There is no single scheme called PM Scholarship. Four different government schemes are officially named Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme, and others carrying the Prime Minister's name sit alongside them. So pick the right one, then apply on the right website.
- Parent served in the Army, Navy or Air Force? Your scheme is the Ministry of Defence PMSS on ksb.gov.in — the only one of the four that is not on the National Scholarship Portal.
- Everything else carrying the PM name — the two Ministry of Home Affairs schemes, the Ministry of Railways scheme, PM-USP CSSS, PM-USP for Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh and the two PM-YASASVI schemes — is applied for at scholarships.gov.in.
- Just finished Class 12? The scheme built for you is PM-USP CSSS, and the test is the top 20 per cent of your stream in your board.
Read directly from scholarships.gov.in on 21 October 2026, against every central sector scheme on the portal:
- 31 October 2026 — student application closes.
- 15 November 2026 — institute verification closes, and defective application verification closes.
- 30 November 2026 — district, state and ministry nodal officer verification closes.
Submitting the form is not the finish line. An application not verified at both levels is officially treated as Invalid. So your real task in the first week of November is to make your Institute Nodal Officer verify you. There is no extension notice on the portal, and dates can change, so re-check before you rely on them.
- Apply online: the official link for your scheme
- Why 31 October is not the real finish line
- Four schemes are officially named Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme
- PMSS from the Ministry of Defence: amount, portal and real odds
- Just passed Class 12? Your scheme is PM-USP CSSS
- How to apply on the National Scholarship Portal, step by step
- Scheme not showing after login? Fix the name mismatch
- Every central sector scheme on the portal, and its dates
- The Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh scheme, and PM-YASASVI in short
- PM Vidyalaxmi is a loan scheme, not a scholarship
- How the money reaches you, and why nobody should charge you
- Official links and helplines
- Frequently asked questions
Apply online: the official link for your scheme
Most readers who search "PM scholarship 2026 apply online" want three things and nothing more: the website, the last date, and what to click. Here they are before anything else.
The portal itself says "The Portal is open for Academic year 2026-27 from 1st June 2026 onwards." Read on 21 October 2026, it shows 31 October 2026 as the student application closing date against every central sector scheme listed on it. Ten days. Start today, because the form needs a One Time Registration number first and that cannot be arranged on the last evening.
Two qualifiers keep that honest. First, 31 October 2026 is what the portal currently displays, and dates do get changed, so confirm on the scheme's own entry. Second, it covers central sector schemes only and says nothing about state schemes, which have their own calendars. Telangana readers should start at our TS ePASS scholarship guide and Andhra Pradesh readers at the AP ePASS and fee reimbursement guide.
Get your OTR before you open the form. One Time Registration has been mandatory since academic year 2024-25. It is a unique 14-digit number, valid throughout your academic career. Aadhaar is 12 digits, so do not confuse the two. Students with disabilities must first give consent on the UDID portal.
Why 31 October is not the real finish line
This is the part almost nobody writes about, and it is the most common way students lose a scholarship they were fully eligible for.
The portal publishes four dates, not one. Student application closes 31 October 2026. Defective application verification and institute verification both close 15 November 2026. District, state and ministry nodal officer verification closes 30 November 2026. Those are not administrative noise. Every application passes two levels of verification — Level 1 by the institute where the student studies, Level 2 by the State Higher Education Department or State Nodal Agency — for both fresh and renewal applicants. An application not verified at either level is treated as "Invalid".
So think of November like this. You submit by 31 October, and then someone in your own college office has about two weeks to open your file and approve it. If that does not happen by 15 November, nothing the nodal officer does later can save it. Colleges handle hundreds of files, and the ones verified first belong to students who turned up and asked.
- 1 to 5 November: log in, open My Application and use Check Your Status against your Application ID.
- If it is pending at the institute: go to the college office in person and ask the Institute Nodal Officer to verify. Carry copies of what you uploaded, because the institute may ask for them at verification.
- Defective means "There are errors you can correct and resubmit", and that is your one chance to edit after submission. Rejected means "permanently disqualified due to non-fulfillment of eligibility or incorrect data", and does not reopen.
Keep checking after 15 November, because Level 2 runs to 30 November. The portal lists nodal officer email addresses under the Services tab.
Four schemes are officially named Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme
Here is the sentence that matters most on this page, and it is the reason defence families waste weeks every year: the Ministry of Defence scheme is the only Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme that is not on the National Scholarship Portal. An ex-serviceman's child who goes to scholarships.gov.in, logs in and looks for their scheme will simply not find it. It is not hidden and it is not closed. It is on a different website, ksb.gov.in, run by the Kendriya Sainik Board.
