Maharashtra NEET UG 2026: CAP Round 1 Is Live — Here's Your Complete Roadmap To An MBBS/BDS Seat

Online Registration: 6 August 2026 to 12 August 2026, up to 11:59 PM Choice/Preference Filling: 19 August 2026 to 22 August 2026, up to 5:30 PM CAP Round 1 Result: 23 August 2026

Overview

The Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell in Maharashtra has now released the schedule that everyone's been yearning for. For those who have passed NEET UG 2026 and are interested in securing a seat in MBBS or BDS in Maharashtra, the first round of CAP counselling has officially commenced, and the registration portal has opened on August 6. Seats will be allocated in this round based on NEET UG 2026 scores in entry-level medical and dental institutions run by the government, government-aided, municipal corporation, or private unaided institutions of Maharashtra.

The counselling procedure in the state is run by the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) through the CET Cell; however, do not confuse it with the body managing engineering admissions. Let us figure out the timetable and the process of registration along with the documents you will require.

What's Happening And When?

The Round 1 schedule has three major milestones you need to track, and they're spaced out over roughly three weeks, so there's no need to panic — but there's also no room to procrastinate once each window opens.

Online registration began on 6 August 2026 and stays open until 12 August 2026, 11:59 PM. This is where you create your candidate profile on the portal and enter your basic and academic details.

Choice or preference filling runs from 19 August to 22 August 2026, up to 5:30 PM. This is the stage where you actually decide which colleges and courses you'd be willing to accept, ranked in the order you want them.

The CAP Round 1 result — meaning the seat allotment outcome — is expected on 23 August 2026.

There's a gap of about a week between registration closing and choice filling opening. That gap isn't wasted time; it's typically used by the CET Cell for document verification and preparing the provisional and final merit lists, which candidates should keep an eye on since your position on that list is what drives everything that comes after.

Key Dates And Links At A Glance

Keep this table close by, because Maharashtra's counselling calendar tends to move quickly once it starts, and it's easy to lose track of which stage you're supposed to be acting on.

Who Should Be Registering?

This round is meant for candidates who've qualified NEET UG 2026 and want to be considered for the 85% state quota seats available across Maharashtra's medical and dental colleges. It covers a mix of government, government-aided, municipal, and private unaided institutions, so whether you're hoping for a government college seat or you're open to private colleges as a backup, this is still the round you register through.

One thing worth flagging: NRI candidates are only eligible under the 15% Institute Quota, based on merit, so if that applies to you, make sure you're registering through the correct category and reading the relevant clauses in the information brochure carefully.

How To Register — Step By Step

The process itself is fairly standard for anyone who's registered for an online counselling portal before, but a few steps deserve a bit more attention than others.

Visit the official portal. Go to cetcell.mahacet.org — this is the only site you should be entering your NEET details on. Steer clear of unofficial links or third-party portals claiming to offer the "same" registration.

Start your registration. To begin registration, you will need to input your date of birth, mobile number, email ID, NEET UG 2026 roll number, and application number.

OTP verification. You will receive an OTP on your mobile number and email ID. This is how you verify your identity and get your candidate account activated. Please ensure that you give the mobile number and email you have current access to.

Log in and complete your profile. Once confirmed, log back in and complete the other details related to your personal information, academic details, and category.

Select your preferred colleges and courses. This part pertains to the course choice-filling process later, but it is better to think about the college you want to apply to before that instead of researching options during the five-day filling process.

Upload your scanned documents. Follow the size, format, and clarity guidelines given on the portal closely. Documents that are cropped oddly, too large, or hard to read tend to cause avoidable delays during verification.

Pay the registration fee. Payment can be made through credit card, debit card, or net banking. This part is important to get right — the CET Cell has been explicit that a candidate is only considered registered once the fee payment has gone through successfully. Filling the form isn't enough on its own; the payment has to clear.

Documents To Keep Ready

Before you sit down to register, it saves a lot of back-and-forth if you have scanned copies of the following ready in advance:

• NEET UG 2026 admit card and scorecard
• Class 10 and Class 12 mark sheets and passing certificates
• School/college leaving certificate
• Domicile certificate (if applicable)
• Nationality certificate issued by the District Magistrate, where required
• Category or caste certificate, along with caste validity certificate if applicable
• Recent passport-size photograph and signature in the prescribed format
• A valid photo ID such as Aadhaar

If you belong to the OBC or SEBC category and don't yet have your Caste Validity Certificate ready, there's some breathing room here — the time limit to submit it has been extended to six months from the date of CAP registration, following a government resolution issued in July 2026. That said, missing even this extended deadline can lead to cancellation of admission and a penalty for lapse of seat, so it's worth treating that six-month window as a firm deadline rather than an indefinite one.

A Few Things That Genuinely Matter Here

Registration isn't complete until payment is confirmed. This is probably the most important thing to internalise from this entire schedule. Candidates sometimes fill out every field correctly, feel done, and then either delay the payment or run into a failed transaction without realising their registration technically never went through. Check your payment confirmation carefully before considering yourself registered.

Choice filling deserves real thought, not a rushed five minutes. You get from 19 to 22 August to fill and order your preferences — use that time properly. Once submitted, your choices are what the allotment algorithm works with, and getting the order wrong (say, ranking a less-preferred college above one you'd actually accept) can mean ending up somewhere you didn't really want, purely because of how the preferences were sequenced.

Fee payment methods matter later too. At the time of physical college joining, fees generally need to be paid via demand draft, with cheques accepted only on bank holidays and required to be replaced with a DD the next working day. It's a small procedural detail, but one that trips people up if they show up expecting to pay by any convenient method.

No proxies at document verification. If your process requires physical document verification at any stage, you'll need to be present yourself — sending a family member or representative in your place isn't permitted.

Schedules can shift. The CET Cell has itself noted that this schedule is subject to change based on directions from MCC, AACCC, or the Central or State Government, or in response to court orders. It's not likely to change dramatically, but it's worth checking the official portal periodically between now and the result date rather than assuming today's dates are cast in stone.

What Happens After The Result?

Once the CAP Round 1 result comes out on 23 August, candidates who've been allotted a seat are expected to move quickly. Physical joining and document submission at the allotted college typically follows within a few days of the result — going by the pattern from previous cycles, this window is expected to fall somewhere between 24 and 28 August 2026, though the CET Cell will confirm exact dates closer to the result date.

At the time of joining, you'll need to carry your original documents, along with the requisite fees payable at the college itself. If you decide the allotted seat isn't what you wanted, there's usually a resignation option within a defined period, though this generally comes with consequences for your registration fee, so it's a decision worth thinking through rather than making impulsively.

Candidates not satisfied with their Round 1 outcome, or those who didn't get an allotment at all, aren't out of options — Maharashtra's CAP process runs across multiple rounds, including Round 2, mop-up rounds, and a stray vacancy round later in the cycle, giving you more than one opportunity to secure a seat.

It's also worth noting that this particular schedule applies specifically to Group A courses — MBBS and BDS. If you're also interested in AYUSH courses (Group B) or allied health programmes (Group C), those schedules are being announced separately, so don't assume your MBBS/BDS registration automatically covers those too.

FAQs

Final Word

CAP Round 1 is the opening act of Maharashtra's medical admission season, and it moves fast once it starts. Register early rather than waiting till the last night of the window, keep your documents scanned and ready well in advance, and when choice filling opens on 19 August, treat it as the most important few days of the entire process — because it genuinely is. Everything from here on, allotment, joining, even your fallback options in later rounds, builds on how carefully this first stretch is handled.

For anything beyond what's covered here, the official CET Cell portal remains the only source worth trusting.