ICSE Class 10 Geography Previous Year Question Papers with Solutions (2020-2026)

Solve 2026 first. It is the newest real paper, and CISCE's 2027 specimen for Geography keeps the same two-part layout. Our post on the ICSE specimen paper 2027 explains what changed in the specimens.

ICSE Geography 2026 question paper: where the 80 marks went

The paper gives you 2 hours to write, after 15 minutes of reading time. Part I is compulsory. In Part II you pick five of nine questions.

• Question 1, topographical map (Survey of India sheet G43S7): 10 marks in five 2-mark parts.
• Question 2, outline map of India: 10 marks for ten items to mark, shade or label.
• Question 3, objective questions: 10 one-mark MCQs, including one assertion-reason, one analogy and one photo.
• Part II, Questions 4 to 12: nine questions of 10 marks each, split 2 + 2 + 3 + 3. You answer any five, for 50 marks.

Source: ICSE 2026 Geography question paper (CISCE, paper code T26 502), Gradehunt analysis.

Map work alone was 20 of the 80 marks, and all of it sat in the compulsory part. At 1.5 minutes a mark, Part I is worth about 45 minutes and each Part II question about 15.

Every Part II question stayed inside one chapter. Question 4 was climate, 5 soil, 6 natural vegetation, 7 water resources, 8 minerals and energy, 9 agriculture, 10 manufacturing industries, 11 transport and 12 waste management.

You can leave four of those chapters out of your long answers on the day, but not out of your revision. The ten MCQs in Question 3 touched all nine chapters, and agriculture got two of them: groundnut residue as cattle feed, and mustard as a rabi crop.

What kind of questions came in the 2026 Geography paper

• Short stories with a name in them. Six question parts are built around a named person: Sahil crossing causeways on the map extract, Shyam comparing winter in Nainital and Ooty, Raghu choosing an irrigation method that spreads water evenly, Umesh and Sagar working in Odisha's iron ore mines, Mr Kumar's family picking transport for three trips, and Udit's advice to his sister on waste.
• Data and pictures. A twelve-month temperature and rainfall table for "station X", a map of the areas that get winter rain, a sketch of soils on a floodplain and a river terrace, a photo of forest in a marshy area, a waterway photo, a waste-management picture and a short extract from the Journal of Hydrology on groundwater.
• Reasons, not just definitions. Six of the eighteen 3-mark parts ask for a geographical reason behind three statements, such as why black soil does not get leached or why trees at high altitudes are conical.

The climate table rewards students who can read it without help: why June is cooler than May, adding up the rainy-season rainfall, and deciding from the range of temperature whether the station is near the sea.

Topographical map and India map questions

The 2026 topo questions tested the usual skills on a new sheet: reading a six-figure grid reference, naming a relief feature and a drainage pattern in a grid square, working out a height difference from contours, and explaining why causeways and a perennial water source appear in a mostly seasonal-stream area.

The India map list mixed physical and economic items: an old fold mountain range, the river called the Sorrow of Bihar, the Gulf of Kutch, the Karakoram Pass, the Western Ghats, the Krishna, an offshore oil field, the laterite soil area in the northeast, an area of dense population and the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Older papers use different Survey of India sheets, which makes them useful practice. Each sheet tests the same skills on unfamiliar ground.

How to practise with these ICSE Geography papers

• Write 2026 and 2025 under exam conditions: 15 minutes of reading, then 2 hours. Use the reading time to choose your five Part II questions.
• Do 2024 and 2023 next, with a fresh outline map of India each time. Mark with arrows where places are crowded, as the paper itself tells you to.
• Use the two 2022 semester papers and the 2020 practice paper for chapter practice. 2022 was a two-semester year, so those papers are shorter.
• Answer every sub-part in serial order. The 2026 instructions ask for this, and it makes your answer easy to check against the solution.

For more practice, Gradehunt's 10 Years Solved Papers (PYQ) for ICSE Class 10 has the Geography board questions from the 2016 to 2026 exams sorted chapter by chapter, with the year printed on each question and the mark for each step shown in the solution.

Taking History and Civics too? It is H.C.G. Paper 1, and its papers are on our ICSE Class 10 History and Civics past papers page.