GPT 2026 - Rules
What are the rules of the GPT 2026?
The general principles of the GPT and IPT can be found here. The local organizing committee (LOC) will follow the rule set of the IPT 2025 edition, with some additional rules and adaptations to handle the particularities of this edition. Everything not explicitly listed below will follow the original rule list.
Online round
We organize an online round closer to the in-person competition (Jan/2026), where the participants will have the opportunity to clarify the mechanics of a fight by doing trial rounds, ask questions to the organization and get some feedback on one of their solutions. Presence in the online round is not mandatory, but we incentivize taking the chance to test-drive their abilities, and get a bonus point: every team that participates automatically gets an extra full point on their total score for the in-person competition, regardless of performance during the online round.
Participant registration and number of problems
The registration form will be unique for the team (only needs to be filled once by e.g. a team leader). There, you will inform the preliminary number of participants and their names, which can be changed if necessary until December 15th. After this, bookings and reservations will be finalized and materials will be printed, so we cannot guarantee the possibility of, for example, adding team members.
Only upon arrival to the MPI FKF campus, the teams will be requested to provide a list of problems to be registered, which can all be challenged. The list will be communicated to all other teams. During a physics fight (PF), each team is challenged by another team to present a problem from their list, except for the final where each team chooses the problem they present from their list. Note however the following rules:
- If possible, a team should not present the same problem twice. A team must register on-site a minimum of 6 different problems, upon arrival on January 15th (3 will be presented in qualification rounds, possibly 1 for the final). There is no maximum number of problems that a team may register.
- For more details on the rules determining which problems are banned from challenging on a specific round, check the official rules in section 2.7.
Problem rejection and penalties
All problems that you register might be challenged by other teams, but note that during the competition you can always tactically reject once per fight challenged problems without penalty (exceptionally, all teams will have an extra tactical rejection on the first PF).
If a team happens to register 7 - 10 problems, it will get an additional tactical rejection per fight (total of 2), if they register 11 - 14, it will have 3 tactical rejections per fight in total, and only if 15 or more problems are registered, the team will have 3 tactical rejections and 1 permanent rejection without penalty, so 4 in total. Additional problems can be permanently rejected, but with an accompanying penalty, in accordance with the IPT rules (exceptionally, they will not be carried to the final round, only upcoming classifying rounds). Further, as specified there, if the list of challengeable problems runs out, the certain otherwise banned problems can be challenged again, as restrictions are slowly lifted. Therefore, the number of problems that you have actually prepared can be smaller than the number of problems that you register on site with.
Additionally, if any team members fail to present at the fight room on time (beginning, after breaks…), within a 5 minutes tolerance from the time requested by the chair, they will not be allowed to join the team for the upcoming round.. In the event that a whole team is not on time, a score penalty of 20% will be enforced on the grades of the late team for the upcoming round only instead. To illustrate, if in the second round, where the team is the opponent, they are all late for more than the 5 min tolerance, their final opponent grade for that fight will be multiplied by 0.8 (after considering the weight of the specific role). The fight will go on as usual, and their grades for all other rounds will not be penalized on this ground.
Final round
In the final round, the teams are not challenged, but can choose the problem they report. The order of problem choice in the final will take place according to the partial ranking after the 3 regular fights, analogous to the IPT: the first place chooses first, then second and finally third place takes their pick.
Note that while you are free to choose the problem for the final, presenting a problem chosen by another team will not be allowed. Further, if one of the finalists wants to present again a problem they already reported, while still having unreported problems in their registered list, a strong penalty will incur on the reporter grade of the repeated problem, proportional to their ranking: the team in first place at the time of the finalist announcement will take 50% penalty to their reporter grade, the second place will take 40% penalty, and the third place, 30%.
Permanent rejections do not have an effect on the final round. Problems a team permanently rejected can still be chosen for the final presentation, and the penalties taken for extra rejections will not carry to the final.
