The pages that matter, in the order you need them
There are about a dozen official pages between the Mains result and the final list, and most candidates reach them through a coaching site or a Telegram forward. This page lists each one directly, says what it holds, and says when we last read it. Everything below was re-fetched on 20 October 2026 and again on 21 October 2026; the Union Public Service Commission's site blocks plain automated fetches, so our check uses a desktop browser identity. One thing we learned on the second pass: a deep link on the bare host (upsc.gov.in/exams-related-info/interview-schedule) was redirected to the home page, while the same path on www.upsc.gov.in answered. Every UPSC link on this page therefore uses the www host. Where a page still stopped us, the entry says so. Nothing on this page comes from a coaching institute, a news site or a forum.
| When | You need | Official page | Status 20 to 21 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before Mains result | Exam calendar and the notification you applied under | UPSC Examination Calendar 2027 (PDF); CSE 2026 notification (PDF) and the CSE 2024 notification (PDF) for comparison; other years from the Examination Notifications menu on www.upsc.gov.in | Calendar verified; 2026 and 2024 notifications verified |
| Mains result day | The result PDF and the DAF-II notice | What's New | Verified; no CSE 2026 item yet |
| DAF-II window | The form itself | upsconline.gov.in (new registrations at upsconline.nic.in) | Verified |
| Two weeks or so before the board | Interview schedule and the e-Summon | Interview Schedules, the Interview Schedule and e-Summon Letters landing page and the e-Summon portal | Verified; CSE 2026 not listed |
| The schedule format | What a UPSC Personality Test notice looks like | CMS 2026 Personality Test notice (PDF), dated 25 September 2026 | Verified |
| Final result | Result, then marks, then reserve list | What's New, then Marks of Recommended Candidates and the Reserve List marks | Verified (pages answer; tables load by script) |
| SSB (NDA, CDS, AFCAT, Navy) | Call-up letter, reporting instructions | Navy: Instructions for SSB; joinindianarmy.nic.in | Navy verified; Army portal needs JavaScript |
- UPSC CSE 2026 Personality Test: not announced as of 21 October 2026. Last cycle, as reported at the time, ran from 8 December 2025 to 27 February 2026, starting about two weeks after the Mains result.
- NDA (I) and CDS (I) 2027, per the UPSC Examination Calendar 2027 PDF: notification 2 December 2026, apply by 22 December 2026, written exam 11 April 2027.
- Civil Services 2027, per the same calendar: notification 13 January 2027, apply by 2 February 2027, prelims 23 May 2027.
upsc.gov.in: schedules, What's New, calendar, notification
UPSC's site answers on both upsc.gov.in and www.upsc.gov.in, but on 21 October 2026 the bare host redirected a deep link to its home page, so use the www addresses below. Five pages and one PDF do the work for an interview candidate.
Interview Schedules
www.upsc.gov.in/exams-related-info/interview-schedule. One list, newest first, each item a PDF with its upload date. On 20 and again on 21 October 2026 it carried schedules for the Indian Economic Service and Indian Statistical Service Examination 2026 (uploaded 15 October), the Combined Medical Services Examination 2026 (25 September) and the Engineering Services (Main) Examination 2026 (7 September). No Civil Services 2026 entry. When the Civil Services schedule appears it is normally released in phases, and each PDF lists the dates, the session (forenoon or afternoon) and the roll numbers called for each session. The same office also keeps a landing page, Interview Schedule and e-Summon Letters, that links the schedules and the e-Summon portal together. Our dates and summon page explains how to read a schedule and tracks each phase.
The CMS 2026 notice: what a Personality Test schedule looks like
Until the Civil Services notice is out, the Combined Medical Services Examination 2026 Personality Test notice (PDF, dated 25 September 2026, read 21 October 2026) is the best model of the document you are waiting for, because it comes from the same office in the same form. Its five numbered paragraphs, in order: the written result was declared on 1 September 2026 and interviews start on Monday 12 October 2026; the e-Summon letters "may be downloaded from the Commission's website, https://upsconline.nic.in" and "no request for a change in the date and time of the Personality Test (Interview) intimated to the candidates will ordinarily be entertained"; a candidate who did not finally submit the application form or DAF in time has the candidature cancelled and gets no e-Summon; travel reimbursement is "restricted only to the Second/Sleeper class train fare (Mail Express)", with the Travelling Allowance form under Forms and Downloads on the site; and then the schedule of 2,842 candidates, roll number by roll number, each with a day and either "FORENOON AT 0900 HRS" or "AFTERNOON AT 1300 HRS". Read it once now; when the Civil Services PDF arrives you will know where your roll number sits in ten seconds.
