GATE 2027 in Prayagraj (Allahabad): IIT Kanpur Zone, Exam Cities and Institutes

If you scroll the city drop-down looking for Allahabad, you will not find it. The GATE 2027 exam-city page lists the city as "Prayagraj", under Uttar Pradesh, in the IIT Kanpur zone. The district's own history page refers to Prayagraj as "then known as Allahabad", so it is the same city under its current name.

The same goes for the two institutes most of us here know by the old name. MNNIT Allahabad and IIIT Allahabad keep Allahabad in their names, but both are in Prayagraj.

The form rule is simple and strict. You choose six cities, and all six must come from one zone. The list is tentative, GATE can add or drop a city, and it may allot you a city outside your six. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

This is where students from our side go wrong. Uttar Pradesh does not sit in one zone. The official list divides it like this:

Uttar Pradesh cities on the list	Zone
Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Gorakhpur, Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi	IIT Kanpur
Greater NOIDA, Mathura	IIT Delhi
Ghaziabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, NOIDA	IIT Roorkee

So if you are doing an internship in NOIDA and want to keep Prayagraj as a home option, you cannot have both. Mathura looks like a western UP neighbour of Agra, but it is IIT Delhi zone, while Agra is IIT Kanpur zone.

Bihar is the other trap. Patna, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Purnea are all in the IIT Guwahati zone. A student from Bihar studying in Prayagraj has to pick one side: a Prayagraj list or a Patna list. The Patna page covers the second.

The district's travel page gives road distances from Prayagraj: Varanasi 112 km, Lucknow 183 km, Kanpur 191 km and Gorakhpur 212 km. All four are in your zone, so they make natural back-ups in that order of distance.

1. Prayagraj
2. Varanasi
3. Lucknow
4. Kanpur
5. Gorakhpur
6. Satna, or Agra if family there gives you a place to stay

The IIT Kanpur zone also covers Madhya Pradesh's Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Sagar and Satna. The same district page notes that Rewa in Madhya Pradesh borders Prayagraj to the south. Rewa is not an exam city, so a student from that side can combine Satna with Prayagraj on one form.

Reorder this by where you can sleep the night before the paper. The Varanasi, Lucknow and Kanpur pages describe the zone from their end.

Questions about exam cities go to the zone's coordinating institute: IIT Kanpur, Kanpur 208 016, gate@iitk.ac.in, phone 0512-2596962 or 0512-2596963. Write from the email you registered with and give your enrolment ID.

Portal and paper questions go to IIT Madras, which organises GATE 2027: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200.

Registration has closed. The paid data-correction window is still marked TBA on the official dates page, so do not assume you can change cities later. The city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027, the admit card date is TBA, and results come on 19 March 2027.

Your admit card names the exact centre and the reporting time. Open the location as soon as the card is out and work out the route from where you will stay. A centre in the Prayagraj listing need not be near your locality.

For students coming from outside, the district's travel page says the city is the headquarters of the North Central Railway zone and has eight railway stations within its limits. It lists UPSRTC bus stands at Civil Lines and Zero Road, and a domestic airport at Bamrauli, about 12 km from the city. If you are allotted Varanasi, Lucknow or Kanpur instead, travel the day before.

DA and CS can be taken together in GATE 2027. If you write both, the two-paper rules say the second paper's centre may be different, though in the same city. Check both papers on the card.

Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you entered on the form, and anything else the card asks for. The admit card's instructions are final.

Two GATE-admitting institutes are in the city itself:

• MNNIT Allahabad, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, in Prayagraj.
• IIIT Allahabad, Indian Institute of Information Technology, at Jhalwa in Prayagraj.

Their GATEiit pages explain how DA and CSE candidates are admitted. In the same state, IIT (BHU) Varanasi and IIT Kanpur have pages too, and the full set is on /institutes.

Your exam city has nothing to do with admission. Writing GATE in Prayagraj gives no edge at MNNIT or IIIT Allahabad.

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

Start 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.

Solve past papers on /pyq and topic sets on /practice. For a plan, read the GATE DA 2027 guide or the GATE CSE 2027 guide, and browse /guides for more. All six exam days fall on weekends, so sit full mocks on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The GATE 2027 page and the exam-city overview have the wider picture.