National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad

The National Institute of Design (NID) has released the admission hanbooks for the B.Des and M.Des courses. It contains the list of exam cities for DAT Prelims exam for each course.

As per information given in the M.Des Admission Handbook, the DAT Prelims exam in the following cities - Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Kurukshetra, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Vijayawada.

The candidate can select their choice of exam city when filling out the NID DAT 2024 application form. 

The National Institite of Design (NID) will conduct the DAT Prelims exam for both the B.Des and M.Des programs on December 24, 2024. The admit cards for the two programs will also be released on the same date, i.e. December 12, 2023.

To download the admit card, the candidate needs to go to the NID admission portal - admissions.nid.edu. On the portal, the M.Des DAT Prelims admit card download link will be given.Click on the link, and then log in using your email id and date of birth. On successful login, you can download the admit card.

NID DAT Prelims 2026 exam will take place in 17 cities in India. Each of these exam cities may have one or more test centres. Candidate will have to select their choice of exam centres for the DAT Prelims exam when filling out the NID DAT 2026 Application form. Candidates must be careful when selecting the exam city, because they will not be allowed to change it after the Application edit window closes.

The results of DAT Prelims for B.Des was declared on April 02, 2026, while results for the M.Des programme was declared on February 12, 2026.

The candidate were able to check their results by logging into the result portal using their email ID and date of birth. Such candidates who get shortlisted have to next appear in DAT Mains.

The reporting time for NID DAT will be mentioned in the Admit card, along with gate closing time, and exam timings and date.

The candidate needs to report for the DAT Prelims exam at 8 am. The gates of the exam center will close at 9:30 AM (or 30 minutes before the commencement of the exam). After that no candidate will be allowed inside the exam hall.

NID DAT Exam timings:

• B.Des - 10 am - 1 pm
• M.Des - 10 am - 12.30 pm

The candidate mustn't under any circumstances wait for the dying hours to download the admit card for NID DAT 2026. It is because in the last few hours, there may a server crash or website slowdown issues due to heavy traffic.

If that happens, you may face difficulty in downloading the admit card.

Also, if there is any discrepancy in the admit card, you won't have much time to get it fixed if you don't download it soon after it is released.

The National Institute of Design (NID)  released admit cards for DAT Prelims on December 11, 2025. Meanwhile, the DAT Prelims exam was conducted on December 21, 2025.

Admit cards for the DAT Mains will be released later.

The candidate must carefully preserve the admit cards for the DAT Prelims and DAT Mains. It is because the admit cards will be required at the time of seat allotment and admission.

Also, note that the window to download the admit card will only be open for a limited period of time.

Aadhaar is one of the valid photo id proofs that candidates can produce as identity proof. But exam officials will also accept other government ids like Driving License, Passport, etc. The list of acceptable ids will be mentioned on the NID DAT 2026 admit card. The security personal at the NID DAT exam center will verify the documents before allowing the candidate entry inside the exam center. Any candidate who fails to produce the admit card and id proof will not be allowed to take the DAT Prelims exam.

The National Institute of Design (NID) is conducting the DAT Prelims exam in a center-based mode across 17 cities in India.