RRC NR Apprentice Recruitment 2026: 4,651 Posts, Apply 11 Nov to 11 Dec

RRC NR Apprentice Recruitment 2026 has 4,651 Act Apprentice slots open across Northern Railway, and the online form runs from 11 November to 11 December 2026 on rrcnr.org. You need a 10th pass with at least 50 percent marks plus an ITI certificate in the notified trade. There is no written exam. RRC builds the merit list from your 10th and ITI marks, so the marks you already hold decide whether you get in.

One thing to get straight before you plan anything. The form does not open today. It opens on 11 November 2026, and the notification is already out, dated 6 November 2026.

Use the days before the portal opens to check Annexure A of the notification against your ITI trade. Picking a cluster or unit where your trade has no slot gets your application rejected, and the fee is not refunded.

RRC NR Apprentice Recruitment 2026 at a glance

Six clusters, and the choice that decides your chances

The 4,651 slots in this RRC Northern Railway Apprentice drive sit in six clusters. Lucknow has the most at 1,525, then Delhi at 1,312, Ambala at 979, Firozpur at 740, Moradabad at 63 and Jammu at 32. The category split across all six is 2,433 unreserved, 755 SC, 300 ST and 1,163 OBC.

Look at Firozpur before you pick it. It has 740 slots but only 12 ST seats in the whole cluster, while Lucknow has 112. Moradabad is the smallest cluster by a distance, with 63 slots in total, and Jammu has just 32.

The raw total of a cluster tells you little on its own. What matters is how many seats exist in your trade, in your category, in the unit you pick.

That is the part candidates get wrong. The notification says you must go through the trade wise slots in Annexure A and select the cluster and unit where slots for your own ITI trade are notified. Apply to a cluster or unit where your trade has no slot and the application becomes meaningless. RRC rejects it outright and keeps the fee.

Spend ten minutes with Annexure A first. It is the cheapest insurance in this whole process.

PwBD and ex-servicemen slots sit inside these totals, not on top of them. If SC seats stay unfilled they can pass to ST candidates, and the other way round. Unfilled OBC seats can pass to unreserved candidates.

No exam. Your old marks decide it

Selection runs on a simple average. RRC takes your matriculation percentage and your ITI percentage in the trade and averages the two, giving equal weight to both. A candidate with 78 percent in Class 10 and 84 percent in ITI scores 81. That number is your merit score.

The 50 percent floor in Class 10 is strict, and both qualifications must have been passed by 6 November 2026, the date the notification came out. Candidates whose Class 10 or ITI results were still awaited on that date cannot apply, even if the result comes out before the last date.

If your board gives grades or CGPA instead of marks, convert them to actual marks and enter the real figures. For grading system boards, RRC takes the midpoint of the grade range. For ITI, it uses the average marks in the consolidated mark sheet of all semesters. If the marks you enter online do not match your original mark sheet at document verification, RRC rejects your candidature outright.

There is no centralised merit list. RRC prepares separate lists for each cluster, each trade and each community, equal to the number of slots. Your competition is the set of candidates who picked your cluster and your trade, a much smaller group than all 4,651 applicants.

Ties break on age first. The older candidate goes first, and if the dates of birth match too, the one who passed matriculation earlier goes first. RRC expects to display the merit list in February 2027.

Who can apply

You must have completed 15 years of age and must not have completed 24 years as on 11 December 2026. That works out to a date of birth between 12 December 2002 and 11 December 2011. The upper limit relaxes by 5 years for SC and ST candidates and by 3 years for OBC candidates. PwBD candidates get 10 years of relaxation, and ex-servicemen get up to 10 more years on top of their service, subject to the conditions in the notification.

On qualification, the rule is a 10th class pass or its equivalent under the 10+2 system with minimum 50 percent marks in aggregate, from a recognised board, plus an ITI certificate in the notified trade issued by the National Council for Vocational Training or the State Council for Vocational Training. Your name, your father's name and your date of birth must match your Class 10 certificate exactly.

