Physics in India

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International Physics Olympiad

2016- 2026

2016: India won gold medals.ipho-unofficial

2017: India won gold medals.ipho-unofficial

2018: India won five gold medals.pib.gov+1

2019: India won at least a silver medal.ipho-unofficial

2022: India won 1 gold and 4 silver medals.pib.gov

2023: India won 3 gold and 2 silver medals.indianexpress

2024: India won 2 gold and 3 silver medals.indianexpress

2025: India won 3 gold and 2 silver medals.pib.gov

2026: India won five gold medals.

2018: 5 gold medals

Yogita Rao, July 30, 2018: The Times of India

In the best ever performance by an Indian team, each of the five students representing the country bagged gold medals at the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO 2018) held in Lisbon, Portugal, last week.

This is the first time in 21 years that all five students have brought gold home. China is the only other country, among 86 others, to bag the maximum gold medals.

Mumbai’s Bhaskar Gupta, Lay Jain from Kota, Rajkot’s Nishant Abhangi, Pawan Goyal from Jaipur and Siddharth Tiwary from Kolkata represented the country at the 49th IPhO in 2018.

Of the 396 students who participated from across the world, 42 won gold medals after a two-stage competition.

Praveen Pathak, scientific officer at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, a national centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which led the international team, said India performed exceptionally well in 2018.

“We have been participating in the competition since 1998 and this is the first year all team members bagged gold medals.

Thrice in the past, we have managed four golds and one silver,” said Pathak.

While Jain and Goyal were among the top 10 rankers for JEE (Advanced) this year, Gupta and Tiwary, too, had good ranks.

Three of the students have opted for IITBombay, while Jain is headed to MIT, US, to pursue a joint course in computer science and physics. Tiwary, who has opted for engineering physics at IIT-Bombay, is keen on pursuing research. Abhangi, the youngest, is in Class XII and will be preparing for JEE (Advanced).

Speaking about the competition, Goyal said, “The experimental component was difficult, but the theoretical exam was easier and three of us scored between 29 and 30 out of 30 marks.” Juhu resident, Bhaskar Gupta, a chess enthusiast, too, found the experimental component tougher.

The five were picked through a rigorous selection process by the Homi Bhabha Centre.

2026

Hemali.Chhapia, July 13, 2026: The Times of India

Mumbai : India made a clean sweep at the 56th International Physics Olympiad, with all five students in its contingent winning gold medals and placing the country jointly at the top of the medals table.


The olympiad was held in Bucaramanga, Colombia, from July 5-12. The gold medallists are Shresth Suraiya from Mumbai, Kanishk Jain from Pune, Riddhesh Anant Bendale from Indore, Rishit Garg from Delhi, and Svarit Joshi from Ahmedabad. 


India shared the first position with China, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan. The competition drew 381 students from 85 countries. A total of 51 gold, 80 silver and 97 bronze medals were awarded. The prize for the overall top performer went to a South Korean student, while an Iranian student was recognised for the best performance in experimental examination. 


This is only the second time after 2018 that all five members of the Indian team have returned with gold medals from the olympiad. 


The five-hour theoretical examination included problems on the thermodynamics of paramagnetic cooling, patterns known as caustics and cusps formed by light reflected inside a coffee cup, the photoionisation of ozone and the dynamics of electronpositron pairs. Several Indian students came close to securing perfect scores in the theory component. 


The five-hour experimental examination tested students on thermodynamic processes in fluids and heat transfer. The Indian team performed strongly in both components of the competition. 


The Indian delegation was led by Anwesh Mazumdar of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and Leena Joshi of St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Ananda Dasgupta of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, and Nisha Kelkar of GogateJoglekar College, Ratnagiri, accompanied the team as scientific observers. The students underwent intensive training at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.