SBI Clerk Prelims Result 2026: Shortlist Rules, Mains Pattern and the Andhra Pradesh Problem

State Bank of India held the online preliminary examination for Junior Associate (Customer Support & Sales) on 26 and 27 September 2026, under advertisement CRPD/CR/2026-27/17. This is the big one — 7,680 clerical vacancies across 24 States and Union Territories.

The result is not out. What follows is everything the official advertisement actually commits to, read page by page out of the document itself, plus the live status of SBI's own careers page as of today. Three things in here change how you should spend the next few weeks, and one of them is bad news for a large group of readers.

Result status as of 23 October 2026

Not declared. SBI's current-openings page still carries the Advt 17 entry under the heading "PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION CALL LETTER IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD". No result link, no scorecard link and no Mains call-letter link has been added to that block. The only links live under Advt 17 today are the advertisement itself, the pre-examination training material, the prelims call letter and the Acquaint Yourself booklet.

That matters because of what has changed elsewhere on the same page. The separate backlog drive — advertisement CRPD/CR/SPLDRIVE/2026-27/16 — has already moved on: its prelims result is live and its Mains call letter is downloadable for an exam on 29 October. Two Junior Associate recruitments are running side by side, at different speeds, and they are being confused constantly. If you are looking for a Mains call letter right now, read the backlog drive page instead and check which advertisement number is printed on your call letter.

This page will be updated in place the day the Advt 17 result appears.

What "shortlisted" means here, exactly

The advertisement is unusually specific about the selection arithmetic, and the specifics are not what most candidates assume.

From the selection procedure, on Phase I:

"No minimum qualifying marks are prescribed for individual test OR for aggregate score. Section wise marks will not be maintained."

Read that twice. There is no sectional cut-off in the SBI Clerk prelims, and there is no fixed overall qualifying mark either. You are not being measured against a pass line. You are being ranked.

The next sentence explains the ranking:

"Adequate number of candidates in each category as decided by the Bank (approximately 10 times the numbers of vacancies, subject to availability) will be shortlisted for the Main Exam from the list of all candidates arranged in descending order of aggregate marks scored."

So the shortlist is roughly ten times the vacancies, category by category and State by State. With 7,680 posts nationally that implies an order of 76,000 candidates called to the Mains — but the number that decides your fate is your own State-and-category slice, not the national figure. A Telangana OBC candidate is competing for roughly ten times 70 seats, against other Telangana OBC candidates. Nobody outside that slice affects you, and the "expected cut-off" lists circulating as a single national number are meaningless for this reason.

Negative marking in the prelims is one-fourth of the mark assigned to each question. The three sections were separately timed and could not be revisited:

The sentence that should change how you feel about your prelims score

Whatever you scored on 26 or 27 September, the advertisement disposes of it in one line:

"The marks obtained in the Preliminary Examination (Phase-I) will not be added for the selection and only the aggregate marks obtained in Main Examination (Phase-II) will be considered for preparation of the final merit list."

Prelims is a gate, not a score. If you scraped through by a mark, you arrive at the Mains exactly level with somebody who topped their State. If you cleared it comfortably, you have banked nothing. The only number that will ever appear next to your name on a merit list is your Mains aggregate.

The practical instruction that follows is simple and almost nobody acts on it: stop re-calculating your prelims attempt. It is spent. Every hour between now and the Mains is worth more spent on General and Financial Awareness than on reconstructing a paper that contributes zero.

Andhra Pradesh: there are no vacancies, and that is not a mistake

This needs saying plainly because a very large number of readers of this site are in Andhra Pradesh.

Andhra Pradesh does not appear in the Advt 17 vacancy table at all. Not with zero posts — it is simply not a row. The Hyderabad Circle appears in the table with one State under it, Telangana, carrying 260 vacancies. The separate "List of medium of examination according to State applied for" runs to exactly 24 entries, and Andhra Pradesh is not among them either. Both tables agree.

Since candidates may apply for vacancies in one State or UT only, and since candidature is considered only against the vacancies of the State applied for, there was no Andhra Pradesh option to take in this recruitment. If you are an AP candidate who sat this exam, you applied against another State's vacancies — and if you are selected, the posting is in that State, with no inter-circle or inter-state transfer available before five years of service.

Andhra Pradesh was also absent from the backlog drive's regular table, where the Hyderabad Circle shows AP with 88 vacancies, all Scheduled Tribe. If you are an AP candidate, the backlog drive is the only SBI clerical route that has carried AP posts this cycle.

Telangana: 260 posts, and the language column matters

Telangana sits in the Hyderabad Circle with 260 regular vacancies — SC 41, ST 18, OBC 70, EWS 26 and General 105. The backlog columns for Telangana under Advt 17 are all zero, because those vacancies were carved out into the separate special recruitment drive.

The specified opted local language for Telangana is Telugu or Urdu, and the medium of examination for the State is English, Hindi, Telugu or Urdu. One language must be chosen at the time of online application and that choice drives the Phase III language test. A candidate who studied Telugu in class 10 or 12 and can produce the mark sheet is exempt from that test entirely.

All 7,680 vacancies, State by State

Figures are the regular vacancies from the detailed advertisement. PwBD and Ex-Servicemen reservations are horizontal — they sit inside these totals, not on top of them — so the five category columns add to each State's total.

Maharashtra at 1,718 and Tamil Nadu at 1,410 take over 40 per cent of the national total between them. Odisha's 1,100 is extraordinary for a State of its size. At the other end, Himachal Pradesh has 9 posts and Ladakh has 7 — in those States the shortlist at ten times vacancies is under a hundred people, and the effective cut-off will be brutal.

