable skill and the commonest failure mode is an unfinished paper, not an unknown answer.
• Weeks 6–7: previous papers and revision only; lock your exam-day logistics the moment the city intimation appears (about 27–28 November), and download the admit card the day it releases, two days before your paper — not the night before.

December cycle timeline: announced dates, derived dates and one disputed date — kept separate

This cycle accumulated three kinds of dates, and most CTET pages online mix them into one confident table. They are not the same kind of fact:

One further date circulates online and is deliberately not in the table above as fact: at least one job-portal page lists a second correction window on 7–10 September 2026, after the reopened window. The sources opened for this page (HaryanaJobs, above) do not carry it, and it could not be verified against a CBSE notice in this pass — if you are relying on having had a September correction opportunity, check your own application record on ctet.nic.in rather than any summary page, this one included. The same caution applies in reverse to the many pages still showing the superseded 6 September 2026 exam date: the December dates in the CBSE notice of 14 September replace them.

The traps still ahead of you

Both application windows for this cycle are closed — if you did not register, December is not your exam, and no "spot registration" exists. If you did register: verify now that you can still log in to the CTET portal (do not discover a lost password on admit-card day), keep your registered mobile active for OTPs and DigiLocker, and treat any site other than ctet.nic.in asking for your application number and date of birth as a harvesting attempt — result and admit-card season is when those clones multiply. Finally, prepare to the paper you actually take: Paper I is built around child development, language comprehension, mathematics and environmental studies at the primary level; Paper II swaps in your subject specialisation for Classes 6–8. With the date fixed at 12–13 December, the planning question is closed — the remaining work is the syllabus.

Related guides on StudyDesk