Representative image. Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Why it matters
Over 46 lakh students now know their exam days more than three months ahead, which fixes revision plans, coaching schedules and family travel. Class 12 students can also see how their board papers sit against entrance exam season, which CBSE says it planned around.
The CBSE date sheet 2027 is out. Class 10 and Class 12 board exams will both begin on Tuesday, 16 February 2027, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said in a circular signed on 6 November 2026 by its Controller of Examinations, Sanyam Bhardwaj. Class 10 papers end on 9 March and Class 12 papers on 9 April.
Every paper in the CBSE date sheet 2027 starts at 10:30 am IST. Most main papers run three hours, to 1:30 pm, while several vocational and skill subjects end at 12:30 pm, the date sheet shows. Over 26.5 lakh students have registered for Class 10 and over 19.8 lakh for Class 12, according to the board.
CBSE date sheet 2027: what the circular says
The CBSE board exam 2027 timetable came early, the board said, and it could finalise it because schools had finished sending their List of Candidates (LOC), the form that records which subjects each student has chosen. With that data in hand, it fixed dates for 83 subjects in Class 10 and 121 subjects in Class 12, and released them 101 days before the first paper.
The circular lists what CBSE weighed while drawing up the dates:
- gaps between subjects that students commonly take together;
- the tentative dates of major entrance exams, so that Class 12 papers end before those begin;
- how many candidates each exam centre can seat on a given day;
- keeping teachers away from their schools for as short a time as possible during evaluation;
- more than 40,000 subject combinations, so that no two subjects a student has chosen fall on the same day.
The board also said the early release should give students time to plan revision, let families plan summer travel around the exam and evaluation calendar, and give exam-centre schools time to prepare. Notes on the date sheet say detailed instructions will follow separately, students must follow the instructions on their admit card, and no communication devices are allowed inside exam centres. The full timetable is on the CBSE date sheet PDF at cbse.gov.in.
CBSE class 10 date sheet: the main papers
The CBSE class 10 date sheet opens with Painting on 16 February, a two-hour paper. The first paper most students will sit is Mathematics (Standard and Basic) on 17 February. The main subjects then follow at gaps of four or five days:
| Date (2027) | Class 10 paper | Days since the previous main paper |
|---|---|---|
| Wed, 17 February | Mathematics (Standard and Basic) | First main paper |
| Mon, 22 February | Science | 5 |
| Fri, 26 February | English (Communicative; Language and Literature) | 4 |
| Wed, 3 March | Hindi Course A and Course B | 5 |
| Mon, 8 March | Social Science | 5 |
Elsewhere in the CBSE class 10 date sheet, regional languages such as Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi and Gujarati are on 4 March, and the last day, 9 March, carries foreign languages including German, Japanese and Spanish along with National Cadet Corps. Indian Express reported that CBSE will again hold Class 10 board exams in two sessions, as it began doing last year, and that the dates for the second session have not been announced yet.
CBSE class 12 date sheet: science, commerce and humanities
The CBSE class 12 date sheet starts with Physics on 16 February. The stretch to 9 April is long because Class 12 has 121 subjects, but each student sits only their own five or six. NewsPlainly lined up the core papers of the three common streams from the date sheet to show when each group finishes:
| Stream (common subjects) | Papers and dates (2027) | Last core paper |
|---|---|---|
| Science, PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Maths) | Physics 16 Feb, Chemistry 27 Feb, English 5 Mar, Mathematics 9 Mar | 9 March |
| Science, PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) | Physics 16 Feb, Chemistry 27 Feb, English 5 Mar, Biology 25 Mar | 25 March |
| Commerce | Accountancy 23 Feb, English 5 Mar, Economics 16 Mar, Business Studies 1 Apr | 1 April |
| Humanities | Geography 25 Feb, English 5 Mar, Political Science 19 Mar, History 27 Mar, Sociology 30 Mar | 30 March |
By NewsPlainly’s count, a PCM student gets 11 days between Physics and Chemistry, 6 days before English and 4 days before Mathematics, and is done by 9 March, a month before the board’s last paper. A commerce student has the longest wait at the end: 16 days between Economics and Business Studies. The final day, 9 April, has only two vocational papers, Retail and Web Application. Science students who take Biology alongside Mathematics (Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology, often called PCMB) will also finish on 25 March, with Biology as their last core paper.
How many students and what happens after the exams
Taken together, CBSE’s figures mean more than 46.3 lakh students (26.5 lakh plus 19.8 lakh) are registered for the CBSE board exam 2027 cycle. Indian Express reported that the exams will be held in pen-and-paper mode in a single shift at centres across India and in 26 countries abroad.
On marking, Indian Express, citing the guidelines in the notice, reported that checking of answer sheets for each subject will begin about 10 days after that subject’s exam and finish within 12 days. CBSE’s circular ties the timetable to this too: it says the dates were set so teachers spend less time away from schools on evaluation duty and non-board classes are not disrupted.
For students, the practical step now is to check their own subject codes against the official CBSE date sheet 2027 PDF rather than a forwarded image, since many papers share a date across subject codes. Admit cards and the detailed instructions mentioned in the notes will come later; the date sheet does not give dates for them. Students who take a vocational or skill subject should look at its time slot as well as its date, because some of those papers end at 12:30 pm and others at 1:30 pm. For more school and exam news, see our India section.
Frequently asked questions
When do CBSE board exams 2027 start?
On Tuesday, 16 February 2027 for both Class 10 and Class 12. Every paper starts at 10:30 am IST.
When is the last CBSE Class 10 and Class 12 exam in 2027?
Class 10 ends on 9 March 2027. Class 12 ends on 9 April 2027 with Retail and Web Application.
When are the CBSE Class 12 Physics, Chemistry and Maths exams 2027?
Physics on 16 February, Chemistry on 27 February and Mathematics (with Applied Mathematics) on 9 March 2027.
Where can I download the CBSE date sheet 2027?
On the official website, cbse.gov.in, where the board posted the Class 10 and 12 date sheet PDF on 6 November 2026.