The FMGE exam: eligibility, dates, pattern and pass mark

Each fact below links to the NBEMS or NMC document it comes from. Where two documents disagree, or an old rule is still printed beside a new one, we say so. Dates and fees can change from one session to the next, so open the bulletin for your own session before you pay for anything.

FMGE at a glance

Checked 18 October 2026 against the October 2026 information bulletin (version 2.2) and the NBEMS and NMC notices named in each row. The fee and the timings changed between June and October 2026, so read the bulletin for the session you are applying to.

What the exam is for

FMGE stands for Foreign Medical Graduate Examination. NBEMS also calls it the Screening Test, because it came in through the Screening Test Regulations, 2002. Regulation 5 gives it one purpose: to decide whether you are eligible for registration with NMC (MCI, when the rule was written) or a State Medical Council. Passing it, in the regulation’s words, “shall not confer any other right, whatsoever”.

Regulation 3 sets out who has to take it. If you are an Indian citizen or an OCI and your primary medical qualification is from an institution outside India, you need to pass it for provisional or permanent registration granted on or after 15 March 2002. If you pass before provisional registration, you do not sit it again for permanent registration.

NBEMS’s part is narrow. Its FMGE page says it conducts the test, publishes the result and hands it to NMC and every State Medical Council. Whether you are then registered is the council’s decision, as After you pass explains.

If you read the regulations yourself, one passage will mislead you. NMC’s consolidated text of the 2002 regulations, amended up to 1 March 2018, still describes a test held twice a year as three papers of three hours each, with 50% needed in each paper. The October 2026 bulletin even reprints the 2002 MCI press note with that scheme in its annexure. The exam does not run that way now. The scheme in force is the one in the bulletin’s main chapters: three sessions a year, one paper of 300 questions, 150 of 300 to pass.

Who can sit it

NBEMS checks eligibility candidate by candidate, against the documents you upload. These are the conditions in the October 2026 bulletin.

Citizenship

The bulletin’s eligibility chapter names Indian citizens and OCIs. Its application chapter treats NRIs the same as Indian citizens, and says foreign nationals “other than Nepalese” who are not OCIs cannot apply. It also lists the photo ID a Nepalese citizen uploads as proof of citizenship. No single sentence says Nepalese citizens are eligible, so if that is you, ask NBEMS in writing before you pay.

Your degree and when its result came out

The Indian Embassy in the country where you studied has to confirm that your primary medical qualification is recognised there for enrolment as a medical practitioner.

The final-examination result for your MBBS-equivalent degree has to be declared before the session’s cut-off: on or before 31 August 2026 for October 2026, and on or before 30 April 2026 for June 2026. You upload proof that you passed every mandatory course, or you are declared ineligible.

The degree certificate or provisional pass certificate must be attested by the Embassy of India in that country, or apostilled by its competent authority under the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention. Certificates with neither, or attested after the document deadline (21 October 2026 for the October 2026 session), are not considered. An apostille or attestation that does not belong to the certificate you uploaded is treated as unfair means.

You are allowed into the exam only if you hold both the Eligibility Certificate, where one applies, and the degree or provisional pass certificate.

Eligibility Certificate or NEET-UG

You need an Eligibility Certificate from NMC, or from MCI before it. You do not need one if you got your qualification before 15 March 2002, or took admission before 15 March 2002 or between 15 May 2013 and 3 January 2014, both dates included. In those exempt periods you upload your admission letter instead.

If you took admission abroad on or after May 2018, your qualifying NEET-UG result is treated as your Eligibility Certificate, provided you met the admission criteria of the Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 1997. You upload the NEET-UG scorecard in its place. The bulletin adds that if a GMER condition later turns out not to have been met, the FMGE result is cancelled.

There is one exception. NMC’s public notice of 7 December 2023 (item 4) exempted some students admitted in 2018-19 and 2019-20 from NEET, and those students need an actual Eligibility Certificate. NMC opened an extra window for Eligibility Certificate applications on application.nmc.org.in from 1 to 7 October 2026, after an earlier one that ran to 30 September 2026. Both have closed.

A NEET result is valid for three years from the day it is declared, for starting MBBS or an equivalent course, counting any pre-medical or language course that comes first. That rule is from the Gazette notification of 14 March 2019, which the bulletin quotes.

Which rulebook applies to you

Your admission date decides it. If you were admitted to your foreign course on or after 18 November 2021, the bulletin says NBEMS decides your eligibility strictly under the Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021 (FMGL-2021), as amended, and declares you ineligible if you do not comply with any of its provisions. NBEMS will revoke the certificate of anyone who falsely claims an admission date before 18 November 2021.

