China Biology Olympiad (CNBO): Official Outline of the Path to IBO

China sends four students to the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) and did extremely well at the most recent one: at the 37th IBO in Vilnius, Lithuania (12 to 19 July 2026), all four Chinese students won gold, China finished first in the team ranking, and Chinese students took the top three individual places.¹ This page outlines how the path to that team works according to the sources we could read. It is a map of the structure, not an insider’s account of what the exams feel like.

Programme

China National Biology Olympiad (CNBO), in Chinese 全国中学生生物学竞赛

Organiser

Committee for China National Biology Olympiad, hosted by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST)²

Who can enter

High school students in grades 10 and 11, through their school and province²

Stages

Provincial league, national final, national training team, IBO team of four

Official website

cyscc.org, as listed by the IBO

Language

Chinese for the national competition; the IBO itself is in English

The path at a glance

Stage	What happens	How sure we are
Provincial league	A written exam taken on one morning in May; each province organises registration and awards	Good for the structure; exam format details come from a third party
National final	The best provincial performers compete in the summer, in theory and practical exams	Good for medal and team counts in past years; the exact entry quota is not stated in what we read
National training team	About the top 50 of the final	Reported for 2023 and 2025
IBO team	Four students, trained by university coaches before the IBO	Training is documented; the exact selection of the four is not

Stage 1: the provincial league

The first stage is a league exam run province by province. The IBO’s directory says there are “two or three rounds of contests, depending on different provinces”, that the first round is theoretical with single and multiple choice questions, and that provincial committees set the first-round tests while the national committee sets the later rounds.²

A third-party education site that summarises the competition rules reports that the league exam is taken on the same morning everywhere, in the second week of May, and that the 2026 exam was on Sunday 10 May. It also reports that registration is organised by each province’s competition branch, usually through your school’s biology teacher, and that taking part is meant to be voluntary.⁶ The same site reports that the 2026 questions asked students to judge four statements per question as true or false, with partial credit for getting some of them right. We have not been able to check that against the official notice, so treat the format as unconfirmed and read the current notice from your province before you rely on it.

Stage 2: the national final

Students who do best in the provincial league go on to a national final held in the summer, with a theory exam and a practical exam; the IBO’s directory says the later round includes both.² The final moves between cities. The 32nd final closed in Beijing on 16 August 2023 and produced 150 gold, 260 silver and 145 bronze medals.³ A county government site reports that the 34th final in 2025 also produced 150 gold medals and that the top 50 entered the national training team; the page text was partly garbled when we read it, so we only rely on those two numbers.⁴

Stage 3: the national training team

The top 50 competitors from the final form the national training team (国家集训队). That count is stated for 2023 and reported for 2025.^3,4 The IBO’s directory says fifty gold winners were offered admission to top universities,² and a county government headline about a 2025 medallist describes the result as a recommended place at Tsinghua or Peking University (保送清北).⁴ Admission rules for competition winners change over the years, so check the current university policy and do not assume it applies to you.

Stage 4: the IBO team and its training

Four students represent China at the IBO. The sources we could read do not explain how those four are picked from the national training team, and we do not want to guess. What is documented is the training: in 2026 the team’s theory and practical training was run jointly by Tsinghua University and Beijing Normal University, led by Professor Zhang Li of Beijing Normal University, with coaches from Tsinghua, Peking University and the China Zoological Society.⁵ The training covered four core modules (animal anatomy and systematics, animal physiology, plant computational biology, and molecular biology and biochemistry), mock exams, phased assessments, and stress management.⁵ A national news report names the National Committee for Middle School Biology Competitions, under the China Zoological Society and China Botanical Society within CAST, as the body handling selection, training and organisation.¹

The IBO’s directory adds that students usually receive about seven days of training at a university coordinated by the national committee, that the committee provides no official study materials for its own tests, and that past IBO papers released by the IBO are available for practice.²

BiOGuide tips for students aiming at this path

These are general tips from BiOGuide, not advice from a Chinese participant, and they apply to any student aiming at an IBO team.

• Train for the international format early. The IBO papers are in English and test reasoning on data and experiments, not only recall. The IBO preparation guide explains the format, and past IBO papers are in our practice papers.
• Cover the four training areas. The 2026 Chinese training modules line up with sections of our notes: animal anatomy, animal physiology, cell and molecular biology and bioinformatics.
• Practise the practical side. The national final and the IBO both include practical exams, so learn the lab techniques and not only the theory.
• Learn the English terms. Even if you study in Chinese, learn the English names of structures, processes and methods, because the IBO papers are written in English.
• Use the official channels for anything dated. Registration deadlines, the league date and the exam format change every year and differ by province. The province’s competition branch and the national committee decide, not us.

Official links and sources

1. Science and Technology Daily, 20 July 2026, on the 37th IBO and the Chinese team (in Chinese). stdaily.com
2. International Biology Olympiad, country page for the China National Biology Olympiad. ibo-info.org. The page is undated and some of its figures are old, so we use it only for the structure.
3. Hunan provincial government, 17 August 2023, on the 32nd national final (in Chinese). hunan.gov.cn
4. Pingjiang county government, 18 August 2025, on the 34th national final (in Chinese; partly garbled when read). pingjiang.gov.cn
5. Beijing Normal University, English news, 28 July 2026, on the team’s training and results. english.bnu.edu.cn
6. Third-party education site summarising the league rules and the 2026 exam (in Chinese, not an official source). zizzs.com. We could not open the page ourselves; its details come from search summaries, so they are the least certain in this guide.

Two more notes on sources. The IBO’s listing names cyscc.org as the national olympiad website, but when we opened it the page was titled as a general youth science and technology platform, so look for the biology olympiad notices through your province’s branch as well. Chinese Taipei has its own national biology olympiad committee in the IBO’s list and is not covered here.

This outline was last checked on 8 October 2026 and will age. Spotted an error or out-of-date detail? Email r6394175@gmail.com.