If you are trying to work out whether you still have time to sit the dMAT this year, or what happens if you don't make the registration window, this page is the place to start. It gathers every date that matters for the first India test cycle in one place, explains what each one actually closes off, and points you to the two guides on this site that go deeper — one on the full registration-to-APS timeline, one on choosing a test centre — along with the syllabus and eligibility pages you'll want next.
The dates that matter
Registration for the first India dMAT cycle opened on 29 June 2026. The registration deadline is 15 September 2026. The test itself is scheduled for 26 September 2026, and certificates become available on 12 October 2026. The fee is €150, payable during registration.
These four dates are the entire structure of the cycle. Everything else — which module you sit, which centre you choose, how you plan your APS submission around the result — happens inside the space they define. It helps to hold all four in your head at once rather than tracking them one at a time as they approach, because several of the decisions below only make sense in relation to more than one date.
What each date actually means
A registration deadline is not a suggestion. Once it passes, you cannot register for this sitting, no matter how ready you are or how good your reasons are. That is worth sitting with for a moment, because deadlines tied to fixed logistics — a test-centre roster, a document reconciliation process running across two countries — tend not to bend for individual circumstances the way a university deadline sometimes does.
The test date is fixed for everyone who registers: 26 September 2026, one day, with no alternate slot inside this cycle. That single-day design is part of why registering early matters more here than it might for an exam you could resit within the same window — there is no such window to fall back on. The official wording refers to this as the "First dMAT test date" for the cycle, and as of now no second sitting has been announced. If you are weighing whether to wait, that absence of an announced second date is the fact to plan around, not an assumption that one will quietly appear.
The certificate date, 12 October 2026, is the one that connects the test back to your APS application. Nothing in your APS file can be finalised before this date, because the certificate itself does not exist until then. That timing is why the official sources describe the dMAT introduction as intended for the Summer Semester 2027 Master's intake and later, not the Winter 2026/27 intake immediately ahead of it — a certificate that first exists on 12 October cannot reach an application process already underway before then.
If you miss the deadline
There is no second sitting announced for this test cycle. If 15 September passes and you have not registered, the honest answer is that this specific window has closed, and the only reliable next step is to check the official sources for whatever comes after it — the g.a.s.t. dMAT pages and the APS India dMAT pages are where any new date would appear first. Do not plan around a rumoured date from a forum or a coaching centre; plan around what those two sites actually publish, and check back rather than assuming a fixed interval until the next cycle opens.
If your APS paperwork was already moving before 29 June 2026, a transitional exemption may apply to you regardless of where you stand on the registration calendar — that is a separate question worth checking on its own terms rather than folding into a missed-deadline decision.
Registering without losing time later
Two decisions inside registration have consequences that surface weeks later rather than immediately. The test centre you select determines your travel and your morning on test day, and capacity in the busier cities can run out well before the deadline itself does. Our guide to choosing a test centre walks through how to weigh that decision properly, rather than picking whichever city name happens to sit at the top of the list.
The second is pacing: the stretch between registering, preparing for the test, and assembling your APS documents is a plan worth building deliberately, not one to assemble under pressure in the final week. Our full registration and APS timeline lays out a week-by-week structure for doing exactly that, including how to run test preparation and document collection in parallel instead of end to end.
Before you register
It is worth confirming the requirement actually applies to you before you pay the €150 fee. Am I affected? walks through the fields and intakes the current rules cover, so you are not registering — or skipping registration — on a guess. If you are past that question and want to know what the test itself contains once you are signed up, the syllabus overview covers the two modules and how the roughly three hours of testing are structured.
Keep checking the source
Every date on this page comes from the official dMAT and APS India pages, and both organisations can revise their own schedules faster than any third-party summary can track. Before you register, and again as the test date approaches, check the official sources directly rather than relying on this page, a forum thread, or whatever a coaching service tells you the date "really" is. The dates rarely move, but confirming them costs a minute, and assuming they haven't moved costs considerably more if you're wrong.
