Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad

The Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad (NBPhO) is an annual regional physics competition held at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) in Tallinn, Estonia. It has been held every spring since 2003 and has run for 24 consecutive editions. The competition began as a bilateral Estonian-Finnish collaboration following the 1992 International Physics Olympiad in Finland; Latvia joined in 2014 and Sweden in 2016.

Participating countries:

Competition format:

The competition runs over three days and includes theoretical and experimental components, following eligibility standards aligned with EuPhO regulations.

Costs:

The Rules page’s fee section, labeled updated January 13, 2023, lists €150 per official-team contestant and €150 per guest-team participant, including leaders and observers. A 2027-specific fee confirmation has not been verified. The organizer covers meals, examination facilities, and equipment. Official delegations receive two nights' accommodation; guest teams arrange their own lodging.

How selection works:

Students are selected through national physics olympiad processes. There is no direct application to NBPhO. Students from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Sweden are selected via their own country's national process. Students from other countries wishing to form a guest team should contact the organizers directly via nbpho.ee.

Recent editions:

2027 cycle check, November 4, 2026: The official homepage explicitly announces April 16–18, 2027 at TalTech in Tallinn and registration March 1–April 4, 2027. These are international delegation registration dates; national student selection deadlines may differ. The Rules & Registration page still displays March 10–April 10, 2026 registration and links that historical cycle’s form. Its fee section is dated January 13, 2023, so the €150 wording above is attributed to that published guidance rather than confirmed as a new 2027 fee.

The NBPhO rules describe official teams as up to around 20 contestants, rather than an exact guaranteed allocation, and guest teams up to five subject to acceptance. They retain a less-than-half-of-lectures over two years condition for ambiguous educational institutions. Although they refer to EuPhO, its current general webpage instead uses a more-than-one-third-per-year threshold. Those official descriptions are not assumed to be interchangeable; the NBPhO wording is preserved here.