Regulation 4 of FMGL-2021 lists what a foreign graduate needs for permanent registration in India:

• ›a course of at least 54 months;
• ›a 12-month internship at the same foreign institution;
• ›English as the medium of instruction;
• ›the subjects listed in Schedule I;
• ›registration with the licensing body of the country that awarded the degree, on par with that country's citizens;
• ›a supervised internship of at least 12 months in India;
• ›clearing the National Exit Test (NExT) “or such other mandated test or tests conducted by the Commission”.

Schedule I adds two more. The whole course, training and internship must be at one foreign institution, with no part of it in India or a third country, and the course must be finished within 10 years of joining. Whether a university’s programme meets these is something you check yourself before you take admission, and our guide “Is my university NMC approved?” shows how.

If you already held the degree, or were already studying abroad, before FMGL-2021 came into force on 18 November 2021, it does not apply to you. Its regulation 5 leaves you under “the erstwhile applicable regulations”, and NMC’s notice of 18 March 2026 identifies those as the Screening Test Regulations, 2002.

A degree from Pakistan

A qualification from Pakistan does not make you eligible. The bulletin makes two exceptions: students who joined a Pakistani college before November 2018, and students who joined later, up to 13 April 2022, after getting security clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). For candidates with a Pakistani qualification, results are declared only after MHA security clearance. Migrants who have been granted Indian citizenship need no extra clearance, but upload their certificate of registration for citizenship. The bulletin takes this from a Health Ministry letter of 26 June 2023.

Session dates

On 28 August 2026 NBEMS announced that FMGE would be held three times a year. It had been twice. The October 2026 bulletin repeats it: “NBEMS shall now be conducting FMGE (Screening Test) three times in a year.” The extra session is October 2026. The one NBEMS had set for 9 January 2027 moves to a later date in January or February 2027, “details of which will be notified in due course”. When we checked the NBEMS notice board on 18 October 2026, no new date had been posted.

A session’s name and its exam date do not always match. The “December 2025” session was held on 17 January 2026, with the result on 29 January 2026. June 2026 was held on 28 June 2026, with the result on 7 July 2026.

October 2026, step by step

From the Important Dates table and chapters 7 to 10 of the October 2026 bulletin, checked 18 October 2026. By that date the application and edit windows had closed.

How to apply

You apply online at natboard.edu.in. NBEMS summarily rejects an application sent by any other mode. The bulletin (para 8.35) sets out the order to follow:

1. Register for a user ID and password, which NBEMS sends you by SMS and email. Your email is verified by OTP.
2. Fill in the form and upload your photograph, signature, thumb impression and documents. The photograph has to be recent, taken no more than three months before you apply.
3. Choose four test cities and pay the fee.
4. Preview the form, accept the declaration and submit.
5. Take a printout of the filled form showing the transaction ID and payment status “S” (Successful), for your records.

The application counts as submitted only once the payment status on the form shows “S”. Keep that printout, because you cannot get the form after the result.

Check five fields before you register: name, nationality, email ID, mobile number and Aadhaar. None of them can be changed afterwards, not even in the edit window, and your test cities are fixed once you submit the form. If you registered with the wrong name, the only fix is a new user.

Documents to upload

• ›your degree certificate or provisional pass certificate, attested by the Indian Embassy or apostilled;
• ›proof of citizenship: an Indian passport (front and last pages), or an OCI card with your passport;
• ›whichever applies of your Eligibility Certificate, your admission letter (for the exempt periods) or your NEET-UG scorecard.

Some candidates upload a different proof of citizenship. Nepalese citizens, and Indian citizens with a Nepal qualification and no Indian passport, upload a Government of India photo ID such as a PAN card or driving licence. Migrants upload an MHA certificate of registration for citizenship. Candidates with a benchmark disability upload a Unique Disability ID (UDID) or a disability certificate.

If a document is deficient and you do not fix it by the deadline (21 October 2026 for the October 2026 session), you are declared ineligible, get no admit card and lose the whole fee.

Test cities

You pick four cities, in no order of preference. NBEMS allots you a centre in one of them at random. If none of your four has a testing seat, it can allot a centre anywhere in India, and the bulletin lets it do that whatever your choices to keep the exam secure or for operational reasons. The October 2026 bulletin lists 76 tentative test cities, all in India.

Fee and payment

The October 2026 fee is ₹4,650: ₹3,940.68 plus ₹709.32 GST at 18%, before payment-gateway charges. In June 2026 it was ₹6,195 (₹5,250 plus ₹945 GST), so take the figure from the bulletin for your own session. You pay through the online gateway only, by UPI, a credit or debit card issued in India, or another mode the gateway offers.

