NBEMS leaves NEET PG out of its exam calendar: Why a missing date feels like warning
NBEMS has published its tentative exam calendar for 2026, but NEET-PG is not on it and that blank space has spooked aspirants. On X, candidates are asking why the country’s biggest PG medical exam has no tentative window when smaller NBEMS exams do. With prep timelines, internships and planning already tight, many see the omission as uncertainty, not routine scheduling.
On December 29, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) published its tentative examination calendar for 2026, covering tests scheduled between January and June. Almost every major exam under its mandate was accounted for — diploma finals, FMGE, DNB and DrNB examinations, GPAT, FET.One conspicuous absence stood out: NEET-PG.For an exam that determines postgraduate medical careers for more than two lakh candidates annually, the omission was not read as routine. It was read as a signal.Within hours, aspirants began flagging the gap on X (formerly Twitter). One of the earliest widely circulated posts came from @bheekamkurmi27, who wrote that NBEMS had released the schedule but made “no mention of NEET-PG 2026.”
The post was reshared repeatedly by resident doctors and aspirant groups, echoing a common fear rather than isolated panic.Another post, amplified by resident associations, used starker language: “NO NEET PG 2026 TILL JUNE.” Similar phrasing appeared across multiple accounts, including @DrMeet_Ghonia, whose post summarising the schedule omission was widely circulated among aspirants.
This was not noise. It was memory, pattern recognition.
NEET-PG in the last five years: A calendar that refuses to settle
The anxiety around the omission of NEET PG in the NBEMS calendar is easier to understand when placed against the recent exam record.
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2021: September 11
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2022: May 21
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2023: March 5
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2024: August 11 (rescheduled)
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2025: August 3 (rescheduled)
What was once a relatively predictable spring examination has migrated steadily towards late summer. More critically, the movement has not followed a transparent arc. It has been marked by postponements, litigation, and last-minute reversals.For aspirants planning internships, rural bonds, gap years, finances and mental-health pacing, this is not an abstract shift.
It alters life timelines.
NEET PG 2024: The last-minute postponement that broke confidence
The current distrust traces directly to June 22, 2024. NEET-PG 2024 was scheduled for June 23. Admit cards had been issued. Travel plans were locked in. Candidates were in peak revision mode. Then, barely hours before the exam, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, along with NBEMS, announced that the test was being postponed as a “precautionary measure.”Crucially, no NEET-PG–specific breach was disclosed.The official explanation referred broadly to the “integrity of certain competitive examinations” and the need for a “robustness assessment of examination processes.” In effect, the postponement was a preventive integrity audit, triggered by the wider national uproar around exam credibility unfolding at the time — not by a publicly identified problem in NEET-PG itself.The exam was eventually rescheduled for August 11, 2024, to be conducted in two shifts.