GATE 2027 in Amaravati: IIT Madras Zone and the Vijayawada Split

The official exam-city page has a single entry, "Amaravati", under Andhra Pradesh in the IIT Madras zone. It does not say which locality the centres will be in. That detail comes only with the admit card.

The name covers more than one idea. APCRDA, the capital region authority, describes Amaravati as the old seat of the Satavahanas, known for the Amareswara temple, and also as the new greenfield capital that the state set out to build through land pooling after the 2014 bifurcation. For GATE, none of this matters beyond one point: Amaravati is a city on the list, separate from Guntur and from Vijayawada.

Watch the spelling on the form. Amravati in Maharashtra is also an exam city, but it is in the IIT Bombay zone. Picking it by mistake would put your whole form in the wrong zone.

The list is tentative. GATE may add or remove a city, and may allot one outside your choices. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

The rule: you choose six cities, and all six must be from the same zone.

Most of us move between Amaravati, Vijayawada and Guntur without thinking of them as separate places. The GATE list does think of them separately, and it splits them:

Exam city	Zone
Amaravati	IIT Madras
Guntur	IIT Madras
Vijayawada	IIT Kharagpur

So a form with Amaravati and Guntur is fine. A form with Amaravati and Vijayawada is not. The same applies to every other IIT Kharagpur-zone city in the state: Eluru, Tadepalligudem, Bhimavaram, Rajamahendravaram (Rajahmundry), Kakinada-Surampalem, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam.

If you will be in a Vijayawada hostel or flat in February and would rather write there, you need an all-IIT Kharagpur list, and Amaravati drops off it. The Vijayawada page builds that list. Vijayawada, the headquarters of NTR district according to that district's own site, has a different zone office too, as the next section but one explains.

Andhra Pradesh has nine IIT Madras-zone cities: Amaravati, Guntur, Chirala-Bapatla, Ongole, Nellore, Tirupati, Chittoor, Kadapa and Nandyala. Telangana adds a few that surprise people. Kodad, Khammam, Kothagudem and Warangal are IIT Madras zone too, so they can share a form with Amaravati even though Vijayawada cannot.

A workable order:

1. Amaravati
2. Guntur
3. Chirala-Bapatla
4. Kodad
5. Khammam
6. Ongole or Nellore

Change the order to fit where you have family or a friend's room for the night before. Tirupati, Kadapa, Nandyala and Chittoor are further same-zone options in the south of the state, and the Guntur and Tirupati pages cover them.

Two other zones are closed to you:

• Hyderabad and Nalgonda are IISc zone.
• Kurnool and Anantapur are IISc zone too.

If you will be working or studying in Hyderabad in February, read the Hyderabad page and pick one zone.

Because Amaravati is IIT Madras zone, your zone office and the organising institute are the same. The official page lists IIT Madras, Chennai 600 036, helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200. Write from your registered email and quote your enrolment ID.

A friend writing from Vijayawada has a different office: IIT Kharagpur, gateonline@adm.iitkgp.ac.in, 03222-282091 or 03222-282095. That is another sign the two cities sit in different zones.

The official dates page shows the paid data correction window, on candidate request, as TBA. Until it opens, assume your submitted city choices stand.

The official dates, which GATE says may change:

What	When
City allotment notification	4 January 2027
Admit card	TBA
Exams	6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 February 2027, all Saturdays and Sundays
Result	19 March 2027

The allotment gives you the city; the admit card gives the centre and reporting time. Do not assume you know where a centre is just because you know the area. Find it on a map the day the admit card appears and plan the route. If you were allotted Kodad, Khammam or Ongole instead, reach the evening before a forenoon paper.

DA and CS are an allowed two-paper pair. If you take both, the official page says the second paper's centre may differ but will be in the same city.

Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you used in the application, and anything else the admit card lists.

None of the institutes with a GATEiit page is in Amaravati itself. The nearest in our state:

• NIT Andhra Pradesh, at Tadepalligudem. Note that Tadepalligudem is an IIT Kharagpur-zone exam city, unlike Amaravati.
• IIT Tirupati, in Tirupati
• IIIT Sri City, at Sri City, Chittoor

In Telangana, look at IIT Hyderabad, IIIT Hyderabad, University of Hyderabad and NIT Warangal, and in Chennai IIT Madras. Each page explains that institute's GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates; the rest are on /institutes.

Your exam city has no bearing on admission. Writing GATE in Amaravati neither helps nor hurts at NIT Andhra Pradesh, though the two places are in different zones.

GATEiit is a free online site. It has no centre, office or classes in Amaravati or anywhere else.

Begin on your paper's page: GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. Each has the syllabus and a link to that paper's WhatsApp group.

Then work through previous papers on /pyq and topic sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide give you a plan, and /guides goes deeper on single topics. Since every paper is on a weekend, sit your full mocks on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

For the wider picture see GATE 2027, the exam-city overview and the Chennai page for the zone's home city. The Tadepalligudem page shows the IIT Kharagpur side of the Andhra split.