Presentation of setups during fights and use of external equipment
As in previous editions and in accordance with the official IPT rules, we will allow the presentation of setups or data during fights by teams that are not reporting, as long as a strong point/conclusion is drawn that directly contradicts the reporter. This will only be allowed with setups/equipment that are brought into the fight room and kept with the team from the beginning of the round. We highlight that this is a high risk, high reward strategy, as the jury will be advised to penalize strongly in grades if the purpose and need for the demonstration by the opponent/moderator team is not made clear.
Furthermore, for captains’ fights, only the materials provided should be used, and no external equipment will be permitted unless exceptionally stated otherwise by the chair.
On the participation of two different countries and total scores
All registered teams will be sorted from the same roster and compete together during classifying rounds. As usual, for each regular fight won, there is a bonus of 2(1) points for the winner(runner up) of the PF or 4(2) points if it is the final fight, to be accounted for on the total score of all teams. If there are only two teams in the PF, only the winner gets 1 bonus point. Further, the points in the final fight are added to the partial score of all classifying rounds to compose their final score and ranking.
Two different scoreboards will be kept, one for the German teams, another for the Austrian teams, as both countries have the chance to register one team each for the IPT (even if the ranking is eventually shown globally). There will be independent, parallel finals (German and Austrian). In the event that only one team from a given country registers, it will only compete in the classifying rounds and automatically become the national team without a final fight, regardless of the pre-final ranking.
Reimbursement/costs
All meals will be covered (more details will be explained during the opening event), and you can submit dietary restrictions on the registration form. Accommodation will be booked also by the LOC at the MPI guesthouse.
For reimbursement of travel costs, we will cover train/flight tickets under 2nd class/economy fares up to 100 euros/person (including seating reservation) for routes inside Germany, and possibly up to 140 euros/person for longer distance travel (e.g. from Austria), to be evaluated. Short notice ticket booking will not be considered an exception to this budget. In non-exceptional cases where tickets go over this limit, partial reimbursement is still possible.
We will ask that a short form for reimbursement is filled upon arrival and handed physically along with the printed copies of the tickets until Friday noon (end of PF1), or the reimbursement will not be processed. On the same occasion, we will hand out a form for arranging lunch options during the weekend, to prevent delays at the restaurant. They also need to be handed over to a member of the LOC until the end of PF1.
Bringing guests
It is tradition on IPT to bring team guests who may have helped the team but did not have a chance/did not want to join as members. Unfortunately, due to limitations to accommodation, we cannot guarantee full coverage or hosting for guests. This can be discussed if necessary, and of course, privately funding and bringing people is a possibility to be treated case by case. You will also be able to state in the registration form if, given the possibility, you would like to bring guests, and after registration is closed, we will look into what scenario we have.
Recommendations, advice and more
Number of problems
If you reach the finals (and do not take the very large penalty for presenting a problem twice), you will present four different problems over the course of the GPT. If you have registered six or seven problems (game theoretically optimal, even if you worked on more), you can ensure to only present from your favourite five problems in the first three rounds. In case you are third for the final and get really unlucky, you could be forced to present a problem outside your favourite five.
If your goal is only to participate, you can use permanent rejection to ensure which problems you present in the initial three rounds, for which three problems are enough. Though this means that you are very unlikely to win.
Speaking from experience, we recommend working on more than five/six problems during the preparation time, as scientific progress is not always straightforward and you may run into problems (sometimes very hard to overcome) at any point in the preparation. This will give you leeway to react, even if you only plan to register six or seven problems anyway.
Literature review and requests for raw data
Following up the last edition of IPT, the jury will be advised to be very attentive to proper literature citation and plagiarism accusations that happen to have been made. For this reason, we recommend that you prepare your presentations making sure that sources are correctly cited and easy to spot/read, highlighting clearly your own contributions, if possible also verbally while presenting. We also recommend that you have your raw data easily accessible in case it is requested by another team or jury member - this is nowadays standard practice when peer-review publishing, for example.