What's New
www.upsc.gov.in/whats-new. The feed of everything UPSC publishes: notices, time tables, interview schedules, written results, final results and marks. It is the first place a Mains result or a Personality Test schedule appears, usually before the dedicated pages update. On 21 October 2026 the feed (its footer read "Last Updated: 21 Oct 2026" that evening) showed, among other items, the written result of the Combined Defence Services Examination (II) 2026, the written result of the National Defence Academy and Naval Academy Examination (II) 2026, interview schedules for IES/ISS 2026, CMS 2026 and ESE (Main) 2026, marks of recommended candidates for the Central Armed Police Forces (ACs) Examination 2024 and a time table for the Indian Forest Service (Main) 2026. Nothing for Civil Services 2026. Bookmark it; it is the page we check first each week.
If you are an NDA (II) or CDS (II) 2026 candidate, those two written-result items are what start your SSB: the call-up follows through your service's candidate login (see the SSB section below), not through UPSC. UPSC's part ends with the written result.
The Examination Calendar 2027
Calendar-Year-2027-Engl-200526.pdf, the annual programme UPSC issues in advance, listed with its upload date (20 May 2026) on the examination calendar page beside the archive. It gives, for each examination, the notification date, the application closing date and the exam date; it does not give Personality Test dates. We read it on 19 October 2026 and it answered on 20 and 21 October 2026. The rows that matter here: Civil Services 2027 notified 13 January 2027, closing 2 February 2027, prelims 23 May 2027, Mains from 20 August 2027; NDA and NA (I) and CDS (I) 2027 notified 2 December 2026, closing 22 December 2026, exam 11 April 2027. If you are reading this after a Personality Test and planning a next attempt, those are your dates.
The Civil Services notification
The notification for the examination you are in is the legal text for the Personality Test. For this cycle it is the CSE 2026 notice (Examination Notice 05/2026-CSE, dated 4 February 2026; PDF read and text-searched on 21 October 2026), which we checked against the CSE 2024 notification. The scheme is the same in both: the written part carries 1,750 marks and the Personality Test 275 marks "with no minimum qualifying marks", 2,025 in all; "the number of candidates to be summoned for Interview/Personality Test will be about twice of the number of vacancies"; the marks of both parts "would determine their final ranking"; in the 2024 text, service preferences, and for IAS and IPS the zone and cadre preferences, went on the online DAF-II "before the commencement of Personality Tests", while the 2026 notice takes service preferences in the application form and gives qualified candidates a window of 15 days after the Mains result to update their details and finally submit the form, without which no e-Summon is issued; and Section II C describes the board as "a Board of competent and unbiased observers" and lists the qualities judged (mental alertness, critical powers of assimilation, clear and logical exposition, balance of judgement, variety and depth of interest, ability for social cohesion and leadership, intellectual and moral integrity), with the technique "not that of a strict cross-examination but of a natural, though directed and purposive conversation". The 2024 notice described a public disclosure scheme that a candidate opted into when downloading the e-Summon; the 2026 notice renames it the PRATIBHA Setu portal, through which the details of candidates who reached the interview but were not recommended, with a percentile rather than marks, are made accessible to registered employers once the reserve list has been used.
One thing neither notice contains is a clause on the medium of the Personality Test. Both set the medium rules for the written papers in detail; the word "interpreter" appears in neither, and neither names a medium for the interview. The rule that you may face the board in English, Hindi or any Eighth Schedule language, whatever your Mains medium, with an interpreter for the other languages, is consistently reported and is recorded in our research notes, but we cannot show it to you on either PDF. Our medium page says exactly that and tells you where the option is reported to be exercised (DAF-II). Do not rely on a coaching site's "quotation" of a medium clause.
upsconline: OTR, DAF-II and the e-Summon
upsconline.gov.in is the candidate portal, and on 20 October 2026 it listed, in this order: One Time Registration (OTR) and online application, the Online Recruitment Application (ORA) for recruitment posts, e-Admit cards for examinations, e-Admit cards for recruitment tests, e-Summon for various examinations of UPSC, and representations. The same page said that new registrations for all future UPSC examinations are now at upsconline.nic.in; on 21 October 2026 that address redirected our fetch straight to a login screen, so we have not read its contents and list it as unverified. Note that the CMS 2026 Personality Test notice names upsconline.nic.in, not the older portal, as the place to download e-Summon letters, so a Civil Services 2026 candidate should expect to find the e-Summon behind the newer login and check both.
