IBPS SO 2026 Syllabus: Prelims & Mains Exam Pattern, Topics

IBPS has released the CRP SPL-XVI notification for Specialist Officer (SO) 2026 recruitment, covering posts such as IT Officer, Agricultural Field Officer, Law Officer, HR/Personnel Officer, Marketing Officer, and Rajbhasha Adhikari. Online applications opened on 1 July 2026 and close on 21 July 2026, with the Preliminary Examination tentatively scheduled for 29 August 2026 and the Main Examination around 1 November 2026 (dates subject to official confirmation on the admit card). A key change this year is that the Preliminary Exam now includes a Professional Knowledge section alongside Reasoning, English Language, and Quantitative Aptitude (or General Awareness for Law Officer and Rajbhasha Adhikari), taking the paper to 100 questions across four timed sections within an 80-minute window. The Main Examination combines an objective paper (Professional Knowledge plus other subjects) with a descriptive test of English writing, and final selection weighs Mains and Interview marks in an 80:20 ratio, since Prelims is only qualifying. Core preparation areas include Reasoning Ability (puzzles, seating arrangement, syllogism, coding-decoding), English Language (reading comprehension, cloze test, error detection, para-jumbles), Quantitative Aptitude (data interpretation, arithmetic, number series), and stream-specific Professional Knowledge covering each specialization's core subjects — for example, programming and DBMS for IT Officer, agri-economics and crop science for Agricultural Field Officer, banking law for Law Officer, HR concepts for Personnel Officer, and Hindi-English translation for Rajbhasha Adhikari. Aspirants should build a daily study plan around solving previous years' IBPS SO papers, taking full-length prelims and mains mocks, and revising specialization subjects thoroughly, since Professional Knowledge now carries significant weight in both stages.