IBPS PO Prelims Cutoff 2026, 2025 and 2024: Overall and Sectional Marks from IBPS

To reach IBPS PO Mains, you have to clear two kinds of cutoff in Prelims. The first is a minimum score in each of the three sections. The second is a minimum total out of 100 for your category. After each Prelims result, IBPS publishes both in a short note called "Process for Arriving at Scores". All the figures below come from those notes on ibps.in.

IBPS PO prelims cutoff by category

Scores are out of 100. They are equated scores (explained below), not raw marks.

HI, OC, VI and ID are the four PwBD groups: hearing impaired, orthopaedically challenged, visually impaired and intellectual disability.

Two things stand out. For three years running, the General cutoff has stayed between 48.50 and 49.68. And for the total, OBC and EWS candidates had the same cutoff as General in all three years.

IBPS PO sectional cutoff

IBPS sets sectional cutoffs for just two groups: General/EWS, and a combined group of SC, ST, OBC (NCL) and PwBD. So an OBC candidate gets the lower sectional bar but must still reach the General total.

The 2024 paper split the marks differently. Quant and Reasoning carried 35 marks each, and English carried 30. The 2024 sectional cutoffs were:

Sectional cutoffs move more than the total. The General English cutoff was 13.25 in 2025 and 10.00 in 2026. Over the same two years the General Reasoning cutoff rose from 9.75 to 12.50. When most candidates find a section easy, its bar goes up.

How IBPS turns marks into scores

IBPS PO Prelims runs over more than one session, and each session gets a different paper. The IBPS note describes three steps:

1. Corrected score. The correct answers in each section, minus the penalty for wrong answers. The penalty is a quarter of the marks for that question.
2. Equated score. Each session's corrected scores are matched to a base paper, using the spread of scores across all the papers. This evens out small differences in difficulty. The notification calls this the equi-percentile method.
3. Rounding. Each section score is rounded to two decimal places, and the three are added to get the total.

The cutoffs are applied to these equated scores: first section by section, then on the total. That is why the score on your scorecard can be a little above or below your raw marks on the day.

Is there a safe score?

No. Any "safe score" you see online is someone's estimate. The cutoff depends on how hard the paper was, how many people took it and how many vacancies there are, and IBPS fixes it only after the exam. The vacancies also change from year to year. For CRP PO/MT-XVI, IBPS listed 7,565 indicative vacancies in its update of 27 August 2026.

What you can do is build a margin over the published figures.

How to read your mock score against these cutoffs

A mock score is a raw score. It has not been equated against other candidates' papers, so treat the comparison as a rough check.

1. Check each section first. A total of 60 with 8 in English does not clear a 10-mark English cutoff. Look at your weakest section before you look at the total.
2. Keep a margin in every section. Aim for 4 to 5 marks above the latest sectional cutoff for your category. Then one hard passage or puzzle cannot knock you out.
3. Aim well above the latest total. The General total has been between 48.50 and 49.68 for three years. Scoring 58 to 62 steadily gives you room for a harder paper. If you are in another category, add the same margin to your own category's figure.
4. Watch the trend, not one result. Five mocks in a row above your target tell you more than one high score.
5. Count marks lost to wrong answers. A Reasoning question carries more marks than a Quant question, so each wrong answer there costs more. Our negative marking strategy guide explains when to skip a question.

The section timings and marks are in our IBPS PO exam pattern guide.

When the next cutoff comes out

IBPS posted the 2026 Prelims scores note along with a result notice dated 29 September 2026, and set Mains for 4 October 2026. The 2025 note went up on 6 October 2025 and the 2024 note on 27 November 2024. Expect the next one a few weeks after the next Prelims.

Test yourself on a full mock

Take IBPS PO Full Mock 1, free. It runs three locked 20-minute sections, as in the real exam. The report gives your score and time for each section, so you can set them against the cutoffs above. That is a comparison with a past exam, not a prediction of your result. More mocks are on the IBPS PO page.