Two things on upsconline matter for the Personality Test. The first is the Detailed Application Form II (DAF-II), which opens for a window after the Mains result (15 days, per the 2026 notice) and is served through the application login. The board builds a large share of its questions from what you write in it: service preferences, cadre preferences, hobbies, prizes, employment. Our DAF-II page maps each field to the questions it generates. The second is the e-Summon, the call letter for the interview, which appears under the e-Summon heading once the schedule is out. It carries the date, the reporting time, the venue (the Commission's office at Dholpur House, Shahjahan Road, New Delhi 110069, per the UPSC contact page, which also lists the helpdesk numbers 011-24041001 and 011-40303444) and the documents to bring. UPSC sends no paper letter: the e-Summon portal itself said on 21 October 2026 that "No Summon letter is being sent by post", and showed "No e-Summon Available", which is what it will show until the Civil Services schedule is out. Download it the day it appears, print two copies, and read the document list twice.
What the portal does not do
upsconline does not show the interview schedule as a whole, only your own e-Summon. It does not show marks. It does not host the DAF-II instructions PDF, which comes through What's New. If someone forwards you a "DAF-II link" on WhatsApp that is not upsconline.gov.in or upsconline.nic.in, do not log in to it.
Results, marks of recommended candidates and the reserve list
Three documents come after the boards finish, in this order, all on upsc.gov.in. First, the final result, a PDF of roll numbers and names in rank order, posted to What's New and to the Final Results menu. Second, some weeks later, the Marks of Recommended Candidates, which gives each recommended candidate's written total, Personality Test marks and total, by examination and year; the page answered on 21 October 2026 (its table loads by script, so open it in a browser), and each release is also an item on What's New (we saw a release for a Central Armed Police Forces exam there on 20 October 2026). Third, when the Department of Personnel and Training asks for more names, the Reserve List and its own marks page, Marks of Recommended Candidates (Reserve List). Candidates who were not recommended see their own marks through the upsconline marksheet system, by roll number, for a limited time: on 21 October 2026 it listed a departmental exam uploaded on 13 October and available until 13 November 2026, and older Civil Services (Main) rows with separate entries for qualified and not qualified candidates, each open for about a month. That is where the honest number for your interview comes from, not from any coaching site's "average interview marks" table. Recommended candidates also receive a conduct note; the advisory to recommended candidates of CSE 2025 (PDF issued 6 March 2026, read 21 October 2026) covers integrity, inducements and endorsements, social media restraint, dress and punctuality. Our final result and marks page walks through a worked example of how the 275 moves a rank.
UPSC also runs a scheme for candidates who reached the interview stage but were not recommended, listed on the site menu as UPSC PRATIBHA Setu (formerly the Public Disclosure Scheme). Per the 2026 notice, the details of willing candidates, with a percentile rather than marks, are made accessible to registered employers after the reserve list has been used. We have not read the scheme page itself this week, so check the terms on the site before relying on it.
SSB: Navy, Army and Air Force portals
The Services Selection Board has no single public site. Each service runs its own candidate portal, and the SSB procedure itself (screening with the OIR test and PPDT, psychology tests, GTO tasks, the personal interview and the conference, across five days) is described to candidates in their call-up instructions rather than on an open page. Here is what each portal gave us on 20 October 2026.
