Previous year paper analysis · GATE

GATE 2026 Electronics and Communication (EC) paper analysis

By the PrepMatic team · Updated 9 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

The GATE 2026 Electronics and Communication Engineering (EC) paper was held on the forenoon of Sunday 15 February 2026, with 65 questions for 100 marks. We read the official paper and key and tallied every question by subject and type. Networks, Signals and Systems was the largest block by a distance at 20 marks, Engineering Mathematics was a small 9 marks, and 42 of the 65 questions were single-answer MCQs.

Paper facts

EC ran in a single session in 2026, so there was no normalisation. The score came straight from raw marks, and the score guide shows the formula.

Subject-wise tally

The official paper has no subject labels, so this is our own classification, accurate to about one question where topics overlap. We counted Networks and Signals and Systems together, as the syllabus does, and placed data converters and memory addressing under Digital Circuits.

Question types

Only 35 marks sat in formats without negative marking. For an EC candidate this makes elimination and confident skipping more valuable than in a NAT-heavy paper such as ME or CE.

What stood out (our reading)

• Networks, Signals and Systems carried the paper. Its 13 questions covered Laplace transforms of a convolution, aliasing from sampling, a second-order difference equation, resonant circuits and phasors, Fourier series, signal energy, cascaded discrete-time systems and two-port parameters. Ten were MCQs.
• Mathematics was light. Six questions: a differential equation with matrix dynamics, the surface normal of a quadric, a determinant condition, series convergence, random variables and a double integral over a square.
• Electronic Devices leaned on multiple-select. Three of its five questions were MSQ, on diode quasi-Fermi levels, BJT Early voltage and an LED's bandgap.
• Digital Circuits mixed counting and conversion. Topics were ripple-counter size, JK flip-flop timing, memory address ranges, the 10's complement, a MUX realisation, a shift register and Boolean minimisation.
• Electromagnetics was mostly one-mark. Five of six were one-mark questions on Friis' equation, polarisation, loss tangent, waveguide cutoff and S-parameters, plus one Smith chart question.
• Communications was mixed. It had Nyquist bandwidth, 16-QAM bandwidth, QPSK error rate, a Shannon-capacity statement set, narrowband signal representations and Hamming decoder failure probability.
• Difficulty is our reading, not an official rating. The one-mark questions were mostly direct concepts, while the 2-mark MCQs in signals and analog circuits needed multi-step setups. The paper had 13 NATs, against 20 in ME and 28 in CE-1.

What it means for GATE 2027 preparation

1. Give Networks, Signals and Systems your biggest slot. It paid 20 marks here and underlies Control, Communications and Analog.
2. Keep MCQ discipline. With 65 marks in negatively marked MCQs, know your guessing rule: a blind guess among four options has zero expected value, but narrowing to two options has a positive one.
3. Do not rely on the small maths share. Engineering Mathematics was 9 marks here, but the 2027 pattern fixes it at 13 marks for EC, so prepare for 13.
4. Compare with 2025. The 2025 EC analysis had 15 marks of mathematics and 13 in Networks, Signals and Systems, so topics swing by several marks each year. The revised 2027 syllabus lists eight EC sections; see the ECE preparation guide.

The previous year papers guide explains how to work through these papers, and the General Aptitude guide covers the 15 marks common to every paper.

Using the tally with PrepMatic

Start with PrepMatic's free assessment (about 15 multiple-choice questions, no timer) to see which of your subjects are weakest. The study plan then spreads the syllabus over the weeks left before your exam date at the daily hours you choose, and you can log study time against it. After each subject, take a topic test of about 15 questions and 30 minutes. Solve the real GATE papers from the links below for exam-style practice.

Frequently asked questions

Which subject had the most marks in GATE 2026 EC?

Networks, Signals and Systems had 13 questions worth 20 marks by our tally, followed by Digital Circuits with 8 questions and 13 marks.

How many NAT questions were there in GATE 2026 EC?

There were 13 NATs worth 20 marks, with 42 MCQs worth 65 marks and 10 MSQs worth 15 marks, according to the official answer key.

What was the GATE 2026 EC qualifying mark?

The official General-category qualifying mark was 26.4, with 23.7 for OBC-NCL and EWS candidates and 17.5 for SC, ST and PwD candidates.

Official sources

• EC question paper and answer key.
• GATE 2026 examination schedule and cut-off marks.
• GATE 2027 downloads page for all past papers.

Counts above are our own tally from the official paper and key. Confirm any figure you rely on against the official files. For the full exam guide, start from the GATE guide; more analyses are in the paper analysis index.

← All previous year paper analysis