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Students often hear that the NEET syllabus "changed", without being told what changed or when. The answer for the most recent exam is short, and the more useful question is a different one: which parts of the official syllabus are not covered by the NCERT theory chapters you are reading? This post gives the official answer on changes, a map of the syllabus, the parts that need extra attention, and an audit you can do in one evening.
Who sets the NEET UG syllabus?
The National Medical Commission (NMC) sets it, not NTA. NMC's Undergraduate Medical Education Board issued a public notice dated 22 December 2025 saying it had finalised the syllabus for NEET (UG)-2026 and advising students to use it for preparation. NTA hosts the NMC syllabus document on its website, and the NEET (UG)-2026 Information Bulletin points to it.
Did the syllabus change for 2026?
No. The bulletin's FAQ on the syllabus asks exactly this question and answers: "No, there is no change in the syllabus of NEET (UG) – 2026 with respect to the previous year."
The same FAQ fixes one wording error. Biology Unit 2 refers to the body systems "of an insect (Frog)". The bulletin says it "should be read as of an insect and a frog".
So if you prepared from the 2025 syllabus, your topic list holds for 2026. For the next exam, check the new bulletin's syllabus FAQ before you trust any claim that topics were added or dropped.
What does the syllabus cover?
The NMC document has three parts.
Physics: 20 units. Units 1 to 19 run from Physics and Measurement to Electronic Devices, and Unit 20 is Experimental Skills.
Chemistry: 20 units in three groups. Physical chemistry runs from Some Basic Concepts to Chemical Kinetics. Inorganic chemistry covers classification of elements, p-block elements, d- and f-block elements and coordination compounds. Organic chemistry runs from purification and characterisation of organic compounds to biomolecules, and ends with Unit 20, Principles Related to Practical Chemistry.
Biology: 10 units, from Diversity in Living World to Ecology and Environment.
Most of this maps onto the NCERT Class 11 and 12 books chapter by chapter. Our post on why NCERT matters for NEET covers how to study from them.
Which parts go beyond the NCERT theory chapters?
This is where students lose marks without noticing. Compare the NMC units with the current NCERT contents pages and three gaps stand out.
1. p-block elements. Chemistry Unit 10 covers groups 13 to 18: electronic configuration, general trends down groups and across periods, and the unique behaviour of the first element in each group. The current NCERT chemistry books have no p-block chapter. The Class 11 Part I contents list units 1 to 6, Part II lists units 7 to 9 (redox, organic basic principles, hydrocarbons), and the Class 12 Part I contents run from solutions to coordination compounds. So the trends material needs a source beyond your current theory chapters, and it is worth checking with your teacher.
2. Experimental skills in physics. Unit 20 lists 18 experiments, including the Vernier calipers, screw gauge, metre bridge, resonance tube, Young's modulus of a wire and the characteristic curves of p-n junction and Zener diodes. It asks for "familiarity with the basic approach and observations". This is practical-book material, not theory-chapter material.
3. Practical chemistry. Unit 20 covers detection of nitrogen, sulphur and halogens in organic compounds, tests for functional groups, the preparation of Mohr's salt, potash alum, acetanilide, p-nitroacetanilide, aniline yellow and iodoform, titrations such as oxalic acid against KMnO₄, salt analysis for listed cations and anions, and four experiments including the preparation of lyophilic and lyophobic sols.
What is not in the syllabus?
It helps to know what you can leave out. The 2026 document has no unit on s-block elements, states of matter, surface chemistry, environmental chemistry or polymers as a chapter, which matches the rationalised NCERT books. Two cautions. First, the absence of a unit is not the absence of every idea: sols appear in the practical chemistry list, and polymerisation is mentioned within the hydrocarbons unit. Second, old guidebooks and older question banks still carry the dropped chapters, so filter them before you practise.
A one-evening syllabus audit
Here is a worked version for chemistry, using the unit counts above.
Print or open the NMC chemistry list: 20 units.
Tick each unit you have studied from a matching NCERT chapter. Suppose you tick 17.
The three left over are likely to be the p-block unit, organic purification and characterisation if you skimmed that part of the organic basic principles chapter, and practical chemistry. That is 3 of 20 units, or 15% of the unit list, that need a separate plan. Units are not equal in weight, so treat this as a to-do list, not a marks estimate.
For each leftover unit, write the source you will use and one date by which you will test yourself on it.
Then test, do not reread. A large review of study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility, and rereading and highlighting as low utility.
If a syllabus topic still feels like words without meaning after you have read it, the Fermi Concept Library covers every concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, so you can look up the idea behind a line before you drill questions on it.
Tonight, open the NMC syllabus, run the chemistry audit above, and write your three leftover units on the first page of your notebook.
