Overview
If more teams register than the number of seats available, the IPT execom is responsible for running a preselection round for the registered teams. The IPT community is informed on whether the preselection is taking place or not shortly after the registration closes. Although one is expected to take place, all in-person IPTs in the last many years had a preselection.
The host university and the countries of the top 7 teams of the previous edition of the IPT are automatically qualified for the next edition.
Please remember that this pre-selection process is free. The registration fees will have to be paid only by the teams qualified for the international competition and will be due to the LOC.
Important updates for IPT 2026
For IPT 2026, the automatically qualified teams are: US, Germany, Switzerland, France, Ukraine, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Denmark and Croatia. There will be a total of 24 seats, therefore 14 teams will be chosen from the preselection.
Given the increased number of participants in the preselection process, we care to ensure that the preselection process is fair for all parties. For this year, we stick to a single-round preselection, as two rounds significantly increase the selection time while not changing the ranking much.
- Deadline for reports submission: January 4, 2026
- Preselection results announcement: January 11, 2026
For more detail info of the schedule check the IPT Calendar page.
The teams are ranked based on a double-blind review process. Each team must submit a scientific paper on one of the following preselection problems:
1. String Telephone
12. Kinetic Voltmeter
16. Singing Flame
In addition, countries with a national selection may choose from two additional problems:
8. Eddy Current Engine
17. Crazy Cyclinder
As a reminder, the description of the problems is available on the website.
Manuscript guidelines
The manuscript must have a .pdf format and cannot exceed 5 pages of main text (i.e. not counting the appendix or cover page). You are free to enclose your own experimental material (videos, photos, computer programs – smaller than 10 MB in total) and to cite it properly in the manuscript.
Make sure that your manuscript is anonymous, i.e. it does not contain any reference to the team. It must be sent only to president@iptnet.info (for anonymity reasons) by 23:59 PT (UTC-8) on January 4, 2026.
Review guidelines
The IPT President and Secretary take the role of editors for the review process. For the first round of review, they will distribute the anonymized manuscripts to 3 referees who will be evaluating them. Your manuscript will be judged on whether it gives a plausible solution to the chosen problem, how well-supported the solution is (experiment and/or theory), how innovative the solution is, and how well all the possible solutions have been considered. A model manuscript from a previous edition is available below. After collecting the referees’ reports and grades (from 0 to 10, with 0.25 precision), the teams are ranked based on the average grade.
Model reports
Chalk Trick problem from IPT 2023. Got 9 out of 10 and passed the preselection
Magnetic Cannon problem from IPT 2016. Got 8 out of 10 and passed the preselection