UPSC Essay Paper: Pattern, Topics and Past Themes

The essay is Paper I of the UPSC Mains: 250 marks, three hours, and one of the seven papers that count towards your final rank. The notice doesn't fix how many essays you write or how long they should be; each year's question paper does. In the 2024, 2025 and 2026 papers candidates wrote two essays of about 1,000–1,200 words each, one from each of two sections, for 125 marks each.

This guide covers what the notice says, the pattern of those three papers, the themes their topics covered and how to prepare.

The syllabus, as UPSC prints it

That paragraph is the whole syllabus. It names no subjects. Instead it tells you what the examiners look for:

• Relevance. Keep closely to the subject of the essay.
• Order. Arrange your ideas in an orderly way.
• Brevity. Write concisely.
• Precision. Credit goes to effective and exact expression.

The notice's general instructions apply too: no marks for superficial knowledge, a deduction for handwriting that isn't easily legible, and credit for orderly, effective and exact expression with due economy of words.

The pattern in UPSC's recent papers

The 2024, 2025 and 2026 essay papers all followed the same pattern:

Each paper also tells you to write in the medium authorised in your admission certificate, warns that answers in any other medium get no marks, asks you to keep to the word limit and to strike off any page you leave blank. The topics are printed in Hindi and English.

The notice doesn't fix the number of essays or the word limit; these come from each year's paper. Read the instructions on the paper before you start.

Past themes, 2024 to 2026

Every topic in these three papers is a single sentence, and most state an idea about life, knowledge, character or society rather than asking about a particular policy. A typical example is Q7 of the 2026 paper: "Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course." Here is what each paper's topics were about, in our words. Follow the links for UPSC's exact wording.

CSE Mains 2026

• Section A: oxymorons and the ironies of life; gratitude; thorns and buds; the grass that suffers when elephants fight.
• Section B: nature and the spirit; education and questioning; putting off hard decisions; leaders and their followers.

CSE Mains 2025

• Section A: truth and colour; winning without fighting; thought as discovery and creation; lessons from bitter experience.
• Section B: letting muddy water settle; years and days as teachers; life as a journey; contentment and luxury.

CSE Mains 2024

• Section A: forests, civilisations and deserts; the empires of the mind; the path to happiness; doubt and science.
• Section B: social media, the fear of missing out and loneliness among the young; adversity, power and character; simple ideas with large consequences; the risk of acting wrongly against the cost of inaction.

Read together, the topics keep returning to ethics and character, knowledge and thinking, how people live and learn, and society and nature. Most can be approached from many angles, so prepare to think a broad idea through rather than memorising essays on expected subjects. Older papers are on UPSC's Previous Question Papers page; see also our guide to previous year papers.

Where the essay sits in the mains

The essay is one of the seven papers that make up the 1,750 marks of your written rank, highlighted below.

How to prepare

• Write two full essays in one sitting. The paper gives you three hours for both, so practise exactly that, by hand.
• Plan before you write. Spend the first minutes on an outline: what the topic means, the angles you will take, the examples you will use and where you will end. The notice rewards orderly arrangement.
• Keep checking the topic. Relevance is the first thing the notice asks for. After each part of your outline, ask whether it still answers the topic you chose.
• Collect examples across subjects. Keep a notebook of examples from history, governance, the economy, science and daily life, and of thinkers' ideas from your GS IV preparation.
• Get your essays marked. Ask a teacher or a fellow aspirant to read them against the notice's tests: relevant, orderly, concise and exact.
• Learn your own word count. Find out how many pages 1,000–1,200 words fill in your handwriting, so you don't have to count in the exam.