IBPS RRB Office Assistant 2026 Vacancies: 8,222 Across 28 RRBs by State

“IBPS RRB Clerk” is the popular name for the post IBPS calls Office Assistant (Multipurpose) in the Regional Rural Banks, recruited through the Common Recruitment Process CRP RRBs-XV. The notification is dated 1 September 2026, registration closed on 27 September 2026 after an extension from 21 to 27 September, and the Preliminary is scheduled for 6, 12 and 13 December 2026 in IBPS’s tentative calendar. The number every candidate wants is the vacancy count for their own State — because under this process you compete only inside the State you chose on the form. This guide prints that number from IBPS’s own Annexure I, with the category split, the reserved seats inside it, and how each State moved since 2024.

IBPS Annexure I updated as on 25.09.2026.

IBPS republished Annexure I three times after the notification. Only the first revision changed the Office Assistant total. If a page still presents 8,183 as the current total, it is using the superseded 01.09.2026 figure rather than the updated Annexure I total of 8,222.

The table below is Annexure I as on 25.09.2026, row by row. Every row adds up to its printed total, and the columns add up to SC 1,258, ST 774, OBC-NCL 1,914, EWS 806 and General 3,470 — 8,222 (our check of IBPS’s figures). The PwBD and ex-servicemen columns are headed “(Out of which)” in the PDF: they are inside the category counts, not extra seats. Across the country that is 99 HI, 85 OC, 81 VI and 90 ID seats for persons with benchmark disabilities, 809 for ex-servicemen and 352 for “DESM” — the column where IBPS clubs disabled ex-servicemen with dependants of servicemen killed in action.

Two things stand out. First, concentration: Uttar Pradesh (1,200), Andhra Pradesh (900), Telangana (750), Odisha (600), Gujarat (510) and Bihar (500) together hold 4,460 of the 8,222 seats — a little over half (our arithmetic). Second, the small States: Nagaland has 6 seats and only 1 of them is General; Puducherry has 11; Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya have 26 each. In those States a single category can hold one or two seats, and one extra reported vacancy changes the picture entirely.

Some category columns are empty by design. Haryana, Punjab and Puducherry have no ST seats; Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have no SC seats; Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura have no OBC-NCL seats. A reserved-category candidate in those States competes for the unreserved seats only.

The national total barely moved — 8,022 in 2025 to 8,222 in 2026, up 200 — but the State numbers were reshuffled almost completely. Rajasthan fell from 1,725 to 225, a drop of 1,500 seats. Karnataka fell from 800 to 279 and Tamil Nadu from 468 to 244. On the other side Andhra Pradesh rose from 150 to 900, Telangana from 450 to 750, Odisha from 309 to 600, and Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra each gained at least 200. The table has every State; the chart shows each State that moved by 100 or more.

The 2024 column is not strictly comparable. In 2024 several States still had two or more RRBs, and four banks sent no figure at all (“NR”: Uttar Bihar, Baroda Gujarat, Baroda Rajasthan Kshetriya and Baroda U.P.). The 2026 notification lists exactly one RRB per State/UT — 28 in all — so a 2024 State figure is the sum of several banks’ rows, and for Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar and Rajasthan it is missing a bank. Use it to see direction, not to compute a growth rate.

If you are reading an older list of “participating banks”, check the names. Six of the 28 banks in the 2026 notification are named differently from the 2025 notification. The State, head office and local language are the same in each case.

IBPS attaches the same sentence to every version of Annexure I: the vacancies “are indicative and anticipated as communicated by the RRBs. However, Provisional allotment will be made based on the actual vacancies reported by the RRBs.” In other words, the number that decides your allotment is the one the RRB reports after the Mains, not the one printed in September. It can go up — Tripura went from not reported to 39 within eight days this year, and Jammu & Kashmir doubled from 50 to 100 during the 2025 registration window — and it can go down.

The notification also provides a reserve list “to the extent of vacancies” in each category. If RRBs report further vacancies within one year of the provisional allotment, IBPS says allotment from the reserve list “will be carried out three to four times” — that is, three to four rounds, not three to four times the seats. The reserve list, and the validity of the CRP itself, expire one year after the date of provisional allotment or when a fresh provisional allotment is made, whichever is earlier.

IBPS’s own “Growth” page gives national Office Assistant totals for two older years only: 7.56 lakh registered and 5.33 lakh tested in 2021–22, and 6.56 lakh registered and 4.83 lakh tested in 2022–23 (official). It has not published State- or category-wise figures, or any figure for 2025 or 2026, so there is no defensible current applicants-per-seat number for your State — pages that print one are estimating. What the vacancy table does tell you is how thin the margin can be. Take Himachal Pradesh: 51 seats, of which 23 General. Or Kerala: 350 seats, 182 General, but only 4 ST. Your competition is the pool of candidates in your State and your category, and the last merit rank that gets a seat moves with the vacancies the RRB finally reports.

Two practical consequences follow. Your State was fixed on the application form and cannot be edited, so the table above is your market for this cycle — there is no switching to a State with more seats. And because final selection is on Mains marks alone, with no interview, the Mains score is the whole contest once you clear the Preliminary.