GATE 2027 in Bhubaneswar: IIT Kharagpur Zone, Cuttack and Odisha Cities

On the official exam-city page, "Bhubaneswar" and "Cuttack" are two separate exam cities. Choosing Bhubaneswar does not cover Cuttack, and the other way round. If you are fine writing in either, put both in your six.

Both sit in the IIT Kharagpur zone, along with the six other Odisha cities on the list: Balasore-Bhadrak, Baripada, Brahmapur, Dhenkanal, Rourkela and Sambalpur. Odisha is one of the states that is not split. Any Odisha city can go on the same form as any other.

The rules behind this: you choose six cities, all six must be from one zone, the list is tentative, and GATE may add or remove a city or allot one outside your options. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

Because all of Odisha is in one zone, you can fill all six without leaving the state. A sensible start:

1. Bhubaneswar
2. Cuttack
3. Dhenkanal
4. Brahmapur
5. Balasore-Bhadrak
6. Sambalpur, Baripada or Rourkela

After the first two, order the rest by where you can actually get to early on a February morning, and where you have a place to stay. If your family lives in Brahmapur or Sambalpur, that city may deserve a higher slot than one that is merely closer.

The zone is much wider than Odisha, which helps if you study elsewhere. It includes Kolkata, Howrah and six other West Bengal cities, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, Raipur, Bilaspur and Bhilai-Durg in Chhattisgarh, and nine Andhra Pradesh cities, among them Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam.

Odisha itself is safe. Its neighbours are not, because three of them are split between zones:

State	Same zone as Bhubaneswar (IIT Kharagpur)	Different zone
Andhra Pradesh	Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and five more	Guntur, Amaravati, Tirupati, Nellore and the rest (IIT Madras); Anantapur, Kurnool (IISc)
West Bengal	Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Kharagpur-Midnapur and four more	Asansol, Burdwan, Durgapur, Kalyani, Siliguri (IIT Guwahati)
Jharkhand	Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh	Dhanbad, Bokaro Steel City (IIT Guwahati)

Chhattisgarh's three cities are all IIT Kharagpur zone. Every Bihar city on the list is IIT Guwahati zone.

Andhra is the one to watch. Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada can go on a Bhubaneswar form, but Guntur, listed in the same state, cannot.

If your college is outside the IIT Kharagpur zone, you cannot mix it with Bhubaneswar. Hyderabad is in the IISc zone with Bengaluru North and Bengaluru South. Chennai South, Chennai North and Vellore are in the IIT Madras zone.

So decide where you will be on the exam weekends, 6 and 7, 13 and 14, or 20 and 21 February 2027. If you are coming home, build an Odisha list as above. If you are staying in your hostel, use that zone. The Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru pages have lists for those zones.

Registration has closed; the special window ended on 16 October 2026. The data correction window is TBA on the official dates page, so do not plan on changing cities until GATE announces it.

Exam-city questions from Bhubaneswar go to IIT Kharagpur, the zone's coordinating institute. As listed: IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721 302, gateonline@adm.iitkgp.ac.in, 03222-282091 or 03222-282095. Use your registered email and quote your enrolment ID.

For the application portal or the papers, write to the organising institute, IIT Madras: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200.

The city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027. The admit card date is still TBA; it names your centre and reporting time. Your centre need not be near where you live, and if you have been given Cuttack or Dhenkanal, it may be a campus you have never seen. Look it up the day the admit card comes out and plan from wherever you will stay the night before.

GATE 2027 allows DA and CS as a two-paper combination. If you take both, the second paper's centre may be different, though in the same city.

Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you used in the form, and anything else the admit card lists. Results are due on 19 March 2027.

In Odisha, GATEiit has pages for IIT Bhubaneswar, at Argul in Khordha district, and NIT Rourkela at Rourkela. Each sets out its GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates.

Across the state border, IIT Kharagpur in West Bengal is the zone's own coordinating institute, and IIT (ISM) Dhanbad is in Jharkhand. Others are on /institutes.

The exam city has no bearing on admission. Writing GATE in Bhubaneswar gives no edge at IIT Bhubaneswar, and writing it in Rourkela gives none at NIT Rourkela.

GATEiit is an online site with no centre or office in Bhubaneswar or anywhere else. Everything on it is free.

Open your paper's page first. GATE DA is Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; GATE CSE is Computer Science and Information Technology. Each has the syllabus and a link to the WhatsApp group for that paper.

Work through past papers year by year on /pyq and topic sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide lay out a plan; /guides has the rest. All six exam days are weekends, so sit your full mocks on Saturday and Sunday.

For the national view, see GATE 2027 and the exam-city overview. The Kolkata and Visakhapatnam pages cover the same zone from the other side.