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IIT GATE 2026 Registration Begins: New subjects added since 2021 – one rivals Computer Science in popularity

IIT GATE 2026 Registration New Subjects List: Biomedical Engineering (BM), Environmental Science and Engineering (ES), and Humanities & Social Sciences (XH), Geomatics Engineering (GE), Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DA), and Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (NM) are some of the papers that have been introduced in the past five years.

GATE: List of subjects that were introduced between 2021-2025. (Image: MetaI/ representational)

GATE 2026 Registration: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati has on August 28 opened the registration window for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2026 on August 28. This year, the Energy Science (XE-I) paper has been introduced under the Engineering Sciences (XE) category. With this addition, the total number of GATE papers has gone up to 30.

Biomedical Engineering (BM), Environmental Science and Engineering (ES), and Humanities & Social Sciences (XH), Geomatics Engineering (GE), Data Science & Artificial Intelligence

(DA), and Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (NM) are some of the papers that have been introduced over the past five years. For more updates on GATE 2026 registration, click here

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The response of the candidates taking the newly introduced papers has been mixed, with Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DA) drawing significant interest in its debut year.

GATE New Subjects: Registrations & Appearances

Source: GATE Registration Data
Year	Subject	Registered	Appeared
2024	Data Science & Artificial Intelligence	52,493	39,210
2022	Geomatics Engineering	4,325	2977
2022	Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering	1,102	642
2021	Environmental Science & Engineering	9,073	6,631
2021	Humanities & Social Sciences (English)	5,665	4,132
2020	Biomedical Engineering	2,682	2,165

Meanwhile, traditional courses Computer Science, Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering continue to dominate students’ choices. These courses are equally popular at the graduation level. The application for Computer Science paper has seen a significant increase over the years, however, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DA) introduced last year is likely to give tough competition to the CS.

Top 5 Subjects by Number of Appeared Candidates in GATE (2022–2025)

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Year	Subject	Appeared Candidates
2025	Computer Science & IT (CS)	170,825
	Civil Engineering (CE)	79,951
	Electrical Engineering (EE)	67,701
	Electronics & Communication (EC)	81,475
	Mechanical Engineering (ME)	62,015
2024	Computer Science & IT (CS)	123,967
	Civil Engineering (CE)	85,869
	Mechanical Engineering (ME)	65,546
	Electrical Engineering (EE)	59,599
	Electronics & Communication (EC)	63,092
2023	Computer Science & IT (CS)	75,679
	Civil Engineering (CE)	83,187
	Mechanical Engineering (ME)	63,489
	Electrical Engineering (EE)	55,292
	Electronics & Communication (EC)	45,833
2022	Computer Science & IT (CS)	77,257
	Civil Engineering (CE)	100,043
	Mechanical Engineering (ME)	89,567
	Electrical Engineering (EE)	69,734
	Electronics & Communication (EC)	54,292

Humanities & Social Sciences (XH) Trends

Discipline	Registered	Appeared
Economics	4,161	2,973
English	5,665	4,132
Linguistics	378	297
Philosophy	702	531
Psychology	5,709	4,125
Sociology	2,147	1,546

The Humanities & Social Sciences paper, introduced in 2021, continues to attract aspirants across diverse disciplines with English and Psychology among the most popular in this category.