The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Tuesday declared the Class 10 board results for 2026, with 93.70% students passing—up marginally from 93.66% last year.
This year, 24.72 lakh students appeared for the examination out of 24.83 lakh registered candidates — a participation rate of 99.53%, compared to 23.72 lakh appearing out of 23.85 lakh registered candidates (99.45%) in 2025. In absolute terms, 23.16 lakh students passed in 2026, higher than 22.22 lakh last year, reflecting a rise in both participation and the number of successful candidates.
“This year, the pass percentage of students in Class 10 is 93.70%, which is better than the pass percentage of last year, i.e. 93.66% of the 2025 examination. This confirms that students are well prepared for competency-based assessment,” CBSE exam controller Sanyam Bhardwaj said in a statement.
Girls continued to outperform boys, with the pass percentage for girls this year at 94.99% (95.00% in 2025), while boys recorded 92.69% (92.63% in 2025). The pass percentage of transgender candidates dropped to 87.50% in 2026, compared to 95% last year.
Among the 22 regions under CBSE, Trivandrum and Vijayawada topped with a 99.79% pass rate, followed by Chennai (99.58%) and Bengaluru (98.91%). In Delhi, the overall pass percentage stood at 97.38%, with Delhi West (97.45%) slightly ahead of Delhi East (97.33%).
The number of high scorers included 2.22 lakh students (8.96%) scoring above 90%, and 0.55 lakh students (2.24%) crossing 95% marks. However, the number of students in the compartment category rose marginally to 1.47 lakh in 2026, compared to 1.41 lakh in 2025, though the proportion remained nearly unchanged at 5.95% (5.96% in 2025).
Among CBSE institutions, Kendriya Vidyalayas (99.57%) and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (99.42%) continued to lead performance, significantly outperforming independent schools (93.77%) and government schools (91.43%).
Students from 27,339 schools in India and abroad appeared for examinations in 84 subjects at 8,074 centres. Nearly 7 lakh evaluators checked 1.63 crore answer sheets.
CBSE reiterated that no merit list has been issued, in line with its policy to avoid “unhealthy competition”, and the board will not award first, second or third divisions to its students. “However, the Board will issue the merit certificate to the top 0.1% of students who have scored the highest marks in the subjects. The Merit certificate will be made available in the Digi-Locker of the student concerned after second board examinations,” Bhardwaj said.
CBSE stopped announcing merit lists or names of national toppers for the first time in 2020.
Class 10 students who appeared in the 2026 board examinations are among the first batch to be assessed under CBSE’s new two-board-exam system for Class 10, aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) aimed at reducing the “high-stake” nature of board examinations. The main board examination for Class 10 in 2026 was conducted between February 17 and March 11, and the second examination is scheduled from mid-May, with final results to be computed by combining performances from both attempts.
To be sure, only students who appeared in the first board exam are eligible to appear for the second exam to improve their performance in any three subjects out of science, mathematics, social science, and languages. “Final result will be declared after the conduct of second board examinations,” Bhardwaj said.
