If you wrote CAT 2025 on November 30, refreshed iimcat.ac.in at 6 p.m. on December 24 to see your percentile, and are now living for the email that will or will not appear in the second week of January, the IIM Ahmedabad admission date calendar is the one document you should have pinned above your desk. Miss a window and your 2026 offer year is over. Here is the full timeline for the IIM Ahmedabad PGP 2026 to 2028 intake, dated and sourced.
CAT 2025: The gate that defines the rest of the year
CAT 2025 was conducted on Sunday, 30 November 2025 in three slots by IIM Kozhikode, the convener for this cycle. The result was released on the iimcat portal on 24 December 2025 at around 6 p.m. IST, with 12 candidates scoring a 100 percentile and 26 more sitting at 99.99 or 99.98, per IIM Kozhikode's announcement reported by Careers360.
For IIM Ahmedabad specifically, this date matters in a way no other date in your cycle does. Everything else, the AWT/PI shortlist, the AWT/PI invite, the interview itself, the final offer, the fee deposit, all of it is tied to the one number sitting in your IIMCAT scorecard. Save a PDF of the scorecard the minute you can. Save it twice.
CAT cutoffs for IIM-A PGP 2026-28: 95 overall, 85 sectional
The Institute has raised the minimum CAT 2025 cutoff sharply over the previous cycle. For the General and EWS categories, you need a minimum overall percentile of 95 and at least 85 in each of the three sections (VARC, DILR, QA). For OBC-NC candidates the bar is 90 overall and 80 sectional, as published in IIM Ahmedabad's selection criteria for the PGP 2026-28 batch. That is a 15 percentile jump from the older 80 overall, 70 sectional baseline.
The implication is operational, not theoretical. If your overall sits at 94.7 General, your IIM Ahmedabad cycle is over before January begins, no matter how strong your profile rating is. There is no second chance to clear this gate inside this admit year.
Second week of January 2026: The IIM Ahmedabad admission date you cannot afford to miss
This is the date that will eat your sleep. Candidates shortlisted for the Analytical Writing Test (AWT) and Personal Interview (PI) are notified by email tentatively in the second week of January 2026, and the list also goes up on the IIM Ahmedabad website at iima.ac.in, per IIMA's official admissions page for Indian candidates.
A few practical notes from working with applicants over many cycles:
- The email lands at unpredictable hours. Refreshing your inbox every 30 seconds will not pull it forward.
- The list is also published on the IIMA admissions page; if the email is delayed, you can still see whether your CAT registration ID appears.
- If you cleared the CAT cutoff but are not shortlisted, the issue is almost always your Application Rating (AR), which weighs Class X, Class XII, graduation marks and work experience signals.
February to March 2026: AWT and PI windows
The AWT is a 20 to 30 minute analytical writing test, immediately followed by a 15 to 25 minute Personal Interview. The Institute conducts both rounds in six cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, and New Delhi, per IIMA's published admissions process. You will have selected your two preferred cities when filling the CAT application form in August or September 2025; you cannot change them now.
Your specific date and time slot is communicated in the shortlist email. Most cycles see AWT/PI run from early February through mid-March, with peak weekends in the last fortnight of February.
Second week of April 2026: The final offer
The final admission results are released tentatively in the second week of April 2026 on the IIM Ahmedabad website. Candidates who appeared in AWT/PI can log in and see whether they have been offered admission. The composite score used to rank candidates after AWT/PI gives 50% weight to the Personal Interview, 25% to CAT, 15% to the Application Rating, and 10% to the AWT, per InsideIIM's breakdown of IIM Ahmedabad's selection criteria for PGP 2026-28.
This is the most heavily PI-weighted process among the older IIMs. A strong CAT can carry you to the interview, but it cannot carry you past the interview. A weak performance in those 15 to 25 minutes is, statistically, the single largest reason strong-CAT candidates miss the final list.
First/second week of May 2026: Acceptance and fee deposit
If you are offered admission, you must confirm acceptance and complete all required formalities by the first or second week of May 2026. This includes:
- Online acceptance form
- First instalment fee deposit (the exact amount is communicated in the offer letter)
- Document upload (Class X, Class XII, graduation marksheets, work experience certificates if applicable)
Miss this window and your offer is withdrawn. There is no rolling waitlist conversion after this point; waitlist movement happens because of these withdrawals, not in parallel.
If you are a final-year student waiting on your degree
You can apply to IIM Ahmedabad PGP 2026-28 in your final year of graduation, but the Institute requires that you submit proof of having completed your degree by 31 December 2026, per IIMA's domestic admissions page. If your university's degree certificate is delayed past that date, your admission can be cancelled retrospectively.
