NBEMS has restructured NEET PG for 2026. The headline is that the paper drops from 200 questions to 180, but the change that will actually decide marks is the timing.
What the paper looks like now
180 questions worth 720 marks, split into five sections of 36. Each section is allotted 42 minutes and is timed independently. Total duration is unchanged at 3 hours 30 minutes, and the marking scheme is unchanged: +4 for a correct answer, −1 for a wrong one, zero for an unattempted one.
Within a section you have the freedom you are used to — move between its 36 questions in any order, change answers, mark items for review.
The part that is new
Three rules govern the boundary between sections, and they only make sense together:
- When a section's 42 minutes expire, it closes. The system advances you to the next section regardless of how many questions you left unattempted, and you cannot return.
- Finishing early does not let you move on. You wait out the remaining time inside the section you are in.
- Unused time does not carry over. Every section gets exactly 42 minutes.
Together these remove time banking entirely. Under the old paper, a candidate who cleared easy questions quickly built a reserve to spend on hard ones later. There is no longer a "later" that crosses a section boundary.
Subjects are mixed, not blocked
The 19 MBBS subjects are distributed across all five sections rather than grouped into subject-wise blocks, so every section mixes pre-clinical, para-clinical and clinical questions. There is no section you can prepare for as a unit, and none you can write off.
What to do about it
The practical consequence is that 70 seconds per question stopped being an average and became a constraint. A question you refuse to abandon now costs you questions in the same section rather than at the end of the paper, and a question you skip is gone the moment that section closes rather than waiting for a second pass.
If your mocks still let you roam a 200-question paper for three and a half hours, they are no longer rehearsing the thing being tested. The unit of practice is now 36 questions in 42 minutes.
A fuller breakdown, including a comparison against the 2025 paper, is on the NEET PG 2026 exam pattern page.