of the New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament 2026
1. About the International Young Physicists’ Tournament
The International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) is a competition among teams of secondary school students from around the world. It takes place in late June or early July. Senior students test their ability to solve complicated scientific problems, present their solutions concisely and then defend them in scientific discussions with other teams, called Physics Fights.
The New Zealand Young Physicists’ Trust (The Trust) is the IYPT licence holder in New Zealand and the only organisation authorised to enter a New Zealand Team to IYPT. The Trust also runs the New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament for schools and educational groups in New Zealand. The school competition format is based on IYPT and uses seven of that year’s seventeen IYPT research problems
The NZ tournament is open to all secondary school students and those attending other pre-tertiary educational programmes. Each team in comprise of three students. Mixed teams from more than one school/group are permitted.
Students are typically in Year 13 and studying for NZCA level 3 or a similar physics qualification. There is however no age limit. Students in years 12 and even 11 have been known to do well.
Students may re-purpose their NZYPT research for exam practical work, or in other competitions providing, that they acknowledge the origin of the research as an IYPT problem
NZYPT call our competition rounds “Physics Matches”, PM, as they are not as aggressive as a fight! But this is only a name change – the rules remain the same.
2. The problems of the IYPT
The 17 problems for the year are formulated by the International Organizing Committee (IOC) of IYPT and sent to the participating countries not later than August. The Trust selects 7 of these problems to be used in the NZ tournament the following school year. Students have many months to research them. These 7 problems are published on Trust’s website, www.iypt.org.nz in the August before the team competition the following year.
3. Entries to NZYPT
The NZ Young Physicists’ Tournament is a team competition.
I. Team Entries
An NZYPT team is composed of three secondary school students. Any school in New Zealand can enter up to two teams into The NZ tournament prior to the published deadline. In cases where a school does not have enough suitable students; students may combine to form a team.
Each team of three students must be accompanied by a teacher to act as the team juror. Schools with two teams must supply two jurors. Consequently, any team who cannot bring at least one juror must notify the Trust to see if it is possible for the team to compete. Jurors do not have to be a physics teacher. See section 4 below.
Organising teachers are asked to fill out an expression of interest for their school and students. This is the first step towards an entry and ensures the teachers receives follow up emails with further instructions and information about the tournament including completing their entry, venue details, fees, deadlines and tournament news. It is assumed that teachers will share this information with their participating students.
The composition of the team cannot be changed during the tournament. The team is headed by a captain who is the official representative of the team during the NZ tournament. The captain is responsible for maintaining the teams challenge sheet. This is a record of the problems the team has been challenged to present, and whether the challenge was accepted or rejected. See section 8 below on how too many rejections will reduce the team’s mark.
Between them, the team should aim to investigate at least five problems to give them sufficient problems to present when challenged.
II. Entry Fee
The entry fee is $135 plus GST per team in 2026. This includes room hire, meals and snacks throughout the day for the three-student team and their Team Leader. Travel costs are additional to this and should be met by the school and/or students.
At the discretion of the NOC, tournament fees may be reduced or waived in cases of significant hardship. Please contact the Trust if you wish to discuss this.
III. Late Entries
The deadline for receiving fees and your student’s details is Wednesday 18th March in 2026. Schools must pay their fee by the deadline to obtain entry to the tournament.
IV. Regional and National Finals
In 2026, NZYPT is a single, national competition held on March 21st in Auckland. No regional rounds will be held.
4. The Jury
A Jury for every PM is nominated and organized by the Trust. The jurors consist of university academics, school physics teachers, parents and supporters of NZYPT with relevant physics or engineering degrees.
The team leader from each team is automatically included as a Juror unless the school has supplied an alternative. Where possible team leaders should not be judging their own team and should not grade the same team more than twice.
5. The Physics Match regulations
In the course of a PM, the members of a team may communicate freely with each other as long as they do not disturb the match or the jury.
Teams must NOT use the internet in a match and will loose their score from that round if they do so.
Before the beginning of a PM, the Jury and the teams are introduced to each other.
Two teams participate in a PM. Each PM is held in its own room. The two teams take turns to report and oppose. Occasionally, the total number of team s entered require three teams in one room who then compete in a round robin.
6. The team roles in a Physics Match
Each team will have either a reporter or an opponent for every leg of the PM. This is an individual student who represents the team. Students cannot represent their team more than three times in the entire Tournament. (either twice as reporter and once as opposer or vice versa). They can take both the reporter and the opposer role in the same physics match; but this is two of their three representations.
The Reporter presents the teams solution to the problem, drawing attention to the main physical ideas, experimental results and conclusions. Standard devices for presentation are whiteboard and computer data show projector. For further devices the teams should consult the organizers. Videos and live demonstrations of the experiments are encouraged within the time limits,
The Opponent puts questions to the Reporter and critiques their report, pointing to possible inaccuracy and errors in the understanding of the problem and in the proposed solution. The Opponent analyses BOTH the advantages and drawbacks of the Reporter’s physics solution (major part) and the clarity of their presentation (minor part). NB: The discussion of the Opponent should not become a presentation of his/her own solution. The opposition report may start with a presentation using a data projector and continue in the discussion phase with the use of diagrams and calculations on the whiteboard.
There will be two legs in a PM so that each team takes a turn at being the Reporter and the Opponent. During any one PM only one member of each team takes the floor as Reporter or Opponent. Other members of the team will help with the presentation technically in the allotted preparation times, (cf. section vii of the regulations) . A competition (heats and final), will have three PM rounds so that every student should get the chance to participate in at least one PM.
7. Physics Match Timings
Physics matches are very structured and use strict timings to balance the competition and keep it to a reasonable timescale. These PM timings are taken from the international competition rules.
There are strictly timed steps outlined here IN MINUTES. This is a maximum time, and the jury will stop any step that exceeds its allotted time by more than a few seconds
There should be no break between the two legs of a PM so that it is completed within two hours.
8. The rules of problem-challenge and rejection
A problem cannot be reported more than once in a match.
The Opponent may challenge the Reporter on any problem with the exception of problems that:
a) was rejected by the Reporter earlier; or
b) was presented by the Reporter earlier; or
c) was opposed by the Opponent earlier; or
d) was presented by the Opponent earlier.
If there are no problems left to challenge, the bans above are successively removed in the order (d), (c), (b), (a) until a problem is selected.
Across all PMs in a competition, the Reporter may reject the challenge of two different problems in total without penalty.
For every subsequent rejection, the Reporter’s mark for the leg is decreased by a factor of 0.2 from the stage of that rejection. This reduction is cumulative and continues through any following PMs. So, for example, if four problems are rejected, the teams’ mark is reduced by a factor of 0.8
9. The grading
After each Stage the Jury grades the teams, taking into account all presentations of the members of the team, questions and answers to the questions, and participation in the discussion. Each Jury member shows integer marks from 1 to 10.
The highest and lowest marks from the jury are averaged to form one mark. The team mark will be the mean of the combined high/low mark and the remaining judges’ marks.
The reporters team mark is then multiplied by 3, less any reduction for rejections . The opponents team mark is multiplied by 2 This ensures that research and presentation is given predominance in the scoring.
Finally, the marks for three matches are added up to give a total mark. The winning team will have the greatest number of points after three rounds of PM.
Any year 12 students in the winning team will automatically be offered places in the Physics Foundation Academy.
10. The status of the regulations of NZYPT
These regulations are established by the Trust as the New Zealand National Organising Committee, (NOC) in accordance with IYPT regulations. Only the Trust may amend them.
Revised for the NZYPT National Tournament being held on 21st March 2026