How Many Students Appear for CLAT? 2026 Data & Trend

Those are the headline numbers. This guide goes further than the headline: the full UG and PG split for each year, how many registered students actually turned up, why the 2024 figures you see online don't agree with each other, what the seat count really means for your odds, and what to expect when CLAT 2027 figures arrive after the 6 December 2026 exam. If you are still checking whether you can sit the exam at all, start with our CLAT 2027 eligibility guide.

How Many Students Appeared for CLAT 2026?

The Consortium of National Law Universities held CLAT 2026 on 7 December 2025 and released the participation figures shortly after the exam. Here is the complete breakdown.

Three things stand out in the CLAT 2026 numbers.

It was a record year. 92,344 registrations is the highest figure CLAT has ever recorded. It is 17.0% more than the 78,914 who registered for CLAT 2025, and the number who actually sat the exam rose by 17.6%.

The UG paper drove the growth. UG registrations climbed 19.4% in a single year, from 62,832 to 75,009, while PG registrations rose a more modest 7.8%. UG candidates made up 81.9% of everyone who appeared.

The gender balance keeps shifting. The Consortium's figures put the male to female ratio among CLAT 2026 candidates at about 0.72 to 1, meaning roughly 139 women for every 100 men. The trend is not new: 57% of CLAT 2024 candidates were women.

Accessibility is growing too. 548 candidates in the PwD category appeared for CLAT 2026. PwD candidates get 40 extra minutes, sitting from 2:00 PM to 4:40 PM, and the 40% minimum marks threshold rather than 45%.

How Many Students Appeared for CLAT 2025?

CLAT 2025 was held on 1 December 2024. It set the record that CLAT 2026 then broke.

Compared with CLAT 2026, the pattern is almost identical: UG attendance above 96%, PG attendance around 92%, and UG candidates making up about four in five of all test takers. The difference is scale. CLAT 2026 added roughly 12,000 more UG candidates in the exam hall than CLAT 2025.

If you are comparing your own CLAT 2025 result with a friend's CLAT 2026 result, keep this in mind. A rank of 3,000 in 2026 was earned against a larger field than the same rank in 2025.

How Many Students Appear for CLAT Every Year? The Year-Wise Trend

Here is how CLAT participation has moved over the last four exams. Each CLAT is named for the admission year, so CLAT 2026 was held in December 2025.

See the next section for why the CLAT 2024 figures need care.

The direction is unmistakable. Registrations rose by about 70% in three cycles, from 54,253 for CLAT 2023 to 92,344 for CLAT 2026. UG attendance grew by roughly the same proportion, from 42,766 to 72,631.

This growth came after a dip. CLAT registrations reached 75,183 for CLAT 2020, then declined over the following cycles to the CLAT 2023 low of 54,253 before climbing back. So the current surge is a recovery that has now gone well past the old peak.

Why the CLAT 2024 Figures Don't Match Online

Search for CLAT 2024 participation and you will find two sets of numbers. One says 71,243 registered and 68,786 appeared. The other says 67,590 registered and 65,185 appeared. Both are widely repeated, sometimes on the same website.

The Consortium's own statements help settle it. Before the exam, it announced that CLAT 2024 applications were 24.5% higher than the previous year. After the exam, it reported overall attendance of 96.45%. Apply 24.5% growth to CLAT 2023's 54,253 registrations and you get about 67,500. Take 96.45% of 67,590 and you get 65,190. The lower set of figures matches both official percentages; the higher set matches neither. That is why the table above uses about 67,600 registered and 65,200 appeared, and why we have not guessed at a UG and PG split for that year.

Did 1 Lakh Students Register for CLAT?

You may also have seen headlines saying over 1 lakh candidates registered for CLAT 2024. That figure comes from the Consortium's press release, but read the wording carefully: it referred to more than 1 lakh people registering their interest in knowing more about the test. That is a count of sign-ups on the portal, not completed applications. Actual applications were in the 67,000 range. None of the figures published for recent CLATs crosses 1 lakh completed applications; the record remains CLAT 2026's 92,344.

Registered vs Appeared: Why Almost Everyone Shows Up

CLAT has an unusually high turnout for a national entrance exam. Across the last three cycles with complete data, overall attendance has stayed between about 95% and 96.5%.

