The CBSE plans to conduct Class X board exams twice a year from 2026 to enable students to improve their performance, the board announced on Tuesday and unveiled a draft scheme.
A media release issued by the CBSE’s controller of examinations, Sanyam Bhardwaj, said the proposal for two Class X board exams from 2026 was discussed by the education ministry and a draft policy uploaded on the board's website for feedback from stakeholders.
It said the decision came against the backdrop of the recommendation of the National Education Policy 2020 that students be given an opportunity to improve their performance in board exams.
“Stakeholders may respond to draft policy by 09.03.2025. The responses would be scrutinised and policy finalised subsequently,” the media release stated.
The draft policy stated that this year’s Class X exams would be conducted over a period of 32 days from February 15 to March 18 across 84 subjects.
In 2026, the first phase of the exams will be conducted from February 17 to March 6 and the second phase from May 5 to 20 over a period of 34 days. Around 26.6 lakh
students are expected to appear for their Class X exams next year.
Science, social science, mathematics, Hindi and English exams will be held on fixed days as usual. Exams on regional and foreign languages, which will be put under one group, will be conducted on a single day.
The exams on the remaining subjects, to be clubbed into another group, will be conducted over 2-3 days based on the subject combination of the students. Practical and internal assessments will be conducted only once.
The list of candidates will be finalised in September of the preceding year. This means that the list for the February 2026 exam will be finalised by September 2025. No new candidates will be allowed to register for the May 2026 exam if they are not on the September 2025 list. Once the list is finalised, the candidates will not be allowed to change their subjects. They can, however, modify their subject selection in the second exam.
The final pass certificate and marksheet will be issued only after the May exam. This document will include the marks obtained in both exams as well as the best of the two scores for each subject.
