The 2025 New Zealand Tournament
is complete.
2026 starts in August 2025!
The New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament is a competition open to all students studying for NCEA Level 3 or equivalent in Physics. A schools may enter up to two teams of three students. Schools can also combine to form a team so long as one of the teacher from those schools supports them. One teacher MUST attend the tournament with each team as the teacher will act as Juror.
The Research
The International Tournament set seventeen problems in July each year. The Trust selects seven of these for the New Zealand Tournament and release them in August the year prior to the National schools’ tournament. Students research these problems through simple experiments, linking them to theory. Between them, the team members need to prepare solutions to at least five of the selected research problems. (here are the 2025 questions).
Participation in the national schools’ team competition greatly enhances the understanding of both both students and teachers of how to do well. It is also invaluable for student’s wanting to be considered for the representative team the Trust takes overseas annual International tournament. In practice this means involving students in year 12, with the intention of maximising their year 13 performance.
The problems can be used as material for science clubs and examination projects so long as their IYPT origin is acknowledged/referenced. These are both ways to extend research time for students and avoids the time pressures of doing everything in term one.
At the tournament, the teams present their research and then answer questions about their work in a series of ‘Physics Matches‘. The matches are watched and scored by a jury panel of physics teachers and other volunteers whose work uses tertiary level physics. The cumulative scores from three matches decides the top teams in the country. The full tournament rules are here and we have some student resources here.
Teachers wishing to enter teams for the 2026 New Zealand Young Physicist Tournament can register their interest here. This adds you to our mailing list but does not commit you to entering the tournament. Further instructions and updates about the tournament will be published on this site and emailed to those teachers and students who have registered their interests. This will include venues, payment due dates, etc..
The NZ Representative Team
The Tournament problems are the foundation for selecting the new Zealand Representative team. There are additional requirements for students wanting to be considered for the NZ representative team. including options for individual students who are unable to participate in the team tournament.
The 2025 team of Alan Chen, Audrey Kung, Kayden Liu, Jason Tao and Julia Sung will represent New Zealand in Lund, Switzerland between June 29th and July 6th this year. The 2026 International Tournament will be held in Switzerland.