UPSC CDS (II) 2026 Syllabus & Exam Pattern: Written Test and SSB Interview

Exam Snapshot / परीक्षा अवलोकन

Important Dates & Event Schedule / तिथियां

Selection Stages & Exam Pattern / परीक्षा पैटर्न और विषय

Important Marking Rules & Qualifying Criteria / महत्वपूर्ण नियम

Syllabus Overview & Preparation Guidance / पाठ्यक्रम विवरण

The UPSC Combined Defence Services Examination follows a two-stage selection process: a written objective test, followed by the SSB Interview. IMA, INA and AFA candidates write three papers — English, General Knowledge and Elementary Mathematics — while OTA candidates write only English and General Knowledge. Check the complete subject-wise topics and marking scheme for CDS (II) 2026 below.

Understanding exactly which papers apply to which academy is the first and most important step in approaching the CDS syllabus, because the written exam is not uniform across all four intake streams the way many first-time aspirants assume. Candidates applying for the Indian Military Academy, Indian Naval Academy or Air Force Academy sit three papers on exam day — English, General Knowledge and Elementary Mathematics — each worth 100 marks and running for two hours, for a combined written total of 300 marks; candidates applying only for the Officers' Training Academy, by contrast, sit just two of those three papers, English and General Knowledge, skipping Elementary Mathematics entirely and arriving at a combined written total of 200 marks. This distinction matters practically as well as academically: a candidate applying for IMA who also wants to keep an OTA option open must still prepare all three subjects, since UPSC does not allow selective paper attempts within a single academy preference, whereas a candidate applying solely for OTA can, in principle, dedicate the time they would otherwise spend on Mathematics to deepening their English and General Knowledge preparation instead. The English paper, common to all four streams, is built around roughly 120 objective questions testing grammar and usage, vocabulary through synonym and antonym identification, reading comprehension passages, sentence and paragraph ordering, error-spotting exercises, and idiomatic usage — testing functional command of the language rather than literary knowledge, since the paper is meant to assess a candidate's readiness for the English-medium instruction and communication expected of a commissioned officer. General Knowledge, similarly common to all streams and also carrying around 120 questions, casts a considerably wider net: current events of both national and international significance, the history of India with particular attention to the freedom movement, Indian and world geography, the basics of Indian polity and the economy, general science at a broadly graduate level, and — a component candidates preparing for a defence-service exam should weight more heavily than they might for a civil-service General Studies paper — current affairs specifically relevant to India's defence establishment, military exercises, indigenous defence production, and international security developments. Elementary Mathematics, applicable only to IMA, INA and AFA aspirants, sits at what UPSC itself describes as a metric or Class X level of difficulty rather than requiring graduate-level mathematical training, covering arithmetic topics like the number system, HCF and LCM, percentages, and ratio-proportion; algebra including basic operations, simple factorisation, and linear and quadratic equations; trigonometry up to the standard Class X syllabus; geometry and mensuration; and elementary statistics involving basic data interpretation — a syllabus scope that keeps the paper accessible to candidates from non-mathematics academic backgrounds who nonetheless need INA's or AFA's specific Engineering or Physics-Mathematics qualifications to be eligible in the first place. Across all written papers, marking follows a single, consistent rule: one mark is awarded for every correct response, one-third of a mark (0.33) is deducted for every incorrect response, marking more than one option on a question is itself treated as an incorrect response, and no penalty at all applies to questions a candidate chooses to leave unattempted — a structure that, as with most negative-marking exams, rewards a disciplined, confidence-based attempt strategy over an all-questions-attempted approach. Once a candidate clears the written cutoff (a figure UPSC does not publish until the entire cycle concludes), the process moves to the Services Selection Board interview, structurally very different from the written papers and, in most successful candidates' accounts, considerably more demanding in terms of sustained performance across multiple days. SSB Stage 1, run on the first day, consists of the Officer Intelligence Rating tests — a battery of verbal and non-verbal reasoning tasks — followed by the Picture Perception and Discussion Test, in which candidates individually interpret an ambiguous image, write a short story around it, and then discuss their interpretation in a small group; only candidates who clear this screening stage proceed further, with a meaningful proportion of each day's batch typically screened out at this point. Candidates who clear Stage 1 move into the more extended Stage 2, spanning roughly four additional days and covering psychological tests (including the Thematic Apperception Test, Word Association Test, Situation Reaction Test and Self-Description exercise), outdoor Group Testing Officer tasks assessing practical problem-solving and leadership under physical and group-dynamic pressure, a detailed personal interview conducted separately from the group assessment, and finally a closing conference where the full assessing panel discusses each candidate's overall profile. The SSB carries 300 marks for IMA, INA and AFA candidates and 200 marks for OTA candidates, deliberately mirroring the written-paper weightage for each stream, so that a candidate's final position depends on a genuinely combined written-plus-SSB score — 600 marks total for IMA/INA/AFA aspirants, 400 marks total for OTA aspirants — rather than the written exam alone determining selection, which is precisely why UPSC and defence-academy guidance consistently stress that SSB preparation should begin well before, not after, the written result is declared. A point candidates preparing across both the written and SSB stages often underweight is that the two are not sequential in the sense of one replacing the other in importance — a candidate who scores well on the written papers but neglects SSB-specific preparation (communication skills, situational awareness, physical fitness relevant to GTO tasks, and general current-affairs depth beyond what the GK paper alone demands) can still be eliminated at Stage 1 screening regardless of how comfortably they cleared the written cutoff, since the two stages test meaningfully different competencies and UPSC does not carry forward or weight written performance into the SSB assessment itself. On subject-wise preparation depth, English and General Knowledge, being common to all four academies, typically reward sustained, long-horizon preparation — daily newspaper reading, a structured current-affairs routine covering both national and international developments, and regular practice with UPSC's own previous years' papers to internalise the specific style of comprehension passages and error-spotting questions UPSC tends to set — whereas Elementary Mathematics, given its fixed Class X-level scope, is generally considered the most reliably improvable section within a shorter preparation window, since the topic list is finite and well-defined compared to the open-ended nature of current-affairs-heavy General Knowledge. Candidates applying across multiple academy preferences within the same CDS cycle should also note that syllabus preparation does not need to be duplicated by preference — since English and General Knowledge are identical papers regardless of whether a candidate's first preference is IMA, INA, AFA or OTA, only the Elementary Mathematics component needs additional, academy-specific attention for those who have listed IMA, INA or AFA anywhere in their preference order.

