There are hundreds of physics competitions a high school student can enter, and most of them are worth exactly as much as the $20 registration fee. A handful are different. Their medals appear, by name, in the admissions and scholarship rules of universities that admit fewer than one applicant in ten, and an admissions reader in Cambridge or Singapore knows what they mean without looking them up.
We checked the entry rules, formats and dates of about 25 physics competitions on their organisers' own sites, then checked which ones universities mention in writing. Ten made the list. They split into two kinds: olympiads you reach through a national team, which carry the most weight, and open-entry competitions you can enter from anywhere with a strong reputation of their own. At the end, we quote what the universities themselves say.
International Physics Olympiad (IPhO)
International Physics Olympiad
The one every other competition measures itself against. Each country sends a delegation of up to five students who must be under 20 and not yet at university, selected through the national physics olympiad. The competition is two five-hour exams, one theoretical and one experimental, in English, with a rest day between. The host covers every cost from arrival to departure, and the statutes fix the medal split: gold for the top 8 percent, gold or silver for 25 percent, a medal of some kind for half the field.
IPhO 2026 was held in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in July. Saudi Arabia has been reported as the 2027 host, but the IPhO site had not listed a city or dates when we checked. Your route in is your own country's olympiad, so the deadline that matters is the one for your national first round, usually in the autumn.
Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO)
The IPhO's regional sibling for countries whose capital or most of whose territory is in Asia or Australasia, with the same age rule and a bigger team: up to eight students per country. The format mirrors the IPhO, a theory day and an experiment day of about five hours each, in English. Your ministry pays the flights; the host pays everything on the ground. Medal proportions are slightly more generous than the IPhO's, with gold for the top 12 percent and a medal for just over half.
APhO 2026 ran in Busan, South Korea, from May 17 to 25. The 2027 edition is listed for Thailand, with city and dates still to come. As with the IPhO, you qualify through your national olympiad.
European Physics Olympiad (EuPhO)
Younger than the other two and, on paper, open to more of the world: any country may send a team of up to five, and the rules say the competition is "open for countries from Europe and beyond," with the understanding that participating countries will host it themselves one day. Two exams, experimental and theoretical, with the theory paper running five hours across three problems. Unlike the IPhO, there is a fee: €350 per person, or €2,100 for a full team, paid by the sending country.
EuPhO 2026 took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June, with 199 students from 41 countries. Medals follow the IPhO proportions. The 2027 host had not been announced when we checked.
International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT)
International Young Physicists' Tournament
The most unusual of the olympiads, and the one that most resembles what physicists actually do. Seventeen open-ended problems are published a year in advance, teams of three to five research them for months, and at the tournament they defend their solutions in "Physics Fights" as reporter, opponent and reviewer, in English. Each member country nominates one team; countries that are not yet members can apply. Gold goes to the top 10 percent of teams, silver the next 15 percent, bronze the rest of the top half.
IYPT 2026 was hosted by ETH Zurich in July, with 35 teams ranked and Singapore, South Korea and China taking the top three places. IYPT 2027 is set for Auckland, New Zealand, July 5 to 12, with the New Zealand host site already live. The participation fee is not published on the IYPT site.
Physics Cup
An individual, online competition run from Tallinn by Jaan Kalda, one of the best-known olympiad coaches in the world, whose problems are intended to be harder than the EuPhO, IPhO and APhO. A new problem is published each month and a new hint each week; faster solvers score more. Anyone who would qualify for their national IPhO team qualifies for the pre-university age group, and you register with a form or an email. No fee is listed. In 2019 the Cup had 400 registered participants, including many IPhO gold medallists, and the top solvers receive gold medals.
Physics Cup 2026 started on October 19, 2025; the next edition had not been announced when we checked, but the pattern is a mid-October start.
CERN Beamline for Schools
Not an exam but a proposal. Teams of at least five students aged 16 or over, from anywhere in the world, write up an experiment they would run on a particle beam and submit it with a short video, in English. The winning teams, up to nine students and two coaches each, are flown to CERN in Geneva, DESY in Hamburg or ELSA in Bonn to run it, with travel, accommodation and meals covered. Taking part is completely free.
In 2026 the competition drew 712 proposals from about 4,500 students in 89 countries, and five teams won. A shortlist place on its own is worth something: Dhruv from Bangalore led a team into the top 50 of about 3,000 and listed it among the honours that took him to UC San Diego. The 2026 deadline was March 13; the 2027 date was not yet published.
