The JAMB admission deadline for outstanding offers from the 2021 to 2025 admission exercises has been extended to Monday, November 30, 2026. The board announced the new date in Abuja on Wednesday, September 30, the same day the earlier deadline was due to expire, and said the extra time makes up for the roughly 96 hours that the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) was unavailable in late September.
- Previous deadlineReplaced by the new date
- New final deadline to accept or rejectCovers outstanding offers from 2021 to 2025
- Unanswered offers revert to Not AdmittedAfter 30 November 2026Later changes attract a penalty fee
Dates from JAMB's statement of 30 September 2026.
If you have an old offer sitting on your CAPS dashboard that you never accepted or rejected, you now have two more months to deal with it. JAMB's spokesman, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made it clear that this is the final window for candidates in this group.
The board has approved November 30, 2026, as the final deadline for candidates in this category to indicate whether they wish to accept or reject their outstanding admission offers.
Why the JAMB admission deadline was extended after the CAPS outage
The September 30 date had already been described as the last chance, so the extension is a real reprieve for anyone who hadn't acted. The reason is the CAPS outage in late September, which took the system offline during the very period candidates had been told to use. JAMB restored the platform and then reset the clock for this category, rather than leave candidates penalised for downtime they didn't cause.
We covered the restored platform and the separate 2026 admission timelines in our piece on the new CAPS deadlines for public and private universities. That schedule is for the current admission exercise. The November 30 date in this article applies only to unresolved offers from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
What happens to your old offer if you still ignore it
Once November 30 passes, any offer from those years that hasn't been accepted or rejected will be switched to "Not Admitted" automatically. Benjamin said "any subsequent request to update an admission record relating to these previous years will attract the applicable penalty fee", so leaving it until after the deadline means paying to fix something you can sort out free of charge today.
This matters most if you resumed school on the strength of a departmental list or an acceptance fee receipt and never touched CAPS. Your institution may have you on its records, but JAMB's system is what confirms the admission, and a mismatch between the two can come back to trouble you later, for example during final clearance.
Admitted in 2026 but still have an old offer? You're safe to act
A lot of candidates hesitated before the original deadline because they feared rejecting an old offer might cancel a new one. JAMB has addressed that directly. Benjamin said candidates "who have been offered admission in the 2026 admission exercise but still have an outstanding admission offer from an earlier year have no cause for apprehension", which means you can reject the older offer without affecting your 2026 admission.
If you're already studying a different course from the one shown on CAPS, the board's earlier guidance still applies. You can accept the offer and then apply for a correction, rather than leave the record hanging. Our earlier guide to accepting or rejecting a CAPS offer walks through those situations in more detail.
How to accept or reject your old offer on CAPS before November 30
Log in to the JAMB e-Facility portal with the email and password you used at registration, then follow these steps.
- Open CAPSCheck Admission Status > Access my CAPSUse the email and password from your UTME registration.
- Check the offerAdmission StatusConfirm the year, institution and course before you click anything.
- Accept or rejectAccept Admission or Reject AdmissionAccepting lets you print your admission letter. Rejecting closes the old offer.
Don't wait until late November to try, because portals tend to slow down as a deadline approaches and a forgotten password can take time to recover. If CAPS shows "Admission in Progress" or nothing at all for a year you know you were admitted, contact your school's admissions office before the deadline so they can check what happened on their side. If your admission depends on an O'level result you sat this year, also make sure it has been uploaded to your JAMB profile, and our guide shows how to check your NECO result first.
The safest thing to do this week
Log in now and look at every year listed on your CAPS page, even if you're sure you accepted your offer long ago. The new date gives you breathing room, but the aim is to have JAMB's record and your school's record saying the same thing well before November 30, without paying a penalty to correct it later.
Join the conversation