Read today from the portal's own All-Scholarships listing for 2026-27, with the Ministry of Defence scheme page, these are the four. The first column is the portal's wording.
| Scheme, exactly as officially named | Run by | Apply on |
|---|---|---|
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme (PMSS) | Ministry of Defence, managed by the Kendriya Sainik Board | ksb.gov.in — not on the portal |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Central Armed Police Forces And Assam Rifles (Merit Based Scheme) | Ministry of Home Affairs | scholarships.gov.in |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Wards Of States/UTs Police Personnel Martyred During Terror/Naxal Attacks (Merit Based Scheme) | Ministry of Home Affairs | scholarships.gov.in |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Ministry Of Railways (Merit Based Scheme) | Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) | scholarships.gov.in |
One naming confusion is worth clearing up once and then leaving alone. Readers often type three letters, PMS, meaning the state-administered Post Matric Scholarship for students of reserved categories, and land on pages about the Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme, which is a completely different thing with completely different eligibility. If that is what you were looking for, our dedicated guide is here: Post Matric Scholarship 2026. Everything else on this page is about the Prime Minister's schemes.
PMSS from the Ministry of Defence: amount, portal and real odds
This is the scheme most people mean when they say PM Scholarship. The Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare page describes it in its own words as being implemented "to encourage technical and post-graduate education for the widows and wards of the deceased/ex-service personnel of Armed Forces." It was introduced in 2006, it is "funded out of National Defence Fund administered by Prime Minister's Office", and it is managed by the Kendriya Sainik Board. It moved from offline to online applications with effect from academic year 2016-17.
| Item | What the Ministry of Defence page says |
|---|---|
| Who it is for | Widows and wards of deceased or ex-service personnel of the Armed Forces |
| Rate for boys | Rs 2,500 per month, with effect from financial year 2019-20 (earlier Rs 2,000) |
| Rate for girls | Rs 3,000 per month, with effect from financial year 2019-20 (earlier Rs 2,250) |
| Scholarships a year | Five thousand five hundred awarded annually |
| Courses covered | Technical institutions — medical, dental, veterinary, engineering, MBA, MCA and equivalent, with AICTE or UGC approval |
| Where to apply | ksb.gov.in — click PMSS on the horizontal menu bar |
The honest answer on the PMSS last date
There is no last date we can give you, and we are not going to invent one. The Ministry of Defence scheme page does not publish an application window. The window is announced by the Kendriya Sainik Board on ksb.gov.in under the PMSS menu. Specific windows for this scheme circulate widely online; we cannot confirm any of them officially, and a wrong date costs a student an entire academic year. Open ksb.gov.in, click PMSS, and trust the notice there over any blog, this one included.
For the same reason you will not find a minimum-marks figure, a first-year-only rule or a priority-category list here. Those claims are common online and we could not verify them officially. The Ministry of Defence scheme page and the Kendriya Sainik Board portal are the sources that count.
What your actual chances look like
The Ministry of Defence publishes the real numbers, which almost nobody reproduces. This is the scheme's own record of applications and selections over five academic years, and it tells a defence family something genuinely useful about the odds before they spend a weekend on documents.
| Academic year | Financial year | Fresh applications received | Found eligible | Fresh merit list | Renewal cases | Total granted including renewal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 5,488 | 5,552 | 5,488 | 10,465 | 15,953 |
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 12,067 | 7,001 | 5,492 | 10,161 | 15,653 |
| 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 12,237 | 9,342 | 5,497 | 9,618 | 15,115 |
| 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 12,199 | 9,401 | 5,503 | 10,877 | 16,380 |
| 2024-25 | 2025-26 | 12,149 | 9,478 | 5,493 | 10,187 | 15,680 |
Read it plainly. Roughly 12,000 fresh applications chase about 5,500 fresh slots, so a little under half of fresh applicants make the merit list, and many who are found eligible still miss out because the list is capped. Renewals run at roughly twice the fresh intake. Getting in once is the hard part, so treat every renewal as seriously as the first application.
Just passed Class 12? Your scheme is PM-USP CSSS
If you finished Class 12 and searched for a prime minister scholarship scheme for 12th pass students, this is your answer. Your scheme is PM-USP CSSS, officially the Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Protsahan (PM-USP) Central Sector Scheme of Scholarship for College and University Students. The Department of Higher Education has run it since 2008, it is merit-cum-means, and it is given "on the basis of results of Higher Secondary / Class XII Board Examination" to "meritorious students from poor families".
