Worried parents can put one fear to rest. The class 10 batch of 2026-27 will not have to pick up a third language at all. CBSE has spelled out how its three-language plan will roll out, and it has built in plenty of cushioning so that no student sitting in an upper class right now gets caught off guard.
The change starts from the 2026-27 session and follows the National Education Policy 2020, which asks students to learn three languages, with at least two of them being Indian. CBSE calls these native tongues Bhartiya Bhashas. The third language is referred to in the guidelines as R3.
What actually shifts depends on which class a child is in. Here’s the quick map.
| Class in 2026-27 | What applies |
|---|---|
| Class X | No change. Continue with the old two-language system. No third language. |
| Class IX | Study three languages, at least two Bhartiya Bhashas. R3 graded only by the school. |
| Class VII / VIII | On reaching Class IX and X, continue three languages with two Bhartiya Bhashas. |
| Class VI | Two of three must be Bhartiya Bhashas. This batch onward will sit a Board exam in R3. |
For the current Class IX students, the third language stays low-pressure. The school handles the assessment through an internal school-based test. When this batch moves to Class X in 2027-28, there will be no CBSE Board exam in that third language. CBSE and NCERT will supply grade-appropriate study material.
A one-time relaxation covers students who are already studying two non-native languages, say English and French. Class IX students in that spot can keep both and simply add one Bhartiya Bhasha as their R3. The same easing applies to current Class VII and VIII students who had already started two foreign languages. They add one Indian language and carry it till Class X, with no Board exam in it.
Things tighten only from Class VI. That batch, and the ones following it, will face a regular Board examination in R3 once they reach Class X. CBSE says the dedicated R3 textbooks for Class VI in 22 scheduled Bhartiya Bhashas are being made available on www.ncert.nic.in.
22 scheduled Bhartiya Bhashas are: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri (Meitei), Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.
A few students are kept out of the third-language requirement altogether:
- Children with Special Needs (CwSN), under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
- All CBSE schools located outside India.
- Foreign students returning to India.
If a family shifts to another state, the child may continue with the same language combination chosen earlier, and the school must arrange the resources to support that choice.
On staffing, CBSE is letting schools manage with existing teachers who have working proficiency, retired teachers, postgraduates, Sahodaya cluster sharing between schools, and virtual or hybrid classes. The Board says the focus stays on enjoyable, useful language learning rather than exams, and that no student should lose out because of the switch.
Schools should now sort out language options and teachers before the new session settles in, and parents of Class VI children in particular should note that the third language will count in the Board exam for that batch.