National Medical Commission
The NMC Eligibility Certificate for FMGE
By Dr. Utsav Bhattacherjee, MBBS, MBA · Last updated:
The Eligibility Certificate is issued by the National Medical Commission and confirms that your foreign medical degree is recognised for the purpose of sitting FMGE. It is not the FMGE application. Those are two separate applications to two different bodies: the certificate comes from NMC, while the FMGE application for a specific session goes to NBEMS. You need the certificate before you can complete the FMGE application, which is why it has to come first. NMC does not publish a processing time, so treat it as the longest item in your timeline and start it as soon as your final result is declared rather than waiting for a session's application window to open. No fee is published on the NMC application portal. If your hall ticket is held up waiting on the certificate, NMC's own notice instructs candidates to email eligibility@nmc.org.in with their application tracking number.
Sources: National Medical Commission (NMC) and National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS). Figures on this page are drawn from their published material.
The Eligibility Certificate is issued by the National Medical Commission and confirms that your foreign medical degree is recognised. You cannot complete an FMGE application without one, which is why it has to come first. This page covers where to apply, what to do when it holds up a hall ticket, and — just as usefully — what NMC does not publish.
Last updated: 1 September 2026
Everything below is read directly from nmc.org.in on that date. The portal changes without notice, so check it against this page rather than the other way round.
If your FMGE hall ticket is pending because of your Eligibility Certificate
- 1Email eligibility@nmc.org.in from the address on your application.
- 2Include your application tracking number — the notice asks for it specifically, and a message without one is harder for NMC to act on.
- 3Do this as soon as the hall ticket is due rather than waiting, since no processing time is published.
This is what a notice on the NMC portal instructs, read on 1 September 2026. That notice is undated and refers to the "DEC. FMGE" session, wording that predates NBEMS moving the exam to three sittings a year in August 2026 — so treat it as the standing instruction rather than as guidance issued for the October 2026 sitting. Check the portal for anything newer before you rely on it.
Where to apply
Applications go through the NMC student registration portal. There is a registration step before the application itself, so allow for it.
The application itself
The portal carries "Online Application for Registration of Eligibility Certificate", behind a login and registration step. That is where an application starts.
A way to retrieve an issued certificate
A separate "View Certificates" route covers Indian Medical Register entries, additional qualifications and eligibility certificates, for candidates whose certificate has already been issued.
An escalation address
eligibility@nmc.org.in, for applications holding up an FMGE hall ticket.
What NMC does not publish
Three things candidates ask constantly have no official answer. Other pages fill these gaps with numbers; we would rather tell you they are not published, so you know to check at the point of applying instead of planning around a figure nobody can stand behind.
The fee
No fee is stated on the application portal. Any figure quoted elsewhere is not sourced from NMC.
A processing time
NMC does not publish one. This is the single most common question about the certificate and there is no official answer to it, which is the reason to apply as early as your degree allows rather than close to a session.
A document checklist
The portal does not list required documents ahead of the application; they are asked for during submission. The documents FMGE itself needs are a separate list, published in each session’s NBEMS information bulletin.
When to start
Before a session’s application window opens, not during it. Because no processing time is published, the certificate is the part of the timeline you cannot compress — begin it as soon as your final result is declared. Candidates who wait for the NBEMS bulletin to appear are the ones who end up emailing about hall tickets.
The four requirements to sit the exam, including this one, are set out on our FMGE exam guide, and session application windows are in the FMGE exam date guide.
Course duration and internship requirements
The Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021 set minimum requirements for the duration of a foreign medical course and for the internship that follows it. Those requirements sit with NMC rather than with NBEMS, and the regulations are the authority on them.
Check the regulations at nmc.org.inQuestions about the Eligibility Certificate
No. They are two separate applications to two different bodies. The Eligibility Certificate comes from the National Medical Commission and confirms your foreign degree is recognised. The FMGE application goes to NBEMS for a specific session. You need the certificate before you can complete the FMGE application, which is why it has to come first.
NMC does not publish a processing time, so there is no reliable answer. Treat it as the long pole in your timeline and start it as soon as your final result is declared rather than when a session’s application window opens.
No fee is published on the NMC application portal. Figures circulating on third-party sites are not sourced from NMC, so check the portal at the point of applying.
A notice on the NMC portal instructs candidates in exactly this position to email eligibility@nmc.org.in with their application tracking number. Send it as soon as the hall ticket is due rather than waiting for the exam to get closer.
Yes, with one long-standing exception: candidates admitted to a foreign medical institution before 15 March 2002 have been treated as exempt from the Eligibility Certificate requirement. That exemption is old enough that it applies to very few current candidates, and you should confirm the current position with NMC rather than relying on this page.
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NMC’s eligibility enquiries address, as published on its portal: eligibility@nmc.org.in
