Short answer: in the three ICAI campus placement drives with published results from 2025 to early 2026, companies offered 2,480 to 3,795 jobs per drive, and newly qualified CAs accepted 76% to 80% of them. The highest domestic offer was ₹32.33 lakh a year (63rd drive, December 2025 – January 2026). The last average CTC ICAI published in a drive report was ₹12.86 lakh (61st drive, February – March 2025). In April 2026, ICAI put the average starting package at ₹12–13 lakh, as reported by Taxscan.
News sites quote these numbers one drive at a time, and they often disagree. Here they are side by side, taken from ICAI’s own placement documents, with each source linked at the end.
ICAI campus placement results, drive by drive
| Drive | Held | Organisations | Jobs offered | Jobs accepted | Accepted ÷ offered | Highest domestic CTC | Average CTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 61st | Feb–Mar 2025 | 204 | 3,729 | 2,968 | 79.6% | ₹29 LPA | ₹12.86 LPA |
| 62nd | Aug–Sep 2025 | 157 | 3,795 | 2,931 | 77.2% | ₹26.60 LPA | not in ICAI’s report |
| 63rd | Dec 2025–Jan 2026 | 145 | 2,480 | 1,892 | 76.3% | ₹32.33 LPA | not in ICAI’s report |
| 64th | Apr–May 2026 | 183 (reported)* | 2,570 placed (reported)* | — | — | — | ₹12–13 LPA** |
LPA = lakh per annum. “Accepted ÷ offered” is our calculation from ICAI’s two counts.
* Reported by Business Standard (July 2026), not yet in an ICAI document we could read. Outlets disagree on whether 2,570 counts offers or candidates placed. ** ICAI’s figure for the average starting package, from its April 2026 letter, as reported by Taxscan.
A few notes on reading this table:
- The 61st drive’s highest offer came from Diageo India, according to ICAI’s report. That report’s highlights box is headed “August – September 2024” while its title says February – March 2025. We follow the title, because the August – September 2024 drive (the 60th) was a different size: about 241 organisations and 4,782 jobs.
- Third-party sites number and date these drives inconsistently. You will find the same figures labelled 63rd on one site and 64th on another, and an average of ₹12.88 LPA quoted for the 62nd drive that we could not find in ICAI’s own documents. When figures conflict, the source to trust is the ICAI placement portal.
- The results of the 65th drive (August – September 2026) were not published when this was written. It opened with 78 organisations and about 5,300 vacancies across 29 centres, as reported.
What your interview day tells you about the salary
ICAI decides which day a company interviews by what it pays. These are the floors from ICAI’s April 2026 brochure for recruiters. A company on a given day must offer at least this CTC to every candidate it hires there.
| Day slot (big centres) | Minimum domestic CTC | Minimum international CTC | Or: hiring 15+ per centre at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day Premier | ₹20 LPA | USD 50,000 | ₹17 LPA |
| Day 1 | ₹14 LPA | USD 40,000 | ₹12 LPA |
| Day 2 | ₹12 LPA | USD 30,000 | ₹11 LPA |
| Day 3 | ₹11 LPA | USD 20,000 | ₹10 LPA |
| Day 4 | ₹10 LPA | USD 15,000 | ₹9 LPA |
The big centres are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune. At smaller centres the floor is ₹9 LPA (Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Durgapur, Ernakulam, Indore, Kanpur, Nagpur, Noida, Rajkot, Thane, Visakhapatnam) or ₹7.2 LPA (Bhopal, Guwahati, Lucknow, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi, Ratlam, Vadodara).
So the day slot is the quickest way to read a company’s pay before the interview: a Day Premier recruiter at a big centre pays at least ₹20 lakh, or hires 15 or more per centre at ₹17 lakh or more.
How the shortlist works
These rules come from ICAI’s candidate FAQ for the April – May 2026 drive. They change little between drives.
- Registration costs ₹1,500, paid online, and gives you a centre code.
- Companies shortlist before anyone interviews. A company can shortlist at most 10 times its vacancies, in two online rounds. ICAI says companies usually shortlist on overall academic record, number of attempts and articleship completion, and may pick at random when too many candidates qualify.
- You consent to the companies that shortlisted you, and you must attend every interview you consented to until one company selects you. Once you accept an offer, you cannot interview further.
- Accepting and then not joining costs ₹5,000, can bring disciplinary action, and ends your access to ICAI’s campus drives and job portal.
- CTC, posting and job profile are shown in each company’s pre-placement talk, inside your candidate login, once it shortlists you.
- If you registered for a big centre and are not selected there, your profile moves to your second-choice smaller centre, with four fresh chances to select companies.
What this means for you
If you are qualifying in the next attempt. In the drives since 2025, about four in five jobs offered were accepted, and the published average sits near ₹12–13 lakh. The headline figure (₹26–32 lakh) is one offer from one company. Plan around the day slots: they tell you the guaranteed floor at each company, which is more useful than the record.
If you are deciding where to give consent. Each consent is an interview you must attend. Giving consent to every Day 4 company “to be safe” can use up the days you would rather spend on a Day 1 interview. Read the pre-placement talks first, then consent where the role and the floor both fit.
If you hold more than one shortlist. Roughly one offer in four or five goes unaccepted. ICAI does not say why; one likely reason is candidates who hold several shortlists accepting one and dropping the rest. Accept only what you will join. The ₹5,000 charge is the small part of the penalty; losing campus access is the large one.
If you are weighing campus against applying directly. Vacancies announced are not offers made. In April 2026, ICAI counted 8,911 vacancies against 5,834 candidates in the ongoing drive, as reported. That is more posts than people, but the shortlist rests largely on a record you cannot change now: marks, attempts and articleship. What you can still shape is how your resume reads in the interview, and for firms you apply to outside campus.
Check your resume before the interview
Shortlisting leans on your academic record, attempts and articleship. Your resume is what you talk from once you are in the interview room, and what you send to firms outside campus, so it is worth knowing what a CA role asks for that it does not yet show.
Skilture’s Resume Score compares your resume with a role you pick. The Chartered Accountant role is graded on 24 skills, 10 of them core: Ind AS, IFRS, Auditing Standards, GST, Income Tax, Company Law, Financial Statement Analysis, TDS, Internal Controls and Attention to Detail. You get a score out of 100, the skills it found, and the core skills it could not find on your resume. The scoring is rule-based, so the same resume gives the same result. No account is needed.
You can also see the whole skill list on the chartered accountant skill gap page, and practise with chartered accountant interview questions.
If a company’s pre-placement talk includes a job description, paste it into Job Post Match to see which of its skills your resume already shows.
Sources
- ICAI, Report on 61st Campus Placement Programme, February – March 2025 (PDF): organisations, jobs offered and accepted, highest and average CTC.
- ICAI, Campus Placement Programme April 2026, brochure for recruiting entities (PDF): highlights of the 62nd and 63rd drives, and the day-slot CTC norms.
- ICAI, Campus Placement Programme April – May 2026, FAQs for candidates (PDF): fee, shortlisting, consent and the commitment charge.
- ICAI Committee for Career Counselling, Campus placement (2026): highest domestic salary for December 2025 – January 2026, ₹32.33 LPA.
- Business Standard, ICAI declares 65th placement drive from August 3 for over 5,300 posts (July 2026): 64th drive organisations and placements, 65th drive vacancies.
- Taxscan, CA not low-paying: ICAI rebuts media report, highlights ₹12–13 LPA average salary (April 2026): average starting package, vacancies and candidates in the 64th drive.
- Careers360, ICAI 60th campus placement (2024): size of the 60th drive, used only to date the 61st report.
