Until when can I change my BE programme after admission?
Until 5 November 2026, when Unique IOE Roll Numbers are issued to everyone admitted by 2 November at 17:00. After that the programme on your roll number is the one you graduate in. A move from Full Fee to Regular inside the same programme stays open.
Programme change ends on the day roll numbers are issued, and IOE fixes both dates in one clause. Be admitted by 2 November 2026 at 17:00 and your Unique IOE Roll Number is issued on 5 November; once it is issued you may not change programme at that campus. The procedure works its own example: a student holding a roll number in Computer Engineering at a campus may not shift to Civil Engineering at the same campus. One move stays open afterwards. Inside the programme you are already in, a transfer from the Full Fee category to the Regular category is still allowed.
- 2 November 2026, 17:00
- Cut-off to be admitted and counted in the main round
- 5 November 2026
- Roll numbers issued. Programme change ends
- After 5 November
- Full Fee to Regular inside the same programme is still allowed
- 16 November 2026
- First year classes begin
Who actually decides a programme change?
The campus or college admission committee does, and it decides on entrance merit rather than on preference. The procedure gives the committee power to change a student’s programme within the same campus on the basis of the entrance examination result order, so a swap is granted where your rank supports it and refused where it does not.
Where is the change recorded?
On the central admission portal, from the campus’s own login. Programme change and admission cancellation both have to be carried out there, which means a change agreed in a department office but never entered is not a change. Ask for the updated portal record before you assume it has happened.
Why does the date matter more than it looks?
Because it is the point at which the choice becomes permanent. Students who took a seat in a programme they did not really want, intending to switch once inside, have until roll numbers are issued. Afterwards the programme on the roll number is the programme on the degree, and the only route left across campuses is the narrow full-fee transfer at the start of second or third year. If you are sitting on that decision, make it in October rather than December.
Full Fee to Regular stays open
If a Regular seat falls vacant in your own programme, that transfer is still available after 5 November, so it is worth asking your campus periodically rather than assuming the door has closed. It is the one movement the roll number does not shut.
The late intake has a later deadline
If you were admitted through the vacant-seat window rather than in the main round, your roll number is not issued on 5 November at all. The procedure gives that intake its own date: the Centralized Admission Monitoring Committee provides the Unique IOE Roll Numbers of students admitted up to 2 December to the campuses on 6 December 2026. Since programme change closes when the roll number is issued, a late-intake student’s window closes on 6 December rather than on 5 November. It is a month longer, and it is worth knowing only because the rest of this page is written for the main round, where the earlier date binds.
Changing campus is a different thing entirely
Programme change is a move inside one campus, decided by that campus’s admission committee. Moving to another campus is not a change at all under this procedure; it is a cancellation followed by a fresh admission. The rule is stated plainly: once you are admitted somewhere, and your name then appears at another campus or college, you can only be admitted at the second after the first admission has been cancelled. That cancellation carries the booklet’s deduction ladder, so the two routes cost very different amounts and only one of them is free.
From the Admission Guidelines 2083: item 12 on page 4 for the dates and the worked example, item 9 on page 3 for who decides a programme change, item 8 on page 3 for the cancel-before-you-move rule, item 10 on page 4 for where it is recorded, and item 13 on page 4 for the late intake’s roll-number date. Dates converted from Bikram Sambat.
Sources
- IOE Admission Guidelines 2083 (Centralized Admission Monitoring Committee)published 12 August 2026 · read 18 August 2026
Last reviewed by Ram Raj Thapa, Admissions Officer, Imperial College of Engineering. Every figure on this page is cited to the document it came from.