| Portal | What it holds | Status 20 to 21 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Indian Navy: Instructions for SSB | Reporting at the railway station named in the call-up letter, where an SSB representative receives candidates; the Movement Control Office contacts at Bhopal, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata stations; the document list (original certificates, photographs, call letter printout, a signed risk certificate from a parent or guardian); the rule that a change of SSB dates is allowed only in exceptional cases and only by the call-up officer of the board concerned, and that a change of venue is not allowed; and the rail fare refund for a first appearance for a type of commission. | Verified; re-read 21 Oct 2026 |
| Indian Navy: Selection procedure | Officer entry routes and the notice board. On 20 October 2026 it said call-ups for the SSC June 2027 course SSBs scheduled in November to December 2026 had been issued, downloadable after login. On 21 October our fetch of this address was redirected to the Navy home page, so reach it from the Join Indian Navy menu if the link bounces. | Verified 20 Oct; redirected 21 Oct |
| Indian Army: joinindianarmy.nic.in | The portal for NDA, CDS, TES and other Army entries. SSB date selection and call-up letters are inside the candidate login. The home page redirected our fetch to an authentication page on 21 October 2026 and showed only Agniveer exam admit-card notices on 20 October, so we could not read any SSB text on it this week. | Reachable; SSB content unverified |
| Indian Air Force: AFCAT portal (afcat.cdac.in) | AFCAT registration and the AFSB call-ups for Air Force entries. An earlier fetch returned 404; on 21 October 2026 the root redirected to /AFCAT, which we did not read. | Unverified; do not rely on the URL |
| Indian Air Force: careers portal (careerindianairforce.cdac.in) | IAF officer and Agniveer entry portal. It answered on 21 October 2026, but the text our fetch saw was dated 2017 to 2019 and carried no AFSB procedure. | Reachable; AFSB content unverified |
| Indian Air Force: indianairforce.nic.in | IAF home with a Join the IAF section. The page loaded on 20 October 2026 and we found no AFSB procedure text on it; on 21 October it streamed too much data for our fetch to finish. | Reachable; AFSB content unverified |
Two practical consequences. No service publishes a calendar of SSB dates, so every "SSB dates for NDA-II 2026" page you see is relaying candidates' call-up letters; treat it as a report, not a schedule. And the only written account of the five-day procedure with official standing is the one in your own instructions, so read them before you read a coaching site. Our SSB dates and centres page keeps the known centre list and what is verified, and the 5-day procedure page separates what is spoken from what is written.
What is not official, and how to tell
Around every UPSC and SSB cycle there is a layer of pages that look official and are not: "upsc interview schedule 2026 pdf download" posts, Telegram channels relaying summon letters, YouTube thumbnails with a date in red. Four checks separate the official from the rest.
- The domain. upsc.gov.in (with or without www), upsconline.gov.in, upsconline.nic.in, dopt.gov.in, joinindianarmy.nic.in, joinindiannavy.gov.in, indianairforce.nic.in and the cdac.in portals the IAF uses. Anything ending in .com, .in or .org that is not one of these is secondary, however good. A PDF is official only if it is hosted on one of those domains; the UPSC ones live under /sites/default/files/.
- The date on the document. UPSC notices carry a date and a file number. A schedule screenshot with neither is a draft or a fake.
- The phase. UPSC releases the Civil Services schedule in phases. A page that says "interview dates announced" after phase 1 is right about phase 1 and silent about yours.
- Marks tables. "Average interview marks" and "highest ever interview marks" tables on coaching sites are compiled from the Marks of Recommended Candidates PDFs, sometimes correctly. Go to the PDF; it is public.
This matters for your preparation as much as for your logistics. Candidates who read "the board prefers English" on a forum sometimes switch medium against their own interest; no official page states a preference, and, as reported, the choice is yours to make on DAF-II. Candidates who read a leaked "schedule" prepare for the wrong week. Read the source, then read us.
Our weekly check, and how to do your own
We re-read every link on this page once a week and update the status words and the dates block, which is rendered from the same dated calendar as our exam dates page. The next items we are watching: the Civil Services 2026 Mains result and the DAF-II notice on What's New, the Civil Services 2026 Personality Test schedule on the Interview Schedules page, and the NDA (I) and CDS (I) 2027 notification on 2 December 2026 per the UPSC calendar. If you want to do your own check in five minutes: open What's New and scan the first screen for "Civil Services"; open Interview Schedules (the www address) and look for a Civil Services line; open the e-Summon portal and, once the schedule is out, the upsconline.nic.in login the CMS notice points to; for SSB, log in to your service's portal and check for a new call-up. Do it on Friday evenings; UPSC posts on working days and the week's items are all there by then. Everything else on this hub, from the question bank to the mock interview, builds on the facts these pages publish, and when they change, we change.