What "top 20 percentile" actually means
This is where most readers give up, because the official wording reads like a statistics exam. The guidelines say the scholarship goes to students "above 80th percentile of successful candidates in the relevant stream from the respective Board of Examination in Class XII of 10+2 pattern". The official FAQ calls the same rule the "Top 20th percentile list of the concerned Board".
In plain language: take everyone who passed Class 12 in your stream in your own board, line them up by marks, and you clear this test if you are in the top 20 per cent of that line. So it counts only students who passed, not everyone who sat the exam; it is within your stream; and it is within your board, so a state board student is not competing against CBSE. The cut-off differs for every board and stream, and no one can print it in advance.
The rest of the eligibility, in full
- You are above the 80th percentile of successful candidates in your stream in your board, in Class 12 of the 10+2 pattern
- You are in a regular degree course
- Family income is up to Rs 4.5 lakh a year
- The course and institution are recognised by AICTE and the relevant regulatory body. A private college is fine if it is recognised and on the AISHE portal
- The course is correspondence or distance mode
- You are a diploma student
- You took a drop after Class 12
- You are "receiving any other scholarship or fee reimbursement of any kind."
How much PM-USP CSSS pays
| Stage of study | Amount per year |
|---|---|
| Graduation level, first three years | Rs 12,000 |
| Post-graduation level | Rs 20,000 |
| Five-year, integrated professional and technical courses, 4th and 5th year | Rs 20,000 |
| Technical courses, 4th and 5th year | Rs 20,000 |
| B.Tech and B.E. | Rs 12,000 for years 1 to 3 and Rs 20,000 in the 4th year. The scholarship runs only up to graduation level for this route |
| Maximum total duration | Not exceeding 5 years |
Renewal, which is where the money is lost
It is renewable year to year up to post-graduate level, except technical degree courses at graduation level. You need at least 50 per cent marks in the annual examination and at least 75 per cent attendance. Indisciplined or criminal behaviour, including ragging, leads to forfeiture. The renewal upload is just your previous year's marksheet. Miss the online renewal and you are not permanently debarred, but that year's renewal is gone.
On the portal's 2026-27 listing, the labels against PM-USP CSSS read "Scheme Open from (for Renewal)" and "Student Application Open till (for Renewal)". The same "(for Renewal)" label appears against PM USP Special Scholarship Scheme For Jammu Kashmir And Ladakh, PM YASASVI Top Class Education In Schools and the NEC Merit Scholarship. Reported exactly as the portal words it: for those four, what the portal confirms as open until 31 October 2026 is renewal. It does not say fresh applications are open, and it does not say they are closed. Open the scheme's own Specifications link and read it before you plan around a fresh application.
How to apply on the National Scholarship Portal, step by step
This is the sequence for PM-USP CSSS, and the shape is the same for the other central sector schemes on the portal. Applications are received online only, on www.scholarships.gov.in. Credentials such as caste and educational qualifications are verified through DigiLocker.
Log in with your Aadhaar or OTR number and your personal details are pre-filled from the OTR registration form. If you have lost your 14-digit number, use the Forgot OTR Number option. To generate the Application ID you must select your Domicile State and then the "Post-Matric" option from the dropdown. Do not be thrown by that label. It is only the portal's name for the application type covering study after Class 10, and choosing it does not put you into a state Post Matric Scholarship. The generated Application ID then appears under My Application.
The form saves at every stage, so you can fill it across many sittings. Choose "PM-USP Central Sector Scheme of Scholarship for College and University Students" from the scheme list. If your scheme is not visible at all, stop and read the next section, because that is almost always a name mismatch.
When several institutes have similar names, identify yours by AISHE code at aishe.gov.in, and select the correct course duration, because a wrong duration causes errors at renewal. The guidelines warn that a FINAL SUBMIT with the wrong institution "shall lead to non-verification of applications by the institution, which cannot be corrected thereafter".
Fresh applicants upload the Class 12 marksheet, family income certificate, a category certificate if reserved and a disability certificate if applicable. Renewal applicants upload the previous year's marksheet. The income certificate is needed only for fresh applicants. Keep copies for the institute. Use your own email and mobile number, because no change in email ID or mobile number will be entertained during the entire process and the portal communicates only by email and SMS.
Scheme not showing after login? Fix the name mismatch
Every year eligible students conclude they are not eligible, when the portal simply cannot match them to their board record.
The rule, in the guidelines' own words, is that the student's name, the father's name and the roll number "should exactly match as it has been mentioned in the Roll Card/Mark sheet, so that the data gets captured and the scheme is visible" on the portal.