The fee is not refunded or carried forward, and absent or ineligible candidates lose it. The one exception is a duplicate payment on the same application, which NBEMS refunds after the application window closes. That can take two to three months.

Who to call

For the form, failed payments, refunds or the payment gateway, NBEMS’s notice of 10 September 2026 gives Candidate Care on +91-7996165333 and the helpline portal in your applicant login. The bulletin’s Communication Protocols chapter (chapter 11) gives the phone hours for the October 2026 session: 9:30 AM to 6 PM on working days, Monday to Friday except gazetted holidays, from 11 September to 30 October 2026, and 7 AM to 4:30 PM on exam day, 31 October 2026. Questions about eligibility or documents go in writing through the NBEMS Communication Web Portal, from your registered email ID. NBEMS’s result notices list a different number, 011-45593000.

The paper

FMGE is one computer-based paper of 300 multiple-choice questions. Each has four options, and the paper is in English only. You sit it in two parts on the same day, with a scheduled break, and each part has 150 questions.

From October 2026 each part allows 153 minutes. That is the 150 minutes the June 2026 bulletin gave, plus one minute per section, up to three, for attendance and biometric checks. Part I runs from 9:00 AM to 11:33 AM and Part II from 2:00 PM to 4:33 PM. The bulletin’s own timing table still heads the parts 9:00 to 11:30 AM and 2:00 to 4:30 PM, but its end-time row and the 153-minute rule give 11:33 AM and 4:33 PM. Check the timings on your admit card. Entry to the centre closes at 8:30 AM and 1:30 PM.

Each part is split into timed sections. The bulletin’s example is three sections of 50 questions and 50 minutes each, and it says the number can vary. You cannot move to the next section early. Once a section’s time is up you cannot go back to it or change those answers.

The syllabus follows NMC’s Competency Based Undergraduate Curriculum for MBBS. The link to it printed in the bulletin returned a 404 error when we tried it on 18 October 2026.

How the 300 marks are split

This is the blueprint in the October 2026 bulletin (para 12.2). The June 2026 bulletin has the same split.

Marking and results

There is no negative marking. You need at least 150 of 300 to pass. The result is declared as pass or fail, and separate marks for Part I and Part II are not published. There is no re-totalling, no re-evaluation and no grace marks (bulletin).

Before the result, you can challenge a question for a technical error, with supporting medical literature, within two calendar days of the exam: until 2 November 2026 for the October 2026 session. You send it through the Communication Web Portal from your registered email. A challenge that says a question was too difficult is not accepted.

For the October 2026 session, the bulletin says NBEMS will publish the answer key. Your applicant login will show the question IDs, the correct answer IDs and the responses you marked. The June 2026 bulletin had said NBEMS would not entertain any request to share exam content, answer keys and answer sheets included.

NBEMS’s result notices for December 2025 and June 2026 both say faculty reviewed every question after the exam. Where a question was technically incorrect, every candidate who sat got its marks. Where a question had two correct answers, either one was marked right. Neither the bulletin nor any notice promises the same review for future sessions.

Results are published on natboard.edu.in, and those two notices say the result includes the marks you obtained. Scorecards can be downloaded for six months only. For June 2026, NBEMS released scorecards from 16 July 2026 and withheld the results of 20 candidates.

On exam day

Carry a colour printout of your admit card and an original, valid government photo ID: PAN card, driving licence, voter ID, passport, or Aadhaar with photograph. Photocopies and DigiLocker copies are refused. A good-quality colour printout of e-Aadhaar is accepted. If you gave your Aadhaar in the form, carry it and keep its biometrics unlocked. The reporting counter closes 30 minutes before the start time (bulletin, paras 6.13 to 6.16).

A demo of the computer-based test is on natboard.edu.in, tentatively from 22 October 2026 for the October 2026 session. Try it before the day.

The bulletin’s penalties for unfair means range from cancelling your exam to debarring you for up to the next 14 attempts or 7 years, or cancelling your candidature.

Attempts and time limits

The bulletin puts no limit on the number of attempts. The original 2002 regulation allowed three, and a notification published on 28 June 2003 removed the cap (regulation 10). Once you pass FMGE you cannot take it again, and any later attempt is void.

The limit that does exist is time. NMC’s FAQ of 8 June 2026 (question 12) says a foreign medical graduate who took admission abroad after 2019 must clear the FMG examination within 10 years of the date of admission. The FAQ calls itself explanatory, says the statutory provisions prevail over it, and links the limit to the GMER (Amendment) 2019. It does not say whether the limit applies to students admitted earlier.

