CBSE Class 12 English Previous Year Question Papers with Solutions (2020-2026)

CBSE has the same 2026 paper, the 2026 compartment paper and their marking schemes on its question paper page and marking scheme page. The 2026-27 sample paper and its marking scheme are on CBSE's academic website, and the sample paper says there is no change in the question paper design or assessment pattern for 2026-27.

CBSE Class 12 English 2026 paper: marks, questions and choices

Here is how Set 1 (1/1/1) was built, question by question:

• Reading, 22 marks, no choice. A 365-word passage from Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull (12 marks over 10 questions), then a factual passage on road safety with a table of accident causes (10 marks over 8 questions).
• Creative writing, 18 marks, every task with an OR: a notice (4), an invitation or a formal reply (4), a letter to the editor or a job application with bio-data (5), and an article or a report (5).
• Literature, 40 marks: a poetry extract (6), a Vistas extract (4), a Flamingo prose extract (6), any five of six short answers (10), any two of three Vistas short answers (4) and two long answers of 5 marks each.
• One-mark questions: 30 of the 80 marks, 14 in reading and 16 across the three extracts.
• Expression marks: 17 of the 80 go to grammar, spelling, punctuation and organisation, and the writing tasks carry 4 more for format.
• Written length: add up the word limits and you write roughly 860 to 1,050 words, besides the one-line extract answers.
• Syllabus spread: counting both options of every choice, Set 1 asked about all 19 prescribed texts, the 8 Flamingo prose chapters, 5 Flamingo poems and 6 Vistas chapters.

Source: CBSE Class 12 English Core papers 1/1/1 and 1/1/2 (March 2026), their marking schemes and the 2026-27 curriculum, Gradehunt analysis.

That last point matters for revision. You get a choice in every literature question, but the choices are spread over the whole book. Skipping two or three chapters can leave you with no real choice at all.

What the 2026 writing tasks were

Set 1's notice was either a career counselling session for Classes 11 and 12 or a call for school magazine contributions. The invitation went to the local MLA for a felicitation function, and the reply option accepted an invitation to run an art therapy seminar. The letter was either to the editor, urging young people to take up yoga, or a job application for an AI engineer's post. The article was titled 'The Vanishing Art of Slowing Down', and the report covered a 'Tastes of India' food week.

The 2026-27 curriculum keeps the same menu for Section B: a notice, an invitation or reply, a letter to the editor or job application, and an article or report. Practise one of each type from every past paper rather than all the notices first.

How the 2026 English marking scheme gave marks

The scheme spells out the split for each kind of answer:

• Notice, invitation and reply: format 1, content 2, expression 1.
• Letter, article and report: format 1, content 2, expression 2.
• Short literature answers of 40 to 50 words: content 1, expression 1.
• Long literature answers of 120 to 150 words: content 3, expression 2. Where a question links two texts, the answer has to refer to both.

A few rules from the same scheme change how you should write:

• Format earns nothing if the content is missing or irrelevant. A boxed notice with the wrong details scores zero for format too.
• In reading answers, grammar, spelling and word count are not marked, and lifting a relevant line from the passage is not penalised. The examiner checks whether you found the idea.
• No marks are cut for going over a word limit. The real cost of a long answer is the time it takes from the next question.
• If you answer both options of a choice, both are marked and only the higher score counts. That rarely helps, since the second answer eats ten minutes.
• Class 12 answer books were marked on screen (On Screen Marking) from 2026, so write each question and part number clearly.

At 2¼ minutes a mark, a three-hour paper splits into about 50 minutes for reading, 40 for writing and 90 for literature.

Which English previous year papers to practise first

• 2026 Sets 1 to 3 and the 2026-27 sample paper, because CBSE has kept the same design for 2027.
• 2025, 2024 and 2023 next, each written in one three-hour sitting.
• 2022 and 2020 for extra passages and literature questions. The 2022 exam was held in two terms, so those papers are shorter.

Mark your writing tasks against the solution in three passes: format, content, then expression. Format is the easiest of the three to fix, because it follows a set layout.

When you want more questions chapter by chapter, Gradehunt's 10 Years Solved Papers (PYQ) for CBSE Class 12 collects the board questions from 2016 to 2026 for each subject, with the year and marks shown on each question and solutions amended to the 2026-27 syllabus.

Solved past papers for Physics, Chemistry and Maths are also on Gradehunt.