ABUJA, Nigeria – The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced a one-month extension of the deadline for all candidates offered admission into tertiary institutions across the country from 2021 to date to formally accept or reject such offers, shifting the final cutoff date to Wednesday, September 30, 2026, the Board confirmed in a statement on Saturday, August 29, 2026.
The examination body had previously fixed Monday, August 31, 2026, as the deadline for affected candidates to indicate their decision on the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), explaining that the extension serves as a final grace window to regularize national matriculation records.
Okay News reports that the directive affects candidates with pending regular admissions as well as those captured under the Condonement of Undisclosed Institutional Illegal Admissions (CUIIA) framework.
In an official statement signed by the Board’s Public Communication Advisor, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, JAMB advised all candidates with outstanding offers to take immediate action on their portals rather than waiting for the closing days of the window.
“Candidates who accept their admission offers will be able to proceed to print and obtain their admission letters,” Benjamin explained. “Those who reject their offers will have their dashboards reverted to ‘Not Admitted’, enabling the Board to update its records and ensure that its admission data accurately reflects the current status of candidates.”
Addressing specific candidate scenarios, the Board clarified that individuals who are no longer enrolled in the institutions that offered the initial admission, or who have switched academic departments, should accept the pending offer on the portal and subsequently apply for official correction or deletion of the admission to reconcile their institutional records.
For candidates currently pursuing a second degree who still have an unaccepted previous undergraduate offer lingering on their profiles, JAMB instructed that they may reject the older offer without disrupting their active academic programme.
Similarly, the Board dispelled anxieties among candidates newly admitted in the ongoing 2026 admission exercise who still have older offers pending on CAPS, assuring them that rejecting previous admissions will not jeopardize or adversely impact their 2026 placements.
JAMB emphasized that no further extensions will be granted following the expiration of the September 30 deadline, warning that all outstanding offers from 2021 to date that remain unaccepted by that date will automatically revert to “Not Admitted” status, permanently invalidating the offers.
