How many medical college seats are there in Pakistan?

About 22,300 MBBS and BDS seats are available each year across public and private medical and dental colleges in Pakistan. Roughly 12,400 of them are in private colleges and 9,900 in the public sector. The exact figure depends on when it was counted, because PM&DC raises or cuts a college's intake between sessions.

That is the answer most candidates want, and it is the least useful one. What matters is the number of seats you can actually compete for, which depends on your province and your sector.

Where the national number comes from

The figure of 22,322 was given by PM&DC to the Senate Standing Committee on National Health Services in March 2026, when the committee was discussing the MDCAT schedule. It is a count of approved intake, not of students admitted, and it includes both MBBS and BDS.

Two things move it. PM&DC approves a new intake every session, and a court order can allow a college to admit before its recognition is complete. In 2026-27 alone, three Khyber Pakhtunkhwa colleges were raised to 150 seats, and PM&DC's public list of private colleges shows several entries marked as admissions allowed under a specific writ petition. A number quoted from a year-old article is a year-old number.

Seats by province

The distribution is uneven, and it is the reason a candidate in Punjab and a candidate in Balochistan face different competition for the same paper score.

The college directory lists every one of those colleges with its approved MBBS and BDS seats, attached hospital, bed count and recorded closing merit.

The dental side

Public dental seats are a fraction of medical seats, and the 2026 regulations added a rule that a candidate must apply separately for BDS. A candidate who applies only for MBBS cannot be given a BDS seat, even where one is vacant.

Dental admission runs on a later calendar in most provinces. In Punjab, the MBBS selection lists were scheduled from 17 November 2026, and the BDS application window did not open until 15 December.

Dental merit closes lower than medical merit in every province, because fewer candidates choose it, and the seats cost less in the public sector. That makes BDS a different competition rather than a second prize: a candidate whose aggregate misses MBBS by two points is often comfortably inside the BDS list at the same college.

The numbers inside a single college

A college page carries three numbers that answer different questions: MBBS seats, BDS seats, and the recorded closing aggregate for each quota. Read them together.

A college with 300 MBBS seats and a closing aggregate of 94 admitted 300 students down to 94 percent. A college with 100 seats and a closing aggregate of 92 admitted fewer, and the difference is the seat count, not a lower standard. That is why a college's closing aggregate cannot be read as a quality score.

Public and private are different competitions

A public MBBS seat in Punjab costs tens of thousands of rupees a year. A private MBBS seat in the same province costs millions over five years. The two sectors share one merit formula but not one price, and the private colleges can be reached at a lower aggregate for a higher fee.

Under the 2026 regulations the merit formula is the same in both. What differs is the closing aggregate, because fewer candidates can pay the private fee. The fees and closing merit guide compares the two, and the hidden costs guide lists what sits outside tuition, and the public versus private comparison sets out the five-year arithmetic.

The number that should worry you

The candidate count is the other half of the ratio. 138,158 candidates were registered for the 2026 test against about 22,300 seats, which is roughly six registered candidates per seat, and the ratio is worse in the cities of Punjab. In Punjab alone, 47,475 candidates appeared for the province's public and private MBBS seats.

What a ratio is worth, and what it is not

Six candidates per seat sounds like a lottery. It is not, for one reason: the six are not equal. About half of the candidates who sit the paper do not reach the 55% pass mark, and a large share of those who do are not competitive for a public college because their FSc percentage caps the aggregate.

The ratio that matters is candidates above the closing aggregate of the college you want, against the seats there. That is a much friendlier number, which is why the closing aggregate, not the national count, is the figure to plan against. The score band guide shows how a band translates into the colleges it reaches.

Why the seats are not spread evenly

Capacity follows hospitals. A province with more teaching hospitals and more consultant posts can carry more medical students, so the Punjab and Sindh counts rise together with their clinical infrastructure, and Balochistan stays small.

That is also why intake moves slowly. A new college has to be inspected, accredited and attached to a hospital before PM&DC approves its seats, and the approval is a number for one session, not a promise. The PM&DC list of recognised colleges is the only source that shows the number actually open for a given year.

The seats that open in the summer

Every province ends its cycle with vacancies, and they are filled through upgradation rather than a new merit list. A candidate who missed a seat in the first list can appear in a later one because someone above them went elsewhere.

That is the reason a candidate who reaches an early list should accept the offer and join the upgradation process, rather than decline and hope. A declined seat is offered to the candidate below, and the candidate who declined starts from where they left off.

How to use the numbers

1. Count the seats in your own province for your sector. That is your pool.
2. Find the recorded closing aggregate of the colleges in that pool, and note the year.
3. Compare it with your calculated aggregate. The gap, not the score, decides whether to apply, repeat, or look at another route.
4. Check the number again in the prospectus of the year you apply, because intake changes.