You must meet the physical fitness standards under the Apprentices Act 1961 and the Apprenticeship Rules 1992 for the trade you apply to. At document verification you will need a medical fitness certificate signed by a government authorised doctor, not below the rank of Assistant Surgeon of a Central or State hospital. PwBD candidates should apply only against slots notified for their type of disability in their trade.

Fee, photo and the one form rule

The fee is Rs 100, paid online through the payment gateway as part of the application. SC, ST, PwBD and women candidates pay nothing. The fee is non-refundable in every case.

If an online payment stays incomplete or pending, the notification tells you to make a fresh payment transaction. An unpaid form is an invalid form.

The photograph, signature and thumb impression each go up as a JPG file between 10 KB and 50 KB. If your files are the wrong size, the site's exam photo resizer fixes them before you upload. RRC rejects any application without a photograph, thumb impression or signature, and any photo taken wearing goggles, a cap or coloured glasses.

One application per candidate. File two with different details and both get rejected, with no fee refunded. No change of any kind is allowed after final submission, so check every entry before you hit submit.

Keep your documents ready before 11 November. You will need proof of date of birth, your 10th mark sheet and certificate, your consolidated ITI mark sheet and National Trade Certificate, plus a caste, disability or ex-servicemen certificate in the prescribed format if you claim one.

Upload everything with the form. Do not send originals to RRC. You carry them, with two sets of self-attested photocopies, to document verification.

How to apply on rrcnr.org

Open rrcnr.org and find the link for Engagement of Act Apprentice online application. Register first with your name, father's name, community, category, mobile number, email ID and date of birth. Your login password arrives on your registered email ID and by SMS on your mobile number.

Log in to the candidate dashboard, fill in the application form, choose your cluster and unit only where your ITI trade has notified slots, and enter your Class 10 and ITI marks exactly as they appear on your mark sheets. Pay the fee online unless you belong to an exempted category, upload your photograph, signature, thumb impression and certificates, and submit before 11 December 2026 at 11:59 PM. Take a print of the submitted application and the fee payment slip and keep them safe.

Do not wait for the last day. The notification itself advises applying well before the closing date, because the portal slows down under last day traffic and RRC takes no responsibility if you cannot submit on the final day. If you have trouble registering online, the help desk on rrcnr.org runs on working days from 9:30 AM to 6 PM. The numbers listed there are 9560268721 and 9560268722.

What the training will not give you

Read the fine print before you pay the fee. This is an apprenticeship under the Apprentices Act, 1961. It is training inside railway divisions, units and workshops, and the notification says plainly that it carries no promise of a railway job afterwards. The employer is not obliged to offer employment on completion, and you are not obliged to accept it.

The training period and the stipend follow the rules in force, and the notice fixes no figure for either, so do not trust any site that quotes a monthly stipend for this drive.

The railways provide no hostel, so you arrange your own stay. RRC pays no travel allowance for appearing in the process. Before training starts, you or your guardian, if you are a minor, sign a contract of apprenticeship with the employer. After selection, no request to change the division, unit or trade is entertained.

The same season has other railway apprentice openings worth a look. The RRC NWR Apprentice Recruitment 2026 post on this site covers 2,008 slots in North Western Railway that close on 22 November 2026, and the Central Railway Apprentice Recruitment 2026 post covers 2,861 slots that close on 2 December 2026.

Sources & verification: Railway Recruitment Cell, Northern Railway, Notification No. RRC/NR/03/2026/Act Apprentice dated 6 November 2026, read 7 November 2026 from the official PDF at rrcnr.org/downloads/Notification_Act_Appretice_2026.pdf. Slot total 4,651, cluster and category break-up, dates, age, qualification, fee, merit rule, photo and signature specs and helpline hours as published in that notification. Apply only through rrcnr.org.