GATE 2027 in Kolkata: IIT Kharagpur Zone, Exam Cities and Institutes

Most of us assume the whole state goes to IIT Kharagpur. The official exam-city page says otherwise. West Bengal's thirteen exam cities are divided like this:

Zone (coordinating institute)	West Bengal exam cities
IIT Kharagpur	Bankura, Berhampore, Hooghly, Howrah, Kharagpur-Midnapur, Kolaghat, Kolkata, Suri
IIT Guwahati	Asansol, Burdwan, Durgapur, Kalyani, Siliguri

Kolkata appears once, as "Kolkata". The list has no north or south Kolkata option and no separate entry for Salt Lake or New Town. Howrah and Hooghly are their own exam cities, which is useful, because they give you two more same-zone choices close to home.

GATE's rule is that all six of your choices must come from one zone. So a form with Kolkata on it cannot carry Kalyani, Burdwan, Durgapur, Asansol or Siliguri, however near some of them feel. The list is tentative: GATE may add or remove a city, and may allot a city outside your options if it has to. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

If Kolkata is your first choice, the other five have to be IIT Kharagpur-zone cities. Inside West Bengal you have seven to pick from, so you never need to leave the state. One reasonable order:

1. Kolkata
2. Howrah
3. Hooghly
4. Kolaghat
5. Kharagpur-Midnapur
6. Bankura, Suri or Berhampore, whichever you can reach or have family in

Put the back-ups in the order you could actually get to on a February morning, and favour the ones where you could stay the night before. A choice you cannot reach is worse than no choice.

The IIT Kharagpur zone is also much wider than Bengal. It takes in all eight Odisha cities (Balasore-Bhadrak, Baripada, Bhubaneswar, Brahmapur, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Rourkela, Sambalpur), Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur and Ranchi in Jharkhand, Bhilai-Durg, Bilaspur and Raipur in Chhattisgarh, and nine Andhra Pradesh cities, among them Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. If you are from Bhubaneswar or Jamshedpur but study in Kolkata, you can mix your home city and Kolkata on one form. That is a real advantage of this zone.

The IIT Guwahati zone reaches well into eastern India, and that is where Kolkata students get caught. None of these can go on a form that has Kolkata:

• West Bengal, IIT Guwahati zone: Kalyani, Burdwan, Durgapur, Asansol, Siliguri.
• Jharkhand, IIT Guwahati zone: Dhanbad and Bokaro Steel City. (Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Hazaribagh stay in the IIT Kharagpur zone.)
• Bihar, IIT Guwahati zone: every Bihar city on the list, that is Patna, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Purnea.
• North-east and Sikkim: Guwahati, Gangtok, Agartala and the rest are all IIT Guwahati zone.

Jharkhand is the one that trips people up, because it is split city by city. A student from Dhanbad who studies in Kolkata has to choose: Kolkata with Ranchi or Jamshedpur, or Dhanbad with Asansol, Durgapur and Burdwan. Both are valid lists. They just cannot be the same list.

If you study or work in Kolkata but go home at weekends, note that GATE 2027 falls on three weekends: 6 and 7, 13 and 14, and 20 and 21 February. Decide first where you will physically be in February. Then pick the zone that fits.

If you will be at home in Kalyani, Burdwan, Durgapur, Asansol or Siliguri, an IIT Guwahati-zone list built on those five cities keeps you close to home. If you will be in a Kolkata hostel, PG or job, stay with the IIT Kharagpur zone and the list in the section above.

Registration for GATE 2027 has closed; the last special window ended on 16 October 2026. The data correction window is shown as TBA on the official dates page, so check there before counting on any change to your city choices.

Exam-city questions from Kolkata go to IIT Kharagpur, the zone's coordinating institute. The contact as listed:

• IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721 302: gateonline@adm.iitkgp.ac.in, 03222-282091, 03222-282095

Write from the email ID you registered with and quote your enrolment ID. For the application portal or the paper itself, the organising institute is IIT Madras: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200.

The city allotment notification is scheduled for 4 January 2027. The admit card date is still TBA, and the admit card is what names your exact centre and reporting time. Kolkata's centres need not be close to where you live, so on the evening the admit card comes out, find the centre on a map and work out the route from wherever you will sleep the night before. If you have been allotted Kolaghat, Kharagpur-Midnapur or one of the other back-ups, reach the day before.

If you are writing two papers, such as DA and CS, GATE says the centre for your second paper may be different from the first, though in the same city. Check both on the admit card.

Carry the printed admit card and the original photo ID you entered in the form, and whatever else the admit card lists. Its instructions on what you may take inside are the final word. Results are due on 19 March 2027.

In West Bengal, the institute with a GATEiit page is IIT Kharagpur, at Kharagpur in the state. Its page sets out the GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates.

Within reach in neighbouring states are IIT (ISM) Dhanbad in Jharkhand, IIT Guwahati in Assam and IIT (BHU) Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. The full list is on /institutes.

Your exam city plays no part in admission. Writing GATE in Kolkata does not help with IIT Kharagpur, and writing it in Dhanbad does not help with IIT (ISM). Choose the city for the day and the institutes on their own merits.

GATEiit is an online site with no centre or office in Kolkata or anywhere else. Everything on it is free and works the same from a hostel room in Kolkata as from a flat in Howrah.

Begin with your paper. GATE DA is Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and GATE CSE is Computer Science and Information Technology; each page has the syllabus and a link to the WhatsApp group for that paper. GATE 2027 allows DA and CS as a two-paper combination.

Then work through past papers year by year on /pyq and topic-wise sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide lay out a plan, with more on /guides. If you are working, take your full mocks on Saturday and Sunday mornings, since that is when the real papers fall.

For the national view, see GATE 2027 and the exam-city overview. Students elsewhere in the IIT Kharagpur zone have the Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada pages.