NBEMS to Hold FMGE Thrice a Year from June 2026 after Candidate Protests

The National Board of Examinations Medical Services (NBEMS) has unveiled a major revision to the schedule of the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE), the licensure test that Indian students who earned their medical degrees abroad must clear to practice in India. Beginning in June 2026, the exam will be offered three times a year – adding a new session in April to the existing January and July sittings. The board also said that each test’s question IDs, the official answer key and individual candidate responses will be uploaded to a dedicated portal within a week of the exam, a move aimed at boosting transparency after months of agitation from aspirants.

The decision follows a series of protests and legal petitions filed by thousands of FMGE candidates who complained about the limited number of attempts, long result turnaround times and the opaque grading process. Under the current system, candidates can appear only twice a year and often wait several months for results, a delay that stalls their registration with the National Medical Commission (NMC) and hampers career progression. By increasing the frequency of the exam and publishing detailed answer data, NBEMS hopes to alleviate the backlog, reduce uncertainty and restore confidence in the assessment mechanism.

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NBEMS officials indicated that the additional April session will be synchronized with the existing infrastructure of test centres across India, and that the online portal will be secured to protect candidate privacy while allowing easy verification of scores. The board has not disclosed any changes to the exam’s syllabus or difficulty level, emphasizing that the core content will remain aligned with the NMC’s competency standards.