GATE previous year question papers from 2015 to 2026 are free to download here, 390 papers across every code from AE to XL, with official answer keys for 2020 to 2026 and the answers marked inside the 2015 to 2019 PDFs. Every GATE paper has 65 questions for 100 marks in 3 hours, so the 2025 and 2026 papers are the closest match to GATE 2027 in February 2027.
GATE Previous Year Question Papers
Pick a year to see every GATE paper and key from that year, or open your paper (CS, ME, EE, DA and the rest) to see it across years.
38 papers
GATE Question Papers by Year
| Year | Papers | Answer key | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GATE 2026 | 38 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2025 | 38 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2024 | 38 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2023 | 29 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2022 | 37 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2021 | 48 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2020 | 27 papers | Yes | View papers |
| GATE 2019 | 26 papers | Not available | View papers |
| GATE 2018 | 38 papers | Not available | View papers |
| GATE 2017 | 40 papers | Not available | View papers |
| GATE 2016 | 1 paper | Not available | View papers |
| GATE 2015 | 30 papers | Not available | View papers |
GATE Question Papers by Subject
26 subjects. Search for yours.
- Aerospace
- Agricultural
- Architecture and Planning
- Biomedical
- Biotechnology
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Ecology and Evolution
- Electronics and Communication
- Engineering Sciences
- Environmental Science
- Geology and Geophysics
- Geomatics
- Humanities Social Sciences
- Instrumentation
- Life Sciences
- Mathematics
- Mechanical
- Metallurgical
- Mining
- Naval Architecture and Marine
- Petroleum
- Physics
- Production and Industrial
- Statistics
- Textile Engineering and Fibre Science
No subject matches your search. Try part of the name.
GATE Paper at a Glance
| Questions | 65 per paper: 10 General Aptitude and 55 subject questions |
|---|---|
| Marks and time | 100 marks (General Aptitude 15, subject 85), 3 hours |
| Question types | MCQ (one correct option), MSQ (one or more correct options) and NAT (type a number) |
| Marking | A wrong MCQ costs 1/3 mark (1-mark questions) or 2/3 mark (2-mark questions); no negative marks for MSQ or NAT |
| Medium | English only, computer-based |
| Papers on this page | 2015 to 2026: 390 question papers, official keys for 2020 to 2026, answers marked in the 2015 to 2019 PDFs |
| Next exam | GATE 2027: 6 to 7 February 2027 |
How the GATE Paper Changed (2015–2026)
- 2015 to 2020: questions were MCQ or NAT only. The 2020 CS answer key has no MSQ at all.
- 2021 onwards: MSQ questions (one or more correct options, no negative marks) appear. In the 2026 CS Session 1 paper, 24 of the 65 questions are MSQ.
- New papers: Petroleum Engineering came in 2016, Statistics in 2019, Biomedical in 2020, ES and XH in 2021, GE and NM in 2022 and Data Science and AI (DA) in 2024, taking GATE to 30 papers.
- GATE 2027: still 30 papers, but Textile (TF) becomes section XE9 of Engineering Sciences and Robotics and Automation (RA) is new. Use the 2026 TF paper for XE9 practice.
What a GATE Paper Looks Like
The GATE 2026 Computer Science and Information Technology paper (CS Session 1), set by IIT Guwahati, has 65 questions for 100 marks, all in English. Questions 1 to 10 are General Aptitude and questions 11 to 65 are CS. Each part has 1-mark and 2-mark questions, and the official key marks every question as MCQ, MSQ or NAT. These four questions are from that paper, with answers from the official key.
| Section | Questions | Marks |
|---|---|---|
| General Aptitude | 1–5 (1 mark each), 6–10 (2 marks each) | 15 |
| CS, 1-mark questions | 11–35: 8 MCQ, 13 MSQ, 4 NAT | 25 |
| CS, 2-mark questions | 36–65: 10 MCQ, 11 MSQ, 9 NAT | 60 |
Q1. Consider a knock-out Women's badminton singles tournament where there are no ties. The loser in each game is eliminated from the tournament. Every player plays until she is defeated or remains the last undefeated player. The last undefeated player is declared the winner of the tournament. If there are 64 players in the beginning of the tournament, how many games should be played in total to declare the winner of the tournament?
- 127
- 64
- 63
- 32
Answer: (3) 63
GATE 2026 CS Session 1, Q3 (General Aptitude) · official answer key
Q2. Which one of the following dependencies among the register operands of different instructions can cause a data hazard in a pipelined processor?
- Read-after-read
- Read-after-write
- Write-after-read
- Write-after-write
Answer: (2) Read-after-write
GATE 2026 CS Session 1, Q16 (1 mark) · official answer key
Q3. With respect to a TCP connection between a client and a server, which one of the following statements is true?
- The client and server use a two-way handshake mechanism before the start of data transmission
- The server cannot initiate closing of the connection before the client initiates closing of the connection
- The TCP connection is half-duplex
- The client and server can initiate closing of the connection at the same time
Answer: (4) The client and server can initiate closing of the connection at the same time
GATE 2026 CS Session 1, Q18 (1 mark) · official answer key
Q4. Consider the implementation of sliding window protocol over a lossless link, with a window size of W frames, where each frame is of size 1000 bits (including header). The bandwidth of the link is 100 kbps (1k = 10³) and the one-way propagation delay is 100 milliseconds. Assume that processing times at the sender and receiver are zero and the transmission time of acknowledgements is also zero. Which one of the following options gives the minimum size of W (in number of frames) required to achieve 100% link utilization?
- 10
- 21
- 20
- 11
Answer: (2) 21
GATE 2026 CS Session 1, Q45 (2 marks) · official answer key
In this paper 37 of the 65 questions are MSQ or NAT, so they carry no negative marks. NAT answers are checked against a range in the key, for example 4.24 to 4.26 for Q58.
How to Use GATE Previous Year Papers?
- Sit for the full 3 hours. 65 questions in 180 minutes is about 2 minutes 45 seconds a question. Finish the 10 General Aptitude questions in about 15 minutes so the 2-mark subject questions get more time.
- Never leave an MSQ or NAT blank. They have no negative marks. Only MCQs do: a blind guess on a 1-mark MCQ averages 0, and ruling out one option lifts it to about +0.11 mark.
- Start with 2021 to 2026, because these papers have all three question types you will see in 2027. Use 2015 to 2020 papers for topic practice; they have no MSQ.
- Check against the right key. Use the official key for 2020 to 2026. For 2015 to 2019, the answers are printed inside each PDF.
- Plan for 6 February 2027. That is about 14 weeks away. One full paper a week, checked and revised, covers the last seven years of your paper code before the exam.
Free full-length GATE mock tests with timers and answers.