Dates and fees
The Consortium's press release of 22 July 2026 and its UG instructions confirm the schedule below. Once you submit and pay, you cannot change your programme, category or BPL status, so check those fields carefully.
- Exam: Sunday, 6 December 2026, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (till 4:40 p.m. for eligible PwD candidates)
- Applications: 3 August to 31 October 2026 (11:59 p.m.), online only at consortiumofnlus.ac.in
- Mode: offline
- Fee: ₹4,000 for General/OBC candidates and ₹3,500 for SC/ST/BPL/PwD candidates
Eligibility for the UG programme
There is no upper age limit. You need to have passed 10+2 or its equivalent with at least 45% marks, or 40% if you are SC, ST or PwD. Students taking the qualifying exam in March/April 2027 can apply, but they must show proof of passing at the time of admission. Indian nationals, NRIs, PIO and OCI card holders can take CLAT. Foreign nationals cannot and must approach the NLUs directly.
The pattern, according to the Consortium
The UG-CLAT 2027 is a two-hour test of 120 multiple-choice questions, each worth 1 mark, with 0.25 deducted for every wrong answer. The questions are spread across five subjects:
- English Language: passages of about 450 words from fiction and non-fiction, testing comprehension, inference and vocabulary in context
- Current Affairs including General Knowledge: passages from news and non-fiction on events in India and the world, arts and culture, and international affairs
- Legal Reasoning: fact situations and policy or moral questions. No prior knowledge of law is needed; you apply the principle given in the passage.
- Logical Reasoning: short passages where you identify arguments and assumptions, and judge whether they are strengthened or weakened
- Quantitative Techniques: numerical information set out in passages, using Class 10 maths such as ratios, basic algebra, mensuration and statistics
The real challenge: time
You get 120 questions in 120 minutes, and most of them come with passages of about 450 words that the Consortium says a Class 12 student may read in 5–7 minutes. The paper does not reward knowing everything. It rewards reading quickly, understanding accurately and moving on. Ties are broken first by marks in Legal Reasoning, then by age, so Legal Reasoning deserves extra practice.
The official guide does not fix how many questions each section will have, so use the section sizes in recent CLAT papers and your own mocks to set a time budget. Then stick to it. The most common way to lose marks is to spend 12 minutes on one difficult passage and run out of time on two easy ones.
With a penalty of 0.25, eliminating even one option usually makes an attempt worthwhile, but blind guessing across a whole passage set will pull your score down.
An 11-week plan
Adjust the weekly split to suit you, but keep every week built around timed passage practice.
- Weeks 1–4: Read one quality long-form article every day and summarise it in three lines. Do two Legal Reasoning and two Logical Reasoning passage sets daily, and revise Class 10 arithmetic (percentages, ratios, averages) for Quantitative Techniques.
- Weeks 1–11, every day: Spend 30–40 minutes on current affairs, building a monthly note from about the past 12 months. Many CLAT passages are drawn from major news topics.
- Weeks 5–8: Take one full two-hour paper a week and analyse it carefully. Note which section runs over time and where the 0.25 penalties are adding up.
- Weeks 9–10: Take two full papers a week. Settle on a fixed section order that works for you (many aspirants start with their strongest reading section) and a time budget for each section.
- Week 11: Revise your current-affairs notes and take one or two light papers. Check your admit card and centre details once the Consortium releases them.
Before 31 October
Don't leave the form to the last day. Read the Information Brochure on the Consortium website for seat intake, reservation and fee details of the 26 participating NLUs before you fill in your preferences. When you are ready for a timed rehearsal, practise the real pattern with a free full-length ExamguruX mock.
Key takeaways
- CLAT 2027 is on 6 December 2026, from 2 to 4 p.m., in offline mode.
- Applications close on 31 October 2026. The fee is ₹4,000, or ₹3,500 for SC/ST/BPL/PwD candidates.
- The UG paper has 120 one-mark MCQs in 2 hours, with −0.25 per wrong answer, across five passage-based sections.
- Ties are broken first by Legal Reasoning marks, so give that section extra practice.
- Build every week around timed passage practice and daily current affairs.
Sources
Dates and patterns change — always confirm on the official website before applying.