The official document gives its own example, which fits almost every Indian family. Say the father's name is printed on the Class 12 marksheet as "Shri Mahendra Pratap Singh" but Aadhaar says "M.P. Singh". Same man; two different people as far as the portal is concerned. The documented result is flat: "Scheme will not be visible". The student logs in, sees nothing to apply for, and assumes the window is shut.
- Compare three fields on your marksheet and Aadhaar character by character: your name, your father's name and your roll number. Usual culprits are initials instead of a full name, a missing middle name, a "Shri" on one document only, and spelling variants. Make the Aadhaar record match the marksheet, because the board record is what the portal matches against.
- Demographic changes, meaning name, father's name, date of birth and contact details, must be made in the OTR login and then re-authenticated through e-KYC and face authentication. Do this before 31 October, because a correction is not instant.
- If the scheme still does not appear once the names match, your college has not published your course. Only the Institute Nodal Officer can fix that by updating and validating the institute's courses and durations.
Every central sector scheme on the portal, and its 2026-27 dates
Read from the portal on 21 October 2026. Every scheme below carries the same closing dates: student application 31-10-2026, institute and defective verification 15-11-2026, nodal officer verification 30-11-2026. Names are the portal's own wording, and our National Scholarship Portal guide takes them scheme by scheme.
| Scheme, as the portal words it | Portal opened |
|---|---|
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Wards Of States/UTs Police Personnel Martyred During Terror/Naxal Attacks | 01-06-2026 |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Central Armed Police Forces And Assam Rifles | 01-06-2026 |
| Prime Minister's Scholarship Scheme For Ministry Of Railways | 01-06-2026 |
| PM-USP – Central Sector Scheme Of Scholarship For College And University Students (CSSS) | 01-06-2026 — labelled "for Renewal" |
| PM USP Special Scholarship Scheme For Jammu Kashmir And Ladakh | 01-06-2026 — labelled "for Renewal" |
| PM YASASVI Central Sector Scheme Of Top Class Education In Schools For OBC, EBC And DNT Students | 01-06-2026 — labelled "for Renewal" |
| PM YASASVI Central Sector Scheme Of Top Class Education In College For OBC, EBC And DNT Students | 01-06-2026 |
| AICTE – Pragati Scholarship Scheme For Girl Students (Technical Degree and Technical Diploma) | 01-06-2026 |
| AICTE – Saksham Scholarship Scheme For Specially Abled Student (Technical Degree and Technical Diploma) | 01-06-2026 |
| AICTE – Swanath Scholarship Scheme (Technical Degree and Technical Diploma) | 01-06-2026 |
| National Scholarship For Post Graduate Studies (UGC) | 16-09-2026 |
| Ishan Uday Special Scholarship Scheme For NER (UGC) | 16-09-2026 |
| Financial Assistance For Education To The Wards Of Beedi/Cine/IOMC/LSDM, pre and post matric stages | 01-06-2026 |
| National Renewable Energy Fellowship Scheme | 01-06-2026 |
| Stipend Scheme For UG And PG Studies In Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata | 01-06-2026 |
| ICAR — National Talent Scholarship (NTS-UG and NTS-PG), Post Graduate Scholarship (PGS), and Junior and Senior Research Fellowships | 01-06-2026 |
| Central Sector Scholarship Of Top Class Education For SC Students | 01-06-2026 |
| Free Coaching For SCs, OBCs And Beneficiaries Of PM CARES Children Scheme | 03-08-2026 |
| Pre Matric and Post Matric Scholarship For Students With Disabilities | 25-07-2026 |
| Scholarship For Top Class Education For Students With Disabilities | 01-06-2026 |
| National Means Cum Merit Scholarship | 01-06-2026 |
| National Fellowship And Scholarship For Higher Education Of ST Students – Scholarship | 01-06-2026 |
| Financial Support To The Students Of NER For Higher Professional Courses (NEC Merit Scholarship) | 15-07-2026 — labelled "for Renewal" |
The Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh scheme, and PM-YASASVI in short
The PM-USP Special Scholarship Scheme for Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh came from an Expert Group constituted by the Prime Minister on 18 August 2010 and launched in 2011. It pays the academic fee and a maintenance allowance for students of the two union territories who, after Class 12, get admission through AICTE's counselling under a supernumerary quota in institutions outside Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, except in medical courses. There are 5,000 fresh scholarships a year: 2,070 General Degree, 2,830 Professional or Engineering, 100 Medical.
| Course group | Academic fee upper limit |
|---|---|
| General Degree | Rs 30,000 |
| Professional, Engineering, B.Sc. Nursing, B.Pharmacy, B.Architecture (subject to NATA), HMCT Degree, BA LLB in National Law Colleges only | Rs 1.25 lakh |
| Medical, BDS or equivalent (subject to NEET where applicable) | Rs 3.00 lakh |
| Maintenance allowance, all streams | Rs 1.00 lakh per annum, in ten equal instalments |
The academic fee goes directly to the institution, at the lower of the claim or the rate fixed by the fee regulatory authority; the maintenance allowance goes to the student's account. These rates come from a document headed academic year 2025-2026, so check the portal and AICTE for the current year.
