SBI Clerk Mains 2026: Admit Card, 29 Oct & 23 Nov Exams

Two drives, two Mains dates — do not mix them up

SBI Clerk — the Junior Associates recruitment — is running two separate drives this cycle, and nearly every confused message about "the SBI Clerk Mains date" comes from treating them as one. They are not one. There is a backlog special drive and a regular drive, with different advertisement numbers, different preliminary examinations already held, different vacancy counts and Mains examinations almost a month apart. Find your drive in the table below first; every other fact in this article depends on which row is yours.

If you appeared in the prelims on 16 September 2026, you are in the backlog drive and your Mains is nine days away, on 29 October 2026, with your call letter already out. If your prelims were on 26 or 27 September 2026, you are in the regular drive, your Mains is the tentative 23 November 2026, and your call letter is still to come. Reading the wrong row has real consequences — candidates have prepared to the wrong date in past cycles — so anchor yourself to your advertisement number, which is printed on your application and your prelims documents.

Backlog drive: call letter out 19 October, Mains on 29 October

For the backlog special drive (CRPD/CR/SPLDRIVE/2026-27/16; 1,538 vacancies), the sequence is already complete up to the hall door: prelims on 16 September 2026, and the Mains call letter released on 19 October 2026. Download it now if you have not — not on the 28th. The call letter carries your venue, shift and reporting time, and discovering a distant venue the night before a Mains is an avoidable injury. The login asks for your Registration Number or Roll Number and your Password, which is your date of birth, in the format the login page specifies.

Your preparation window is nine days, and it should be spent on full-length timed practice under the real pattern (below), not on new material. A Mains paper is a resource-allocation test as much as a knowledge test; the candidates who have rehearsed their section order and their abandon-a-question discipline in advance spend the exam answering, not deciding.

Regular drive: Mains on 23 November, and the date is tentative

For the regular drive (CRPD/CR/2026-27/17; 9,766 vacancies), prelims were held on 26–27 September 2026 and the Main Examination is scheduled for 23 November 2026 — tentative, in SBI's own framing. Keep the word attached until your call letter is in hand; tentative dates move, and they move by official notice, not by rumour. Your call letter will be released ahead of the Mains through the same Careers login. With roughly five weeks in hand, the regular-drive candidate has the one thing the backlog candidate does not: time to fix a weak section rather than merely rehearse around it.

The Mains pattern, for both drives

Whichever drive is yours, the Main Examination in front of you is the same shape: 190 questions, 200 marks, in 2 hours 40 minutes. That is under a minute per question across the paper, with the marks-per-question varying by section — the practical meaning is that question selection is a scored skill in this examination. Attempt order, the willingness to skip, and a pre-decided time budget per section will move your total more in these final weeks than any new topic you could start now.

After the Mains, shortlisted candidates face the Local Language Proficiency Test — the stage that verifies you can work in the local language of the state you applied for. It comes after the Mains, so it decides nothing today, but if your application state is not your home state, it is worth knowing now that this test exists and that it is part of the road, not an afterthought.

Downloading the call letter: the exact routine

• Go to sbi.bank.in and open the Careers section; choose the call letter link under your drive's advertisement number — SPLDRIVE/16 for backlog, /17 for regular.
• Log in with your Registration Number or Roll Number and your Password (your date of birth).
• Download the call letter and read all of it: venue, date, shift, reporting time, and the instructions and documents page.
• Print a clear copy and keep a digital copy on your phone; carry the identity documents the letter specifies.
• If the login rejects a date of birth you are sure is right, check the format the page asks for before retrying repeatedly — repeated failed logins help no one, and SBI Careers is the only support route that counts.

A final warning that belongs in every admit-card article and is earned every cycle: the call letter is free and is issued only through SBI Careers. Any site or person offering to "provide" your admit card for a fee is selling you something that does not exist.

Official links

• State Bank of India — Careers (call letters under Advt CRPD/CR/SPLDRIVE/2026-27/16 and CRPD/CR/2026-27/17): https://www.sbi.bank.in/

Related guides on StudyDesk