New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Wednesday announced the results of NEET (UG) 2026, with students from Punjab and Haryana emerging as the country’s top performers. The examination, conducted for admission to undergraduate medical and allied courses, saw more than 11.21 lakh candidates qualify from a record participation of nearly 20 lakh aspirants.
The top position was jointly secured by Aryan Gupta of Punjab and Panshul Bansal of Haryana, who each scored 715 marks out of a possible 720, making them the highest scorers in this year’s examination.
According to the NTA, the list of 138 top-ranking candidates represents 66 cities across the country, reflecting a broad geographical spread of high achievers. Candidates scoring above 705 marks hailed from states including Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
Female candidates continued their strong performance in the national entrance examination. More than 58 per cent of the qualified candidates are women, while the overall success rate among female aspirants was also higher than that of male candidates.
The agency noted that a majority of the highest scorers belonged to the 17-19 age group, with most of them appearing for NEET for the first time. Out of the top scorers, 138 candidates secured more than 690 marks, highlighting intense competition at the highest level.
Candidates from all 36 states and Union Territories featured among the successful applicants. While Uttar Pradesh produced the highest number of qualified candidates, smaller regions also registered notable performances, including top scorers from Ladakh, Lakshadweep and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
The examination was conducted across 5,440 centres in India and overseas in 13 languages, including Hindi, English, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Odia and Urdu.
NTA stated that this year’s result declaration was completed on schedule after streamlining several evaluation stages. The answer key challenge process, OMR response display and final evaluation were carried out through parallel processing to ensure timely publication of results.
The score distribution released by the agency shows that 19 candidates crossed the 700-mark barrier, while 1,492 candidates scored 650 or above. More than 10,000 aspirants secured over 600 marks, and nearly **91,000 candidates scored above 500, underlining the high level of competition for medical seats across the country.
With the declaration of results, the counselling process for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other undergraduate medical programmes is expected to begin shortly under the All India and respective state quota systems.