PM-YASASVI is the PM Young Achievers Scholarship Award Scheme for Vibrant India for OBCs and Others, run by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment. In the ministry's words it is "an umbrella Scheme formulated for OBC, EBC and DNT Students by clubbing the existing Scholarship Schemes and Hostel Scheme", with five sub-schemes: Pre-Matric Scholarship, Post-Matric Scholarship, Top Class School Education, Top Class College Education, and Construction of Hostel for OBC Boys and Girls. Rates, income limits and test dates are fixed by the ministry's notification, so we are not printing numbers we could not verify. Our PM-YASASVI scholarship guide covers it in depth.
PM Vidyalaxmi is a loan scheme, not a scholarship
Many readers expect PM Vidyalaxmi to be a grant. It is a Central Sector scheme approved by the Union Cabinet on 6 November 2024 under the National Education Policy 2020, and it gives loans. A student admitted to a Quality Higher Education Institution can get a collateral-free, guarantor-free loan covering the full tuition fee and other course-related expenses. Quality institutions are set by NIRF rankings: top 100 overall, category-specific or domain-specific; state institutions ranked 101 to 200; and all central-government-governed institutions. The list began with 860 institutions covering over 22 lakh students. Apply at pmvidyalaxmi.co.in, operational since 25 February 2025. As on 21 July 2026, 1,12,817 loans worth Rs 15,634.78 crore had been sanctioned.
| Benefit | PM Vidyalaxmi | PM-USP CSIS |
|---|---|---|
| Interest subvention | 3 per cent on loans up to Rs 10 lakh during the moratorium period | Full interest subvention during the moratorium period on loans up to Rs 10 lakh |
| Family income ceiling | Up to Rs 8 lakh a year | Up to Rs 4.5 lakh a year |
| Who | Up to one lakh fresh students a year, not already getting another government scholarship or interest subvention | Students in technical or professional courses |
There is also a credit guarantee of 75 per cent of outstanding default on loans up to Rs 7.5 lakh, which supports the bank rather than paying you cash, and release of the subvention from the second year onwards depends on satisfactory academic performance. If a loan is your realistic route, read our complete education loan guide for India first.
How the money reaches you, and why nobody should charge you
PM-USP CSSS is paid by Direct Benefit Transfer into the student's own savings account, which must be Aadhaar-seeded at the bank branch holding it. Track payment on the PFMS portal under Know Your Payment using your Aadhaar number, account number or application ID. If PFMS shows Success but no money arrives, check the account that was Aadhaar-seeded on the transaction date.
There is no application fee, in the government's own words. The official FAQ says: "No, application on the National Scholarship Portal is completely free of cost." So nobody needs paying to generate your OTR or fill your form, and nobody can sanction a scholarship for a commission.
The Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh scheme carries a second protection in equally plain words: even if the institute's total fee exceeds the ceiling, "neither AICTE shall reimburse extra amount nor institute can charge the same from the students". Apply only on scholarships.gov.in, ksb.gov.in or pmvidyalaxmi.co.in.
One last point on names. "PM Kisan scholarship for B.Tech students", "PM Modi scholarship", "PM SSB scholarship" and "PM Shri scholarship" are search phrasings, not scheme names.
Official links and helplines
| What you need | Where to go |
|---|---|
| Apply for central sector schemes | scholarships.gov.in |
| Apply for the Ministry of Defence PMSS | ksb.gov.in |
| PM Vidyalaxmi education loans | pmvidyalaxmi.co.in |
| File a grievance | pgportal.gov.in, plus nodal officer emails under the portal's Services tab |
| Scholarship Division, Department of Higher Education | Phone 011-20862360, email ns1-scholarship@gov.in, at West Block 1, R. K. Puram, New Delhi 110066 |
| Ministry of Social Justice helplines | Toll free 1800-202-1989, national helpline 14566 |
Frequently asked questions
How do I apply for PM Scholarship 2026 online, and what is the official link?
What is the last date for PM Scholarship 2026?
What is the last date for the Ministry of Defence PMSS on ksb.gov.in?
I just passed Class 12. Which PM scholarship is for me?
How much money does PM Scholarship pay?
Why is the scheme not visible when I log in to the National Scholarship Portal?
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