IIT admissions 2025: Olympiad, arts, and sports pathways now open for UG courses

Several Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have announced that they will be broadening the eligibility criteria for students to get admitted to them.

From the 2025-26 academic year, several of the top IITs, including IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Bombay and IIT Indore, will open admission channels for students excelling in the Olympiads exam, fine arts, sports or cultural activities, Business Standard reports.

IITs Kanpur, Gandhinagar, Indore, Madras and Bombay have opened up the Olympiad route for admissions. However, this route is restricted by subjects in some of the IITs — for instance, IIT Madras has opened this route for candidates for the Science Olympiad, and IIT Bombay is accepting Math Olympiad performances.

As for sports excellence, IITs Indore and Madras have opened admissions for applicants through the Sports Excellence Admission (SEA) pathway.

IIT Madras is the only one among the top IITs to open its admission to candidates excelling in fine arts and cultural activities. Students with remarkable achievements in the arts can now seek admission through the Fine Arts and Culture Excellence (FACE) programme.

Usually, admission to IITs is determined by the applicants’ scores in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) — both the Main paper and the Advanced paper.

The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) has initiated the admissions counselling process for IITs, with the Mock Seat Allocation 1 results out on the official website today, June 9.