NEET PG 2026 Round 2: 15,387 seats vacant, 3,657 newly added

MCC has published the Round 2 seat matrix for NEET PG 2026 counselling. Its clear vacancy list carries 15,387 MD, MS and DNB seats that are empty right now, of which 3,657 are newly added seats.

Choice filling for Round 2 is open. Every vacant seat in the list below is now on the CutoffBridge cutoff explorer, beside each seat's closing ranks for 2024, 2025 and 2026 Round 1.

What the lists mean

MCC publishes three lists before a round, and they do not mean the same thing.

Clear vacancy seats are empty now and sure to be offered in Round 2. They include seats nobody took in Round 1, seats freed when a candidate resigned or did not report, and seats added since Round 1.

Newly added seats are seats that were not in the Round 1 matrix at all. All 3,657 of them are already inside the clear vacancy list, so they are not extra seats on top of the 15,387. We tag them separately so you can see which colleges and branches grew.

Virtual vacancy seats are still held by a candidate who joined in Round 1 and asked for an upgrade. Each one opens only if that candidate actually gets a better seat.

For comparison, Round 1 had 29,152 seats and 28,723 candidates were allotted a seat.

MCC's virtual vacancy file does not open

The Virtual Vacancy list for Round 2 on the MCC website is incomplete and will not open in any PDF reader. The file is cut off at exactly 1,048,576 bytes and has no end marker, so the download stops partway through the document.

Because of that, this article and the cutoff explorer cover the clear vacancy and newly added lists only. Virtual seats show as "–" rather than 0, and a seat with no clear vacancy is marked "Not known" instead of "not on offer". A seat with no clear vacancy may still open on an upgrade; we simply cannot see it until MCC replaces the file.

Vacant seats by quota

Quota	Clear seats	Of which newly added
All India Quota	7,028	1,974
Management / paid (deemed)	3,885	1,210
DNB (post MBBS)	2,149	162
NBE Diploma	1,013	38
NRI	958	136
Armed Forces Medical Services	123	123
Delhi University	87	1
BHU internal	37	9
IP University (GGSIPU)	37	1
Jain minority	30	1
AMU internal	29	2
Muslim minority	11	0

All India Quota is the 50% of government seats filled by MCC on all-India merit. Management seats are the paid seats at deemed universities, which usually cost far more; check the fee and bond on each seat's page before you add it to your list.

Vacant seats by branch

Anaesthesiology has the most vacant seats, followed by General Medicine and General Surgery.

Branch	Clear seats	Of which newly added
Anaesthesiology	1,026	249
General Medicine	1,007	295
General Surgery	955	256
Pathology	866	251
OBG	815	235
Paediatrics	766	223
Orthopaedics	692	231
SPM	675	202
Radio Diagnosis	552	157
Anatomy	537	114

A branch having many vacant seats does not make it easy to get. Clinical branches such as General Medicine and Radio Diagnosis still close at very early ranks; the vacancies are spread across many colleges, most of them well down the preference order.

Vacant seats by state

State	Clear seats	Of which newly added
Maharashtra	2,474	649
Tamil Nadu	2,284	761
Karnataka	1,923	397
Uttar Pradesh	1,163	309
Telangana	706	240
Gujarat	621	34
West Bengal	621	157
Rajasthan	540	84
Odisha	523	254
Andhra Pradesh	522	99

What to do with this

Open the cutoff explorer and use the Round 2 seat matrix filter to see only seats that are empty now. Each row shows the seat's 2026 Round 1 closing rank beside the Round 2 vacancy, so you can judge whether your rank is in reach.

Remember that a later closing rank means the seat was easier to get: the last candidate admitted had a higher rank number. A seat that closed after your rank in Round 1 is worth listing again in Round 2.

3,409 of the vacant seats are at colleges or courses with no past closing rank in our data, mostly new colleges and new courses. They appear on the seat matrix page under "Seats not yet in our cutoff explorer", because there is no earlier rank to compare them with.

Check every number against the MCC notice before you lock your choices. Round 2 choice filling and the seat matrix can both change while the round is open.