GATE 2027 in Belagavi: IISc Zone Exam City and the Goa-Kolhapur Trap

The Belagavi district administration describes the place as sitting in the zone of cultural transition between Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa, and close to both states.

The GATE exam-city list ignores that closeness. It goes state by state and zone by zone. On the official GATE 2027 exam-city page, "Belagavi" is a plain single entry under Karnataka, in the IISc zone. Belgaum, the older name, still turns up in places, including on the district's own site; the GATE list uses Belagavi.

What the name gives you is a city. Your actual centre, with its address, appears only on the admit card.

The rules are the same for everyone:

• You pick six cities, and all six must come from one zone.
• The list is tentative. GATE may add or remove a city, and may allot one outside your six.
• GATE 2027 is held only in India.

Every Karnataka city on the list is IISc zone. Every Maharashtra city, and Goa, is IIT Bombay zone. So for us the zone boundary is simply the state border.

City	Zone	Can it sit with Belagavi?
Hubballi/Dharwad, Bagalkot, Davanagere	IISc	Yes
Shivamogga, Ballari, Kalaburagi, Bidar	IISc	Yes
Goa	IIT Bombay	No
Kolhapur, Sangli, Ratnagiri	IIT Bombay	No
Pune, Solapur - Pandharpur	IIT Bombay	No

Put Goa or Kolhapur alongside Belagavi and the form breaks the same-zone rule. If you are doing a semester project or internship in Goa, Kolhapur or Pune in February and want to write there, your whole form has to become an IIT Bombay list, with Belagavi left off. The Goa page and the Kolhapur page cover that side of the line.

It makes no difference which taluk you live in or how close the border is. The zone follows the city on the list, not your address.

Start with the city you will actually be in during February, then add IISc-zone cities you could reach the evening before. A list for someone living in Belagavi:

1. Belagavi
2. Hubballi/Dharwad
3. Bagalkot
4. Davanagere
5. Shivamogga
6. Ballari

Hubballi/Dharwad is one entry covering both twin cities, so it uses only one slot; the Hubballi-Dharwad page explains it. If you are spending the winter in Bengaluru for an internship, Bengaluru North or Bengaluru South can go first, as the Bengaluru page describes. If you study on the coast, Mangaluru or Manipal - Udupi make sense; see the Mangaluru page.

The IISc zone also takes in Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad in Telangana, but Chennai South and Chennai North are IIT Madras zone. Registration has closed, so if you have already applied, your six choices are fixed. The important dates page lists the paid data-correction window as TBA.

Questions about the Belagavi exam city go to the IISc zone office, listed on the official page as IISc, Bengaluru-560 012: helpdesk.gate@iisc.ac.in, 080-22932644, 080-22932392 or 080-22933333. Application and portal questions go to IIT Madras, the organising institute: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in or 044-22578200. Write from your registered email ID and quote your enrolment ID.

If GATE flagged a scrutiny defect in your application, the dates page now shows the no-fee rectification window closing on 30 November 2026, after the earlier 31 October and 3 November deadlines were extended. Fix it before then.

After that, the city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027. The admit card date is still TBA, results are due on 19 March 2027, and every date is marked liable to change. Writing both DA and CS? The two-paper page says the second paper may be at a different centre, though in the same city.

Once the admit card is out, find the centre the same day and time the route from where you will sleep the night before. Unfamiliar campuses take longer to find than you expect, so aim to arrive well before the reporting time. Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you gave in the application, and anything else the admit card lists.

If you are coming home from college elsewhere, the district's how-to-reach page has the basics. Belagavi airport is at Sambra, about 7 km from the city, with flights to Bengaluru. By rail, Belagavi connects to Bengaluru via Londa and to Mumbai via Miraj, and to Vasco da Gama; the page puts both Bengaluru and Mumbai at around 12 hours by train. The city sits on the Pune-Bengaluru highway, and the main bus stand is near the old town.

If GATE allots you Hubballi/Dharwad, Bagalkot or anywhere further, travel the previous day rather than on the morning of the paper.

Visvesvaraya Technological University has its head office at Jnana Sangama, Belagavi, but it is not among the institutes GATEiit covers. None of the institutes covered on GATEiit is in Belagavi itself, but three are within the state. Each page explains that institute's GATE routes:

• IIT Dharwad, Dharwad
• IIIT Dharwad, Dharwad
• NITK Surathkal, Surathkal, Mangaluru

Across the border are IIT Goa and NIT Goa, and further off is IISc Bengaluru, which also runs our zone. Your exam city has no bearing on admission anywhere, so writing in Belagavi does not count against you in Goa. The full list is at /institutes.

GATEiit is a free website. It has no centre, office or classroom in Belagavi or anywhere else.

Pick your paper page first: GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. Each has the syllabus and the WhatsApp group link. Work through past papers on /pyq, drill weak topics on /practice, and follow the GATE DA 2027 guide or the GATE CSE 2027 guide. Other guides are at /guides.

All six GATE days are Saturdays and Sundays, so keep weekend mornings for full-length mocks from December onwards, alongside your final-year coursework. The GATE 2027 page has the whole timeline, and /gate-2027/cities links every city page.