UGC NET June 2026 Re-Exam Answer Key & Result Update

Who Is Affected — and What the Result Actually Gives You

The September re-examination applied only to UGC-NET June 2026 candidates in English, Commerce and Sociology. Candidates in the other 84 subjects already received their result on 28 August 2026 and had their result declared separately.

Career Outcome and Academic Pathway

UGC-NET is an eligibility examination, not a direct recruitment appointment. Depending on the category in which a candidate qualifies, the examination can establish eligibility for Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor with Ph.D. admission, or Ph.D.-only admission under the rules applicable to the June 2026 cycle.

A qualifying score does not itself create a government job appointment. Universities and institutions conduct their own recruitment or admission processes. Candidates should therefore treat the NTA scorecard as the eligibility outcome that unlocks the next academic or recruitment step, not as a final employment offer.

Scorecard message before the re-exam result (28 August notice)

NTA's 28 August result notice told English, Commerce and Sociology candidates that they may see an "Invalid Application Number/Password" message if they try to open the UGC-NET June 2026 scorecard, because their scorecard and result would be made available only after the re-conduct of their examination. That message did not mean the application itself was invalid.

Your allocated numbers are protected

For the three re-exam subjects, NTA stated that the number of candidates to be qualified for eligibility for Assistant Professor will be equal to 6% of the candidates who appeared in the June 2026 test or in the retest, whichever is higher, and that the numbers already allocated for each subject will not be reduced under any circumstances after the retest.

UGC NET June 2026 Status by Subject Group

The UGC-NET June 2026 cycle covered 87 subjects and was conducted in CBT mode on 22, 23, 24, 25, 29 and 30 June and 5 July 2026, across 655 examination centres in 286 cities. Results were declared for 84 of those subjects; English, Commerce and Sociology were re-conducted separately in September.

Result at a Glance — 84 Subjects (declared 28 August 2026)

Official — NTA press release dated 28 August 2026. These figures cover the 84 declared subjects only. Separate figures for English, Commerce and Sociology were published with the re-exam result on 17 September 2026.

Answer-Key Challenge Fee and the Closed Application Cycle

Re-exam answer-key challenge fee

The processing fee for the re-exam answer-key challenge was Rs. 200 per question challenged. NTA's public notice of 10 September 2026 states that this fee is refunded in full for every challenge accepted by the subject experts. Payment was accepted by Debit Card, Credit Card or Net Banking up to 13 September 2026, 11:59 PM. No challenge was entertained without receipt of the processing fee.

The window is now closed. No further challenge can be submitted, and NTA has stated that no challenge or grievance about the answer keys will be entertained after the closure of the window or after declaration of the result.

No extra examination fee for the re-conduct

NTA's public notice of 16 August 2026 confirms that no additional examination fee was charged from candidates of English, Commerce and Sociology for the September re-conduct.

Original application timeline, for reference

The UGC-NET June 2026 application cycle is closed. It opened on 29 April 2026 and the deadline was extended twice. Under NTA's final public notice on this, dated 23 May 2026, the closing dates were:

• Online submission of the application form: 24 May 2026, up to 11:50 PM.
• Examination fee payment: 24 May 2026, up to 11:50 PM.
• Correction in particulars: 26 May to 28 May 2026, up to 11:50 PM.

How the Re-Exam Result Was Processed

How the answer-key challenges were handled

• Challenges submitted between 10 and 13 September are verified by designated subject-matter experts.
• If a challenge is accepted, the correction is applied uniformly to all candidates of that subject. Candidates did not need to submit the same challenge more than once.
• The Rs. 200 processing fee is refunded in full for each accepted challenge.
• NTA does not communicate an individual decision on every challenge. The final answer key was published on 17 September 2026.
• Responses were evaluated against that final answer key, and the re-exam result/scorecard was declared on 17 September 2026.

Why these three papers were re-conducted

NTA received several complaints about errors in the English, Commerce and Sociology papers and formed a committee to enquire into them. The committee found many factual, typographical and translation errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes and non-standard coined terms for established concepts, as well as repetition of a significant number of previously administered questions. NTA concluded that defects of this extent "cannot be cured merely by dropping questions after the challenge process", and the papers were re-conducted.

Cut-off context for these three subjects

NTA published category-wise cut-offs for the 84 subjects with the result on 28 August 2026, and separate subject/category-wise cut-offs for English, Commerce and Sociology with the re-exam result on 17 September 2026. Use only the official NTA cut-off PDFs for these figures.

UGC NET Exam Pattern — What the Re-Exam Was Scored On

The UGC-NET June 2026 Information Bulletin sets out a Computer Based Test in two parts, taken in a single session with no break between them. The pattern was unchanged for the September re-examination, and the final answer key for the three subjects will be applied to this same structure.

Marking

• Each question carries 2 marks for a correct response.
• There is no negative marking for an incorrect response.
• Unanswered or marked-for-review questions score nothing.
• If a question is later found to have more than one correct option, is found wrong, or is dropped, 2 marks are awarded to candidates who attempted it. This is the mechanism through which accepted answer-key challenges change scores.

The question paper is set in English and Hindi only, except language papers. If there is any ambiguity in translation, NTA treats the English version as final.

What Candidates Should Do Now

The answer-key and result stages of the UGC-NET June 2026 cycle are over. There is no application or objection step left in this cycle.

1. Download and save your scorecard from the official UGC-NET website, ugcnet.nta.nic.in.
2. If you qualified, download your e-Certificate / JRF award letter through the official “Issuance of e-Certificates for UGC-NET June 2026 Examination” link on ugcnet.nta.nic.in.
3. Check that the qualification category on the certificate matches your own result.

Helpdesk: NTA’s published contact for UGC-NET is 011-40759000 and ugcnet@nta.ac.in.