How does Nepal choose its IBO team?

The IBO lists a national olympiad with local, district, province and national rounds, an online study period, a national camp and a practical round. The sources we could read do not say how the IBO team is chosen from it, or how many students go.

Did Nepal send a team to the latest IBO?

The 2026 results list at the IBO in Vilnius includes four competitors from Nepal. We did not find a Nepali delegation in the 2025 ranking, and Wikipedia describes Nepal as a pending IBO member.

Who organises the programme?

The IBO lists the Science Teachers' Association of Nepal (STAN) in Kathmandu as host. A 2023 news report names STEM Foundation Nepal as the host of Nepal's international science olympiads, so the roles are not fully clear to us.

Is this guide written by a Nepali participant?

No. It is an outline of the official picture from published sources, with tips from BiOGuide. We are looking for a Nepali olympiad participant or coach to write a firsthand guide and replace this one.

National Biology Olympiad of Nepal: Official Outline of the Path to IBO

Nepal runs a national biology olympiad that the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) lists among its national olympiads, established in 2017.¹ The IBO’s 2026 individual results from Vilnius, Lithuania list four competitors from Nepal.² Nepal’s IBO history is still short and thinly documented, so this is a short outline with many open points. It is a map of the structure, not an insider’s account of what the exams feel like.

Programme: National Biology Olympiad of Nepal, established 2017¹
Organiser: Science Teachers' Association of Nepal (STAN), Kathmandu¹
Who can enter: Students aged 16 to 19 who are not yet at university; grades are not stated¹
Stages: Local, district, province and national rounds, camp, practical round
Official website: The IBO lists only a Facebook page; we found no standalone site
Language: The IBO lists English as the website language; the exam language is not stated

The path at a glance

Stage	What happens	How sure we are
Round 1, local level	Multiple choice, a basic selection	Medium: from the undated IBO page
Round 2, district level	Multiple choice, a basic selection	Medium
Round 3, province level	Multiple choice and subjective questions, the first national selection	Medium
Online study and national camp	Training, sometimes online and sometimes in person, about 15 days	Medium
Round 4, national level, and practical round	Multiple choice and subjective questions, then a practical	Medium
IBO team	Not described in the sources we read	Low

The national rounds

The IBO’s page for Nepal lists these steps in order: a local round and a district round, both multiple choice, then a province round with multiple choice and subjective questions, then online study and a national camp, then a national round and a practical round.¹ It says the organising structure has one central, seven province, 77 district and 753 local committees, and that training lasts 15 days and may be online or in person.¹ The page gives no quotas, dates or exam format beyond this, and the school year it describes runs from mid-April to mid-March.¹

Taking part in the IBO

At the 37th IBO in Vilnius (12 to 19 July 2026), the individual results list four competitors from Nepal.² We did not find a Nepal entry in the IBO 2025 ranking from Quezon City.³ A 2023 news report says two shortlisted Nepali students could not travel to the IBO that year for lack of funds, and says a Nepali student won a bronze medal at the IBO in 2020; that report covers Nepal’s science olympiads in general and not biology alone.⁴ The sources we could read do not say how the team is chosen from the national rounds.

Points for an Author

If you went through this programme yourself, these are the points we most need you to settle. They are grouped here so that nothing uncertain is buried in the text above.

Where the sources disagree

IBO membership status. The IBO lists Nepal among its national olympiads with no stated status,¹ while Wikipedia, in a snapshot dated 2 June 2026, counts Nepal as a pending member.⁵ Nepali competitors appear in the 2026 IBO results,² so we cannot tell what “pending” means in practice.
Who hosts Nepal’s IBO entry. The IBO names STAN as host,¹ while the 2023 news report names STEM Foundation Nepal as the national host for ten international olympiads and says STAN co-manages only the junior science olympiad.⁴
Participation figures. The IBO page gives 1,200 students from 425 schools for 2025 and 640 from 320 schools for 2023 in its yearly list, but its text also mentions about 2,500 first round students.¹

Gaps a firsthand author could fill

How the IBO team is chosen and how many students it has each year.
The dates, quotas and syllabus for each round, and what the exam language is.
How a student registers at the local level, and whether there is a fee.
What the rounds, the camp and the practical are actually like, and what students wish they had known.

A firsthand author can settle every one of these points. If that could be you, email us or read how it works.

BiOGuide tips for students aiming at this path

These are general tips from BiOGuide, not advice from a Nepali 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.
Practise the practical side. The national path has a practical round and the IBO has practical stations, so learn lab techniques as well as theory. Our notes on practical skills are a start.
Build the core theory. Work through cell and molecular biology, genetics and plant physiology.
Learn the English terms. Even if you study in Nepali, learn the English names of structures, processes and methods, because the IBO papers are written in English.
Use the official channels for anything dated. Dates, eligibility and team selection change every year. The organisers decide, not us.

Official links and sources

International Biology Olympiad, country page for the National Biology Olympiad of Nepal. ibo-info.org. The page is undated, so we use it for the structure only.
International Biology Olympiad, IBO 2026 individual results, Vilnius (PDF, in English). ibo-info.org
International Biology Olympiad, IBO 2025 ranking, Quezon City (PDF, in English). ibo-info.org
The Kathmandu Post, 27 February 2023, on the national science olympiads (in English; not specific to biology). kathmandupost.com
Wikipedia, International Biology Olympiad (third-party, not an official source, used only for the membership status). en.wikipedia.org

The IBO’s listed website for the programme is a Facebook page, and when we opened it we found nothing about the olympiad. We found no Nepali government page and no Nepali news report about the biology olympiad itself. No fact in this guide depends on a translation.

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