Subject-wise weightage in UPSC Prelims, 2016–2026: Economy and Polity lead, Geography has doubled
How many questions each subject got in every GS Paper I from 2016 to 2026, in one table. Which subjects are biggest, which swing from year to year, and which are rising or falling.
How many questions does each subject get in Prelims? Here is the answer for every GS Paper I from 2016 to 2026, counted from the 1,091 questions on this site.
Questions per subject, every paper
| Subject | ’16 | ’17 | ’18 | ’19 | ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ’23 | ’24 | ’25 | ’26 | Total | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 25 | 19 | 22 | 22 | 24 | 18 | 19 | 17 | 13 | 15 | 19 | 213 | 19.4 |
| Polity | 18 | 31 | 18 | 19 | 17 | 18 | 12 | 17 | 20 | 19 | 12 | 201 | 18.3 |
| Environment | 18 | 13 | 13 | 18 | 16 | 22 | 17 | 15 | 15 | 11 | 8 | 166 | 15.1 |
| History | 14 | 10 | 17 | 12 | 17 | 14 | 14 | 10 | 7 | 15 | 13 | 143 | 13.0 |
| Science & Tech | 9 | 9 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 10 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 14 | 15 | 134 | 12.2 |
| Geography | 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 14 | 16 | 19 | 15 | 11 | 119 | 10.8 |
| International relations | 9 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 10 | 14 | 77 | 7.0 |
| Art & Culture | 2 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 38 | 3.5 |
| All subjects | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 98 | 99 | 99 | 99 | 97 | 100 | 99 | 1,091 | 99.2 |
Every paper has 100 questions, but UPSC dropped 9 of them after the exam: 3 in 2024, 2 in 2020, and 1 each in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2026. Dropped questions are left out here, so those years add up to less than 100.
The biggest subjects
Economy and Polity carry the paper. Together they have 414 of 1,091 questions, 38% of the total. That is about 19 Economy questions and 18 Polity questions in an average paper.
Add Environment and you pass half. The top three subjects have 580 questions, 53% of everything asked.
Economy is the largest, but not every year. It had the most questions in 6 of the 11 papers and tied with Polity in 2023. Polity came first in 2017, 2024 and 2025, and Environment in 2021.
Art & Culture is small. It averages 3.5 questions a paper and has never had more than 7.
Steady subjects and swing subjects
Some subjects give roughly the same number every year. Others jump around.
Science & Tech is the steadiest big subject. It has had between 9 and 15 questions in every paper.
History is fairly steady too, between 10 and 17 in every year except 2024, when it fell to 7.
Polity swings the most. Its 31 questions in 2017 is the highest count in the table. Leave that year out and Polity sits between 12 and 20.
Geography and International relations swing because they are growing. Geography had 5 questions in 2016 and 19 in 2024. International relations had 2 in 2020 and 14 in 2026.
Environment fell to 8 in 2026, its lowest in 11 papers. It had 22 in 2021.
Rising and falling
To see a trend, compare each subject’s share of the paper in the first three papers (2016 to 2018) with the last three (2024 to 2026). A change of 3 points or more counts as rising or falling. This is the same test the paper trends page uses, so the two agree.
| Subject | 2016–18 | 2024–26 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geography | 7% | 15% | Rising |
| Science & Tech | 10% | 15% | Rising |
| International relations | 7% | 10% | Rising |
| Economy | 22% | 16% | Falling |
| Polity | 22% | 17% | Falling |
| Environment | 15% | 11% | Falling |
| History | 14% | 12% | Steady |
| Art & Culture | 4% | 4% | Steady |
Geography has more than doubled. It had 20 questions in 2016 to 2018 and 45 in 2024 to 2026.
The top of the paper is now crowded. In the last three papers Polity had 51 questions, Economy 47 and Geography 45. In 2016 to 2018 Geography had 20 against Polity’s 67.
So the totals in the first table can mislead. Economy has the most questions overall, but its share is falling. Geography is only sixth overall, but on recent papers it is nearly level with the top two.
What weightage tells you, and what it doesn’t
Weightage tells you how much of the paper a subject fills. It doesn’t tell you where inside the subject to study.
A subject’s questions are spread across many small areas. Economy’s 213 questions fall into 22 subtopics. Even its biggest, financial markets and instruments, has only 22 of them, about one in ten. Polity’s 201 questions fall into 31 subtopics.
So “about 19 Economy questions a year” doesn’t mean every Economy chapter is worth the same. Four Economy subtopics are Must-Do Areas, asked in at least 9 of the 11 papers. They hold 68 of Economy’s 213 questions, about a third. The rest is spread thin.
Use subject weightage to split your time between subjects. Then use the Must-Do list to decide what to read first inside each one. To see how one year’s paper was built, open it from the papers page.