The Mains: 200 marks, 190 questions, 2 hours 40 minutes

The advertisement places the Main Examination tentatively in November 2026. Structure:

Two details worth marking. First, Reasoning Ability and Computer Aptitude carries 60 marks for 50 questions — 1.2 marks per question, the only section not marked at parity. It is the single highest-yield section in the paper and it is the one most candidates deprioritise because computer aptitude feels trivial. Per minute of preparation it is the best investment available to you.

Second, the Mains repeats the prelims rule: a minimum percentage on aggregate only, with 5 per cent relaxation for SC, ST, OBC, PwBD, XS and DXS candidates, and "No minimum qualifying marks for individual subject are prescribed. Section wise marks will not be maintained." There is no section you can fail. A disastrous English paper rescued by a strong Reasoning paper costs you nothing structurally. Negative marking is again one-fourth.

Each section is separately timed, so there is no carrying time forward from a section you finish early.

The 5 bonus marks most candidates never hear about

Buried in the selection procedure is a provision worth 2.5 per cent of the Mains paper:

"Trained apprentices of SBI are given weightage in the Main Examination by awarding 2.5% of the maximum marks (i.e. 5 marks out of 200 marks) as bonus marks."

Those 5 marks are added to the Mains aggregate before the merit list is drawn. In a State where a hundred candidates sit within two marks of each other, five marks is not a rounding error — it is several hundred ranks.

The conditions are strict: the apprenticeship engagement start date must be on or after 1 January 2022; one year of specified branch experience in SBI must have been completed on or before 31 August 2026; conduct and performance must have been satisfactory throughout; and the apprentice must have passed the skill evaluation Trade Test and obtained the joint National Apprenticeship Certificate issued by SBI-NSDC / BFSI-SSC.

If you are a graduate without a bank apprenticeship behind you, this is a concrete argument for taking one now — it pays a stipend while you prepare and it carries weight into the next SBI clerical cycle. UCO Bank's apprentice engagement is open to any graduate at the time of writing. Note that the bonus is specific to SBI apprentices; another bank's apprenticeship builds the experience and the stipend but not these five marks.

Phase III: the language test, and who skips it

Provisionally selected candidates who did not study the specified local language in class 10 or 12 must sit a Local Language Proficiency Test after selection but before joining:

Minimum qualifying marks are decided by the Bank, with the usual 5 per cent relaxation. Candidates who fail it are not offered appointment, and candidates found not proficient are disqualified. If you have a class 10 or 12 mark sheet showing the language, dig it out now rather than at document verification.

Wait list, and what it is actually worth

A wait list of up to 50 per cent of vacancies, State and category wise, is maintained. Candidates are released from it on a quarterly basis against non-joining and resignation out of the current batch only, subject to securing the minimum qualifying marks. It is valid for one year from the date of declaration of the final result.

Fifty per cent of 7,680 is a large wait list, and quarterly releases over a year mean a wait-listed candidate has four realistic windows. It is worth far more than a wait list usually is — but it draws only on people who decline or leave this batch, not on future vacancies.

What to do between now and the result

• Keep your registered email and mobile number live. SBI issues shortlist intimation and call-letter notices to them.
• Keep your prelims call letter. On the backlog drive, candidates are being asked to carry the prelims call letter and a stamped ID photocopy to the Mains centre alongside the Mains call letter. Expect the same requirement here and do not discard anything.
• Start General and Financial Awareness now. It is 50 marks, it is the section that rewards daily accumulation rather than last-week cramming, and it is the only section with a syllabus that moves every day.
• Work Reasoning and Computer Aptitude at 1.2 marks a question. It is 60 of the 200 marks.
• Check your class 10 and 12 mark sheets for the opted local language and keep them with your documents.
• Do not plan around a confirmed Mains date. The advertisement says November 2026 and labels it tentative. No request for change of examination centre, date or session is entertained.

Problems candidates are hitting right now

"My friend's Mains call letter is out, mine is not." Your friend is almost certainly in the backlog special drive, Advt 16, whose Mains is on 29 October. Advt 17 has not reached that stage. Check the advertisement number on the call letter.

"What is the expected cut-off?" There is no published cut-off to expect. The advertisement states no minimum qualifying marks are prescribed for the prelims at all, and that section-wise marks are not maintained. The effective cut-off is whatever mark the roughly ten-times-vacancies boundary falls at in your State and your category, and it is not knowable in advance.

"Will SBI release the prelims scorecard?" The advertisement says results of candidates who have provisionally qualified for selection will be made available on the Bank's website. It does not commit to a prelims scorecard. Treat a score release as a possibility, not a plan.

"I am from Andhra Pradesh — which State's merit list am I in?" The one you selected in your application, because there was no Andhra Pradesh option under Advt 17. Your candidature is considered only against that State's vacancies and your posting would be there, with no transfer available for five years.

"I did badly in English but well in Reasoning." Structurally that costs you nothing. There is no sectional cut-off in either phase and section-wise marks are not maintained. Only the aggregate exists.

"Can I appear again if I clear nothing?" Not in this project — candidates can appear for the test only once under this recruitment. The next opportunity is the next advertisement.

Source

Every figure above is taken from the detailed advertisement, which we mirror so the link does not rot when SBI reorganises its site: SBI Junior Associate 2026 detailed advertisement (PDF), advertisement number CRPD/CR/2026-27/17. Live link status was read from SBI's current-openings page on 23 October 2026.

Related reading: SBI Clerk Mains call letter for the backlog drive, UIIC AO prelims result 2026 and IBPS SO prelims result 2026.