This matters more than it seems. In exams where a large share of registrants stay home, the registration figure overstates the competition. In CLAT it barely does. When you read that 75,009 students registered for CLAT 2026 UG, the field you actually faced was 72,631, only about 2,400 fewer.

In absolute terms, only 3,687 of the 92,344 candidates who registered for CLAT 2026 stayed away: 2,378 in UG and 1,309 in PG. For CLAT 2025 the figure was 3,553. So the number of absentees barely moves from year to year even as registrations climb by thousands, which means almost all of the growth shows up in the exam hall. For a UG aspirant, that is the most useful single fact on this page: when registrations rise, your real competition rises by almost exactly the same amount.

PG attendance runs consistently about four percentage points lower than UG. One plausible reason is that many LL.M. aspirants are working lawyers or final-year students juggling other commitments, although the Consortium does not publish reasons for absence.

The practical lesson: plan your preparation as though every registered candidate will sit the exam, because nearly all of them do.

How Many Seats Are There in CLAT, and How Competitive Is It?

Participation numbers only tell you half the story. The other half is the number of seats those candidates are competing for.

Published counts of CLAT 2026 UG seats vary depending on what is included. One widely used compilation puts the UG intake across NLUs at 3,952. Another puts it at 4,092 once NRI, foreign national and supernumerary seats are added. Either way, the figure sits at roughly 4,000 seats across the participating NLUs, which number 26 for CLAT 2027.

So roughly one UG candidate in 18 won an NLU seat through CLAT 2026. Put another way, about 5.5% of those who sat the paper could be admitted to an NLU.

The real picture is tighter at the top and looser overall. It is tighter because seats are split across reservation categories and many NLUs hold a share for their own state's domicile candidates, so the seats open to any one candidate are fewer than the total. It is looser because several affiliate universities outside the NLU system also use CLAT scores for admission, so a CLAT score can lead to admission well beyond the NLU seat count.

What Rank Do You Need?

If roughly 4,000 UG seats go to about 72,600 candidates, the last NLU seats in the general merit list go to candidates at around the top 5.5% of the field, which is roughly the 94th to 95th percentile. Treat that as an outer boundary, not a target. The top NLUs close far higher, and your own cutoff depends on your category, your domicile, and which NLUs you list in counselling. For a realistic target, check the previous year's closing ranks for the specific NLUs you want.

The Same Rank Means More in a Bigger Field

Because the UG field grew by about 12,000 candidates in a year, a given rank now places you higher relative to everyone else. This table converts ranks into the share of candidates ahead of you, using the actual CLAT 2025 and CLAT 2026 UG fields.

Read the last column carefully. Holding the same share of the field, a CLAT 2026 rank of 3,000 corresponds to a CLAT 2025 rank of about 2,500. This is why a seat that closed at a certain rank last year may close at a numerically higher rank this year even if it is no easier to get: the field is bigger, so every percentile band holds more people. When you study previous closing ranks, adjust them for the size of the field.

UG vs PG: Two Very Different Contests

The headline total mixes two separate exams with different candidates, papers and seat pools. It is worth reading them separately.

UG is where the growth is. Its field grew by about 12,000 appeared candidates in one year, while PG added about 1,200. If you are a Class 12 student, the UG numbers are the only ones that describe your competition. It is easy to quote the combined 88,657 figure as if it were the UG field; for UG aspirants, the relevant number is 72,631.

How Many Students Will Appear for CLAT 2027?

Nobody knows yet. CLAT 2027 registrations close on 31 October 2026, and the exam is on 6 December 2026. In recent cycles the Consortium has shared registration figures around exam day and attendance figures soon after, so expect the first official numbers in early December.

What we can do is show what the recent trend implies, as simple arithmetic rather than a forecast:

For UG aspirants specifically, the number to watch is UG candidates in the hall. CLAT UG attendance grew 20.0% last year, from 60,544 to 72,631. If it grew at that rate again, about 87,200 UG candidates would sit CLAT 2027. If it stayed flat, the field would again be around 72,600. Plan for the larger number; being over-prepared for a smaller field costs you nothing.

If growth continues at anything like last year's pace, CLAT 2027 would become the first CLAT to pass 1 lakh completed applications. We will update this page with the official CLAT 2027 figures as soon as the Consortium releases them.

