GATE 2027 in Bengaluru: North and South Exam Cities, IISc Zone Choices

On the official GATE 2027 exam-city list the city appears twice: Bengaluru North and Bengaluru South. Each one is a separate entry, and each takes up one of your six slots. Putting both in is the obvious move: the city is large, and either half is easier than a trip to another district.

Which one goes first is your call. The list does not say which localities fall under North and which under South, and nothing official tells you where the centres will be until the admit card names one. So pick the half where you live or study as choice one, the other half as choice two, and move on. Do not spend a week on this.

One more thing to keep in mind from the same page: the list is tentative. GATE 2027 can add or drop a city, and it can allot you a city that is not among your options. Your choices are a preference, and the allotment notification on 4 January 2027 is the answer.

The rule is short. You pick six cities, and all six must come from the same GATE 2027 zone. Once Bengaluru North is on your form, every other choice has to come from the IISc zone too.

That zone is wider than people expect. Its Karnataka cities are Bagalkot, Ballari, Belagavi, Bengaluru North, Bengaluru South, Bidar, Chikkamagaluru, Chikkballapur, Davanagere, Hassan, Hubballi/Dharwad, Kalaburagi, Kolar, Mandya, Mangaluru, Manipal - Udupi, Mysuru, Shivamogga and Tumakuru. It also covers Anantapur and Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh, eight Kerala cities (Angamaly, Kannur, Kasaragod, Kozhikode, Palakkad, Pathanamthitta, Thrissur, Wayanad), Hyderabad and Nalgonda in Telangana, and Port Blair.

For someone based in Bengaluru, the sensible back-ups after the two Bengaluru entries are the Karnataka towns around the city on that list: Kolar, Chikkballapur, Tumakuru, Mandya and Mysuru. Choose the four you could reach most easily on an exam morning, keeping in mind trains, buses and anyone you could stay with the night before. If your family home is elsewhere in Karnataka, say Hubballi/Dharwad or Mangaluru, that town can be a better fourth or fifth choice than a closer one where you know nobody.

Hyderabad is in the same zone, so it is allowed on a Bengaluru form. It is rarely a sensible back-up unless you have family there.

This is where Bengaluru students slip. Several cities that feel next door are in the IIT Madras zone, so none of them can sit on the same six-city list as Bengaluru North or South:

• Tamil Nadu: Krishnagiri, Vellore, Salem, Chennai North, Chennai South, Coimbatore and every other Tamil Nadu city on the list.
• Andhra Pradesh: Chittoor, Tirupati, Kadapa and the rest of the southern Andhra cities, even though Anantapur and Kurnool are in the IISc zone.
• Kerala: Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kottayam, Aluva - Ernakulam and the other southern Kerala cities. Only the eight Kerala cities named in the previous section belong to IISc.

Goa, for anyone in north Karnataka weighing it, is in the IIT Bombay zone.

If you would genuinely rather write in Krishnagiri or Vellore, you can, but then all six of your choices must come from the IIT Madras zone and Bengaluru drops off your list entirely. You cannot have one foot in each zone.

For exam-city questions in the IISc zone, the contact the official list gives is:

GATE office, IISc, Bengaluru-560 012
Email: helpdesk.gate@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-22932644, 080-22932392, 080-22933333

IIT Madras is the organising institute for GATE 2027. Its helpdesk is helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in and 044-22578200, and the official site lists application-related queries from Monday to Friday, 5 pm to 7 pm. Write to one office at a time, quote your enrolment ID, and keep the reply.

If you have already applied, the regular, extended and special registration windows closed in October 2026, so your six choices are already on your application. The official dates page lists a data correction window with fee as TBA. Watch the important dates and check what that window allows before assuming you can change cities.

City allotment is scheduled for 4 January 2027. The admit card date is still TBA, and the exams run over three weekends: 6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 February 2027. Results are due on 19 March 2027. All official dates are liable to change.

A few habits that help in a city this size:

1. When the admit card arrives, find the exact centre address and do a trial run the weekend before, at the same time of day as your session.
2. If you plan to take the metro, check the timetable on the website of Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) closer to the date. BMRCL notes that train times may change for planned activities.
3. Aim to reach well before the reporting time. Unfamiliar campuses take longer to find than you think.
4. Carry the printed admit card and the photo ID you used in the application, plus whatever else the admit card tells you to bring. Follow the admit card over any advice from friends, including this page.

If you are allotted Tumakuru or Mysuru rather than Bengaluru, plan that trip the same way and consider staying close by the night before.

Each of these has a GATEiit page that explains its GATE routes. Start with the one in your own city.

• IISc Bengaluru, Bengaluru, Karnataka.
• IIT Dharwad, Dharwad, Karnataka.
• NITK Surathkal, Surathkal, Karnataka.
• IIT Palakkad, Palakkad, Kerala.
• IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
• IIT Tirupati, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh.

Where you write the exam has no link to where you can apply afterwards. A Bengaluru North centre does not tie you to IISc, and a GATE score from any centre counts the same. The full list is on /institutes.

GATEiit is a free online site. It has no centre, office or classroom in Bengaluru or anywhere else, so everything below works the same from a PG room in the city or a hostel in Mysuru.

Pick your paper first. GATE DA (Data Science and Artificial Intelligence) and GATE CSE (Computer Science and Information Technology) each have a paper page with the syllabus, and the WhatsApp group link for that paper sits on its page. The step-by-step guides are how to prepare for GATE DA 2027 and how to prepare for GATE CSE 2027, and the rest are under /guides.

From November to February, the most useful work is solving old papers under time. Use /pyq for previous-year questions and /practice for timed sets. If you have a weekday job in the city, two focused evening hours plus a full mock on Saturday or Sunday fits well, since the exam itself falls on weekends.

Friends writing elsewhere can compare notes on the Hyderabad and Chennai pages, or the full GATE 2027 cities list.