SBI Clerk State-wise Vacancy 2026-27: Three Years and Local Languages

SBI recruits Junior Associates state by state: you apply for one State/UT, compete only with candidates who chose it, must be proficient in one language you opt for from those listed for it, and are posted there. So the national total matters far less than your state’s row — and those rows swing wildly. Karnataka went from 50 seats to 270 to 760 in three years; Bihar from 1,111 to 260 to none. This guide sets out every state’s regular vacancies for the last three cycles, the 2026-27 special-drive seats, and the local language each state requires.

SBI advertisements 2025-26/06 and 2026-27/17.

Three states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Odisha — hold more than half of the 2026-27 regular seats. Uttar Pradesh, which had 1,894 in 2024-25, has 250; Madhya Pradesh fell from 1,317 to 113. The pattern is not a trend but a roster: SBI fills each state’s requirement cycle by cycle, so a state that was large last year can be small this year. The only safe reading is your own state’s row in the current advertisement.

The category split changes the picture more than the state total does. Odisha’s 1,100 seats include 242 ST seats, Chhattisgarh has more ST seats (91) than OBC, SC and EWS combined (79), and Tamil Nadu has 380 OBC seats but only 14 ST. Several north-eastern states have no SC seats at all, and Himachal Pradesh has 9 regular seats in total, six of them General. A candidate’s real competition is the row and the column — the state and the category — because the merit list is drawn “State wise, category wise”.

SBI shortlists “approximately 10 times the numbers of vacancies” in each category for the Main, “subject to availability”, from all prelims candidates in descending order of aggregate marks. Applied to the 2026-27 regular seats, that points to roughly 76,800 Main candidates nationally — our arithmetic, not an SBI figure; in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 cycles we checked, SBI published prelims results only through a login utility, with no count of candidates shortlisted.

For a candidate choosing a state, the practical meaning has not changed: plan to work in the state you apply for. The regular 2026-27 advertisement is the first regular one to add a route out of the state — a discretionary request after five years; the earlier intra-state exceptions only move a recruit between two circles of the same state.

SBI’s centre list is national. A candidate “may appear in the examination from any notified Centre”, including centres in states that have no 2026-27 regular seats — so a Bihar candidate applying for Odisha can take the prelims and Main in Patna. Only the language test must be taken in the state applied for, “at his/her own expenses”.

The 2026-27 special drive fills backlog SC, ST and OBC seats — 1,538 in all, most of them ST (1,219). Gujarat (289 ST), Maharashtra (165 ST), Madhya Pradesh (134 ST) and Jharkhand (133: SC 14, ST 119) are the largest; Karnataka’s 120 are SC 85 and ST 35, and Rajasthan’s 106 are SC 20 and ST 86. Only non-creamy-layer OBC candidates may apply for OBC seats, and the fee is ₹750 for OBC and nil for SC and ST.

Each state lists one or more local languages, and a candidate opts for one at the time of application. The prelims and Main are offered in English, Hindi and, in most states, one or two regional languages (the English section is in English only) — but not every local-language option is an exam medium: Bodo, Nepali, Kokborok, Garo, Khasi and Mizo, for example, are not. The language-test guide in this series has the full comparison. After selection, a candidate who did not study the opted language in Class 10 or 12 must pass SBI’s local language test before joining. Candidates can take the written exam at any centre, but the language test is in the state applied for, at their own expense.