यूपीएससी सीडीएस परीक्षा दो चरणों में होती है: वस्तुनिष्ठ लिखित परीक्षा और उसके बाद एसएसबी साक्षात्कार। आईएमए, आईएनए और एएफए के उम्मीदवार तीन प्रश्नपत्र — अंग्रेजी, सामान्य ज्ञान और प्रारंभिक गणित — देते हैं, प्रत्येक 100 अंकों का, कुल 300 अंक। ओटीए उम्मीदवार केवल अंग्रेजी और सामान्य ज्ञान देते हैं, कुल 200 अंक — गणित नहीं होता। सभी प्रश्नपत्रों में हर गलत उत्तर पर एक-तिहाई (0.33) अंक की कटौती होती है, जबकि अनुत्तरित प्रश्नों पर कोई कटौती नहीं होती। लिखित परीक्षा पास करने वाले उम्मीदवार एसएसबी साक्षात्कार के लिए बुलाए जाते हैं, जो दो चरणों में होता है — स्क्रीनिंग (OIR व PPDT) और टेस्टिंग (मनोवैज्ञानिक परीक्षण, जीटीओ कार्य, साक्षात्कार व सम्मेलन)। एसएसबी आईएमए/आईएनए/एएफए के लिए 300 अंकों का और ओटीए के लिए 200 अंकों का होता है, जो लिखित परीक्षा के भारांश से मेल खाता है।

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