INPhO is conducted on the last Sunday of January, every year, by the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.
School students (usually of standards 11 and 12 albeit special cases prevail) first need to qualify the National Standard Examination in Physics (NSEP) held on the last (or second last) Sunday of November of the preceding year.
Use of a non-programmable scientific calculator is usually allowed, as long as it has less than 4 lines in its display, no graphing feature and no CAS-like functionality.
The selected team of 8 students, for APhO, must attend a 5 day long training camp prior to APhO, where topics such as relativity and thermodynamics, absent/not stressed upon in most Indian schools, are covered.
The top 40 students (20 each, Group A & Group B), based solely on their INPhO scores are selected to attend the Orientation cum Selection camp (OCSC), a 14-day long camp held at HBCSE, Mumbai.
The team for the International Physics Olympiad is selected based on a rigorous procedure of theory and practical examinations (Normally, 3 each) at OCSC Physics.60% (240 marks) weightage is given to the theory exam, and 40% (160 marks) to the practical one, akin to that at the International Physics Olympiad.