Whatever the final number, seats cannot grow by thousands in a single year the way candidate numbers have. More candidates for roughly the same seats means the marks needed for a given NLU tend to rise, which is exactly why preparation quality matters more each year.

CLAT Participation Milestones at a Glance

If you only need the story in brief, these are the moments that shaped how many students appear for CLAT today:

1. CLAT 2020: registrations reach 75,183, a high point before a multi-year decline.

2. CLAT 2023: registrations bottom out at 54,253, with about 51,500 candidates appearing.

3. CLAT 2024: applications rise 24.5%, attendance reaches 96.45%, and 57% of candidates are women.

4. CLAT 2025: a new record of 78,914 registrations, with 75,361 candidates appearing.

5. CLAT 2026: another record, 92,344 registrations and 88,657 candidates appearing, with women outnumbering men by about 139 to 100.

6. CLAT 2027: registrations close on 31 October 2026 and the exam is on 6 December 2026. Official figures are expected around exam day.

Five cycles, one clear message: after a dip, CLAT has grown every year since CLAT 2023, and each of the last two cycles has set a new record.

Five Common Mistakes When Reading CLAT Numbers

CLAT statistics get repeated across dozens of sites, and the same errors come up again and again. Avoid these:

1. Treating the combined total as the UG field. The 88,657 figure for CLAT 2026 includes 16,026 PG candidates. The UG field was 72,631.

2. Treating registrations as competition without checking attendance. For CLAT the gap is small, about 4%, but in other exams it can be large. Always use the appeared figure when judging competition.

3. Believing the 1 lakh headline. It counted portal sign-ups for CLAT 2024, not applications.

4. Using unreconciled CLAT 2024 figures. Two sets of numbers circulate. Only one matches the Consortium's own percentages.

5. Comparing raw ranks across years. A bigger field changes what a rank means. Compare the share of the field instead, as in the rank table above.

Where These Numbers Come From

Every CLAT participation figure on this page traces back to statistics released by the Consortium of National Law Universities, which conducts the exam. The Consortium usually publishes them in press releases around exam day and alongside results, and they are then reproduced by education news outlets. Where compilations disagree, as with CLAT 2024, we have checked them against the Consortium's own stated percentages rather than picking whichever number appears most often. Attendance rates, growth rates, candidates per seat and rank shares on this page are our own calculations from those official figures.

Seat counts are the least settled numbers here, because NLUs revise intake and supernumerary seats from year to year. For the current intake of any NLU, the Consortium's information brochure and the NLU's own website are the authority.

What These Numbers Mean for Your Preparation

Statistics are only useful if they change what you do. Here is how to use these numbers:

1. Measure yourself against the right field. If you are a UG aspirant, compare yourself with about 72,600 candidates, not 88,657. Mock test rankings in a large national test series are the closest you can get to this before the real exam.

2. Aim for a percentile, not a raw score. Raw cutoffs shift with paper difficulty. A position in roughly the top 5% of a large mock series is a more stable indicator of NLU-level readiness than any fixed mark.

3. Don't ignore sections because the field is big. With nearly 73,000 candidates, ranks are densely packed and a couple of marks can move you hundreds of places. Every section counts. Our guide to the CLAT exam pattern shows how the 120 marks are split.

4. Keep your boards on track. Most UG candidates sit CLAT before their Class 12 boards, and admission depends on meeting the minimum marks afterwards. Read CLAT eligibility after 12th to see how that timeline works.

5. Plan for more competition, not less. Registrations have grown in each of the last three cycles. Prepare for a CLAT 2027 field that is at least as large as CLAT 2026's.

Preparing for CLAT 2027? With around 18 candidates for every NLU seat, a structured plan makes the difference. Explore our CLAT coaching in Delhi for section-by-section preparation and regular national-level mock tests.

The short version: CLAT is growing fast, almost everyone who registers turns up, and the seat count is not keeping pace. 88,657 students appeared for CLAT 2026, and the CLAT 2027 field is likely to be larger still. Knowing the numbers won't raise your score, but it will tell you honestly what score you need. For a closer look at what makes the paper itself hard, read our honest guide to whether CLAT is tough.