Two more 10-year rules count from the day you joined your foreign university. NMC’s public notice of 7 December 2023 says every foreign medical graduate must finish the internship within 10 years of joining, and FMGL-2021 requires the foreign course to be completed within 10 years of joining. After you pass FMGE, the Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI) Regulations, 2021 give you two years to complete the internship.

How many candidates pass

NBEMS publishes an institute-wise performance report each year, and the Total row of each report gives the national figure.

The 2024 and 2023 counts include some candidates declared ineligible after the exam. NBEMS notes that some rates in the 2024 report may change once withheld results are declared, and the 2023 and 2022 reports say the same of the rates for Pakistan qualifications. The 2022 to 2024 reports do not say which sessions each one combines, so they are named here by report year.

NBEMS’s 2025 report gives each session its own national total: 6,709 of 36,037 candidates passed in the June 2025 session (18.62%), and 10,264 of 42,868 in the December 2025 session, held on 17 January 2026 (23.94%). As in the 2023 and 2024 reports, those counts include some candidates declared ineligible after the exam, and NBEMS says some figures may change once withheld results are declared. As of 18 October 2026, no NBEMS report covered the June 2026 session. University by university, every figure we hold is on FMGE pass rates by university, and universities with large enough cohorts are ranked on best FMGE pass rate universities. The 2024 figures for Russian universities are on our MBBS in Russia page.

After you pass

Collect the pass certificate

State Medical Councils do not accept the FMGE scorecard for registration. They want the NBEMS pass certificate, which you collect in person after finger-biometric and Face ID checks and a document check. NBEMS aims to issue it within about four weeks of the result. Collect it within six months of the result, or your candidature and result for that session are deemed cancelled (bulletin).

For June 2026, certificates were handed out at the NBEMS office in PSP Area, Sector 9, Dwarka, New Delhi, from 22 July to 20 August 2026, with a final deadline of 7 January 2027. NBEMS does not hand certificates to representatives.

Registration is the council’s decision

Sitting FMGE gives you no automatic right to registration. The medical council decides your eligibility when you apply to it, after checking your 10+2 marksheet, caste certificate, Eligibility Certificate or NEET-UG result, attested or apostilled degree and FMGE pass certificate.

Under the 2002 regulations (regulation 11), NMC or the State Medical Council grants provisional registration to someone who has passed and still has the one-year internship to do, and permanent registration once it is complete. For admissions on or after 18 November 2021, FMGL-2021 and the CRMI regulations govern this instead.

The internship in India

If you were admitted abroad on or after 18 November 2021, you do one year of CRMI in India after passing FMGE. If you were admitted before that date, the 2002 regulations apply, and you need CRMI in India only if you came back without finishing the mandatory internship abroad (NMC notice of 18 March 2026, appendix item 1).

You apply for the internship to your State Medical Council, through NMC (FMGL FAQs, question 15). State Medical Councils and the state Directorates of Medical Education allot the seats: 7.5% of the permitted intake of interns in established colleges, all CRMI seats in new colleges, and all CRMI seats against seats added between 2022-23 and 2025-26. NMC’s circular of 10 March 2026 counted 43,250 of these for 2026-27, on top of seats in listed non-teaching hospitals.

Is NExT replacing FMGE?

Not yet. The NMC Act and NMC’s rules provide for it, but as of 18 October 2026 no start date had been notified.

Section 15 of the NMC Act, 2019 provides for a National Exit Test for a licence to practise and for enrolment, and section 15(4) says anyone with a foreign medical qualification has to qualify it. Under section 15(3), NExT becomes operational on a date the Central Government appoints by notification, “within three years from the date of commencement of this Act”. NMC’s NExT Regulations, 2023, notified on 27 June 2023, include foreign medical graduates. They say the equivalent exams that exist now will be phased out once NExT is in force, may continue for earlier batches as the Commission decides, and that NExT “shall eventually replace” them.

On 13 July 2023 NMC deferred NExT on the Health Ministry’s advice of 11 July, “till further directions” from the Ministry. When we went through NMC’s What’s New list on 18 October 2026, the latest NExT item was from 8 February 2024: it extended the deadline for comments on the 2023 regulations to 17 February 2024. No start date or first batch has been notified.

The registration rules show the gap. The 2023 registration regulations, as notified on 10 May 2023, mention only NExT for a foreign graduate’s provisional registration (regulation 3(ii)) and entry in the National Medical Register (regulation 4(ii)). NMC’s draft amendment of 11 August 2026 would add FMGE as the route “until National Exit Test (NEXT) comes into force”. It is still a draft, to be taken up 30 days after the Gazette copies are made public, and we found no final notification. The CRMI Regulations already say foreign graduates will do their internship after NExT Step 1, but only once NExT is operational.

So plan for FMGE. If someone quotes you a NExT start year, ask them for the notification.