FMG Internship and Registration: Why the Wait in 2026

Clearing the exam is not the last step for a foreign medical graduate. You then need an FMG internship seat in an Indian medical college, and then permanent registration from your State Medical Council. For 2026-27 the National Medical Commission has counted 43,250 internship slots across the country. Parliament was told in March 2026 that graduates who cleared the exam in July 2025 were still waiting for theirs.

Key takeaways

• A foreign medical graduate must do twelve months of internship in India, called CRMI, after clearing the exam, before a State Medical Council can grant permanent registration.

• The National Medical Commission circular of 10 March 2026 counts 43,250 internship slots available to foreign medical graduates for 2026-27, listed state by state and then college by college.

• That same circular says the Commission prepared the slot list because of a significant increase in court cases filed by foreign medical graduates over the denial or non allotment of internship. That is the regulator putting the problem on record itself.

• Slots are not spread evenly. Uttar Pradesh has 5,034 and Delhi has 1, because of how the formula works.

• Your State Medical Council, not the Commission, decides your internship seat and your registration. Under the 2023 registration rules it must decide a registration application within 30 days.

What are the steps after you clear the exam?

There are four, and the last two are where people get stuck.

1. Clear the screening exam. Today that is FMGE, the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination, held by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences.

2. Apply to your State Medical Council for an internship seat. A State Medical Council is the body that registers doctors in your state.

3. Do twelve months of internship in India. This is the CRMI, the Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship. The CRMI Regulations, 2021 set it at not less than twelve months, and require it to be finished within two years of passing FMGE.

4. Apply for permanent registration. Only then can you practise.

Note the two year clock in step three. It starts the day you pass the exam, not the day you get a seat. A graduate who waits nine months for an allotment has already spent a third of it waiting.

How many graduates are competing for a seat?

The exam itself is the first filter, and it is a severe one.

NBEMS does not publish a pass percentage for FMGE. Counting the result file it published for the June 2026 session, held on 28 June 2026, gives 4,635 passes among 36,300 candidates who appeared. That is 12.77 per cent, so roughly one in eight.

Those who pass join a queue that is already there. Every graduate from an earlier session who has not yet been allotted a seat is ahead of them.

What did Parliament hear about the delay?

On 13 March 2026 two Members of Parliament asked the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare about it directly. Their question, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3552 on delay in internship of FMGs, asked whether thousands of foreign medical graduates who cleared the exam in July 2025 were still waiting for the internship allotment list, and whether the delay had cost them their eligibility for NEET PG 2026.

The government's answer did not give a number of waiting graduates. It set out who is responsible and on what formula:

So the answer to a graduate asking who is holding up their seat is the state, not the Commission.

How are FMG internship slots calculated, and why is Delhi so low?

The Commission's circular of 10 March 2026 sets three rules for how many internship slots a college must give to foreign medical graduates.

• 7.5 per cent of the permitted intake of interns in established medical colleges.

• 100 per cent of the internship seats in new medical colleges.

• 100 per cent of the seats added to existing colleges between 2022-23 and 2025-26, where the students admitted against those extra seats have not reached internship stage yet.

Adding those together gives 43,250 slots for 2026-27: 36,502 from added seats and 6,748 from the 7.5 per cent share.

Because two of the three rules depend on growth, a state that grew fast has many slots and a state that did not grow has almost none.

Figures from the Total column of Annexure I to the Commission's circular of 10 March 2026.

Delhi is not a misprint. Its approved MBBS intake was 1,365 in 2021-22 and fell to 1,264 by 2025-26. The formula treats that fall as a negative, so it cancels almost the whole of Delhi's 7.5 per cent share of 102 seats, and what survives is a single slot. Delhi is the only state or union territory in the table where the intake went down. If you are a Delhi graduate, that one line is the most important number on this page.

One thing the circular does not do is say how many graduates will need a slot. It gives the supply and is silent on the demand.

What do you have to produce for online classes?

This is the second place applications stall, and it applies to anyone whose course went partly online during the pandemic years.

The public notice of 18 March 2026 on physical onsite compensation for online studies sets out two paths. A graduate who could not make up the online teaching with physical classes at their own foreign university has to do one or two years of clinical clerkship in India first. A graduate who did make it up has to prove it. The notice says:

Read the condition carefully, because two parts of it are easy to miss. The certificate must come from your own university, not a partner one. And it has to be supported by transcripts, not issued on its own.

The Commission's frequently asked questions of 8 June 2026 tighten it further. Question 11 asks whether a compensation certificate by itself entitles a graduate to registration. The answer is one word: no.

The notice also tells State Medical Councils to check the certificate against the entry and exit stamps in your passport. States have already built that into their paperwork. Rajasthan's foreign medical graduate internship counselling notification of 15 June 2026 asks applicants to upload a course completion or compensation certificate and a travel proforma alongside their exam pass certificate.

So the practical rule is simple. Your passport has to agree with your certificate.

How long should registration itself take?

Once your internship is finished and your documents are in, the Registration of Medical Practitioners and Licence to Practice Medicine Regulations, 2023 give the State Medical Council a deadline. It must decide the application within 30 days. Your registration number is a unique identification number with your state code added to it, and it appears in both the state register and the National Medical Register. The licence to practise runs for five years and then has to be renewed.

Two further points are worth knowing. The Commission's June 2026 answers say the March 2026 notice does not work backwards, so a graduate already allotted one or two years of clerkship must finish it. And the same answers repeatedly say decisions are taken case to case, which is why two graduates with similar records can get different outcomes in different states.

What should you do while you wait?

1. Apply to your own state's council the moment your result is out. The two year window under the CRMI Regulations starts on the day you pass, not the day you are allotted.

2. Check your state's slot count before you assume anything. If your state has very few, ask your council in writing whether you may do the internship in another state. The Commission's earlier circulars say councils must not refuse allotment on the ground of domicile.

3. Get the compensatory certificate from your own university, with transcripts. Ask for it to name the dates of the physical classes. A certificate that only says the course is complete will not do the job.

4. Match it against your passport yourself, before the council does. Line up the entry and exit stamps against the dates on the certificate and fix any gap now.

5. Keep your own file. Application date, acknowledgement, every reply. If you ever need to escalate, a dated record is what you will be asked for.

What to read next

• Which NMC rules apply to you settles whether the 2002 or the 2021 conditions govern your degree.

• FMG internship stipend in India covers what the internship pays and what the rules say about it.

• How to become a registered medical practitioner explains the state and national registers.

• FMGE 2026 pass rate covers the exam that comes before all of this.

• NExT or FMGE in 2026 answers which exam you actually sit.

• MBBS in Ukraine looks at the country where the online classes question bites hardest.