The practical implication: chase your university's Examination Section the week your final results are declared. Get a provisional certificate within 30 days. Do not assume that "the convocation in November" is your safety net; convocation paperwork does not always arrive before December 31, especially at large state universities like Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, and Pune.
If you are a working professional trying to fit AWT/PI into a sprint
If you are sitting in a 9-to-7 job at a Big 4 audit firm, a Tier-1 IT services company, or a fast-paced startup, the calendar item to negotiate now is two to three days of personal leave in the second half of February or first half of March 2026. Do this in January, the moment the shortlist email lands. Three reasons:
- AWT/PI weekends are clustered. Your peers in the same firm may be sitting in the same Mumbai or Bengaluru centre on the same weekend, and approvals get harder when more than one team member asks at once.
- Travel between cities is on you, and last-minute IndiGo or Vistara fares in late February are not kind.
- A frazzled interview after a 6 a.m. flight will read as a frazzled interview, regardless of how strong your CAT score was.
Book the leave with your reporting manager early, frame it as a personal commitment, and do not volunteer the IIM Ahmedabad context unless you trust the manager fully. Indian organisations have a strange relationship with employees who are about to leave for an MBA.
Common questions Indian applicants are asking
Is the IIM Ahmedabad admission date calendar different from CAP or JAP?
Yes. The Common Admission Process (CAP) covers a cluster of newer IIMs, and the Joint Admission Process (JAP) covers IIM Kashipur, Raipur, Ranchi, and Tiruchirappalli for the 2026 cycle. IIM Ahmedabad does not participate in either. IIM-A runs its own AWT/PI on its own calendar, in its own six cities, with its own composite score formula. The dates above are IIM-A specific and should not be inferred for any other IIM.
When does the IIM Ahmedabad admission test (AWT) happen each year?
For the 2026-28 PGP cycle, the AWT runs alongside the PI from February through mid-March 2026. The exact weekend is communicated in the shortlist email in the second week of January. Historically, IIM-A has clustered AWT/PI in the last two weeks of February and the first two of March, but you should treat the email as the authoritative date, not the historical pattern.
Can I change my AWT/PI city after the shortlist email?
No. The two cities you selected during the CAT application form in August or September 2025 are the only options. IIM-A allocates one of the two to you based on logistics and centre capacity. If you genuinely cannot travel because of medical reasons, write to admission@iima.ac.in with documentation; relief is occasionally granted but never guaranteed.
Will the IIM Ahmedabad admission 2025 cutoff carry into 2026?
The bar resets each cycle. For PGP 2026-28, your CAT 2025 score is the input; the older PGP 2025-27 cutoffs (80 overall, 70 sectional General) no longer apply. The new PGP 2026-28 bar is 95/85 General and EWS, and 90/80 OBC-NC. Plan for the new bar.
If I am waitlisted, when do I find out?
IIMA does not publish a public waitlist number, but waitlist movement begins after the acceptance window closes in mid-May 2026 and continues through June and into July depending on conversions and withdrawals at peer programmes such as ISB, FMS, XLRI and the other older IIMs. The outgoing batch's convocation happens in late March or early April, which is sometimes confused with the waitlist date; they are unrelated.
What this means for Indian applicants
Pin the calendar today. Set five reminders, one for each date in this post, in whatever app you actually open: Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Notion, a paper notebook taped above your desk. The single biggest failure mode we see in 13 years of advising IIM-A applicants is not missing a date because they did not know it; it is missing a date because they were so focused on CAT that they treated the gates afterwards as a vague "I will figure it out". You will not figure it out under pressure. The window for each gate is narrow.
The second thing this calendar tells you is where to spend your prep effort. If your CAT score is comfortably above 95/85, your marginal hour is best spent on AWT and PI preparation, not on more mocks. The composite is 50% PI, 10% AWT, 25% CAT, 15% AR; the PI alone carries more weight than CAT and AR combined.
For applicants whose Application Rating is the weak link (low Class X or XII percentage, gap years, low graduation marks), our profile evaluation framework is built around lifting those signals before the next shortlist email window. For applicants who clear the shortlist and need PI-focused work, our MBA admissions consulting workflow runs structured mocks in the configuration IIM-A actually uses: one or two panellists, 15 to 25 minutes, mixed academic and career questions.
Related reading
- IIM Ahmedabad CAT Cutoff: The 95 Percentile Jump for 2026 Explained
- IIM Ahmedabad Admission Process Step by Step
- MBA Admissions Timeline for the 2027 Intake
- Profile Evaluation
Sources verified on 22 May 2026. Calendar dates are tentative as published by IIM Ahmedabad and may shift by a week in either direction; always cross-check against the iima.ac.in admissions page and your IIMCAT scorecard inbox. Next review: 1 January 2029.