Online Physics Olympiad (OPhO)
A student-run, online olympiad for teams of up to three, with more than 10,000 competitors from over 80 countries since it began in 2020. The 2026 contest ran August 21 to 23 as a single round with short-answer, long-answer and simulation-experiment problems. Under the 2025 rules, team members had to be under 20 and not yet at university, with undergraduates in a separate non-prize division; the 2026 rules were not published on the new site when we checked. Entry is free. The 2027 dates were not announced.
Fyziklani
Europe's largest in-person physics team competition, run by the FYKOS group at Charles University in Prague. Teams of up to five from at most two schools get three hours and seven problems open at a time; solve one and the next arrives. Since 2018 it has run in English as well as Czech, and foreign teams are welcome; in 2023 nearly 1,200 students from 21 countries took part. Fyziklani 2027 is on February 12, 2027, at PVA EXPO Praha, with registration opening November 13. Travel and lodging are your own.
One thing to know: FYKOS's online sibling, Physics Brawl Online, closed in 2025 after fifteen years because AI tools were solving its problems as well as students could and 175 teams had to be disqualified. If you see it listed anywhere, it no longer exists.
Sir Isaac Newton (SIN) Exam, University of Waterloo
The accessible one. A two-hour, online exam written under your own school's supervision, on classical mechanics at roughly Ontario high school level, open to students in any grade from Canada, the US and abroad, for $4 per student. Papers are hand-marked, and the top scorers are considered for Waterloo scholarships and high-achiever awards. The 2026 sitting was May 1, with registration opening in early March; 2027 follows the same rhythm. It will not impress Cambridge, but it is cheap, low-risk, and a direct line to one of Canada's best physics departments.
Regeneron ISEF, Physics and Astronomy category
The largest pre-college science competition in the world, and one that admissions readers everywhere recognise. You cannot enter directly: you qualify through one of the 365 affiliated fairs in more than 60 countries, then bring a research project, alone or in a team of up to three, to a week of in-person judging. Entrants must be in grades 9 to 12 or the equivalent and under 20 on May 1. Physics and Astronomy is one of 22 categories at ISEF 2026.
The 2026 fair in Phoenix had more than 1,700 finalists from nearly 70 countries competing for over $7 million in awards. ISEF 2027 is in Los Angeles, May 8 to 14, at the Los Angeles Convention Center; the route in is your national or regional fair, whose deadlines fall in the winter and early spring.
Also worth knowing
The AAPT PhysicsBowl is a 40-question multiple-choice test at $10 a student with regions covering most of Asia and the Gulf. The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a two-minute physics video with a $250,000 scholarship attached, open to anyone 13 to 18.
What universities actually say about these medals
This is why the olympiads sit at the top of the list. The recognition is not folklore; it is written into policy.
- Christ's College, Cambridge states that students who win a gold, silver or bronze at a science-based International Olympiad, and perform strongly at interview, are considered for adjusted offers, meaning offers set lower than for non-medallists. That is a college policy rather than a university one, but it is in writing.
- NUS School of Computing gives IPhO gold, silver and bronze medallists special consideration under the university's discretionary admission scheme.
- École Polytechnique runs a full scholarship scheme for International Olympiad medallists on its English-taught bachelor's, capped at €87,900 for a non-EU student, for medals won in the two years before enrolment, with priority to gold. The first recipients held IMO, IPhO and APhO medals.
- ENS-PSL in Paris offers IMO and IPhO gold and silver medallists a scholarship of €1,000 a month for three years, plus an annual flight home and subsidised housing, with a preparatory year at Lycée Louis-le-Grand on €500 a month for those who need it. The 2026 application closed December 15, 2025.
- MIT Admissions names the IPhO on its STEM preparation page and tells students outside the US to look up the qualifying competitions in their own country, without saying how medals are weighed.
None of the open-entry competitions appear in those policies. They matter for a different reason: a top-50 finish at Beamline for Schools or a Physics Cup medal is evidence of the same skill, in a form an admissions reader can verify.
Start your own journey
The route to every olympiad on this list starts with your country's national round, and those close months before the international event, usually in autumn. Most students find out about them a season too late.
Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, keeps the calendar for you. Tell Kai your subject, your grade and where you want to apply, and it pulls the right competitions from the extracurricular database, turns each deadline into a task, and works through your college list and essays alongside them. It is free to use.
Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who did it.
