SOF and SilverZone registration last dates 2026-27, explained for parents

Between 23 and 30 September 2026 four registration dates land for two school-run olympiad bodies. Three are SOF’s, one each for Maths, English and Science, and they are arithmetic rather than published dates. One is SilverZone’s, and it covers every paper SilverZone runs, in all five of the subjects we cover. Not one of the four is a form a parent fills in. Each is the date by which your child’s school has to have sent its registrations to the body. What a parent can do about them is ask the school the right questions, early enough for the answer to matter.

What is the SOF registration last date for 2026-27?

SOF does not publish one. It publishes a rule, in its own words: “Schools may send registrations by 30 days before the chosen date of each exam.” So the last date depends on which of SOF’s dates your school has picked for each paper. If your school picks 23 October 2026 for IMO, registrations reach SOF by 23 September 2026. If your school picks 27 October 2026 for IEO, the date is 27 September 2026. If your school picks 30 October 2026 for ISO (formerly NSO), it is 30 September 2026. SOF also states that “change of date is not permitted”, so once the school has chosen, that date and the cutoff 30 days before it are fixed.

What is the SilverZone registration last date for 2026-27?

SilverZone publishes one date for every paper it runs: 30 September 2026. It sits on a page SilverZone itself heads “Tentative Examination Schedule for the year 2026-27”, so treat it as the body’s stated date rather than a final one. It has moved once already: SilverZone’s own data returned 31 August 2026 until 1 September 2026 and 30 September 2026 from 2 September, with no announcement. One paper does not fit the single date. The first iSSO (Social Studies) sitting is 29 September 2026, the day before the cutoff, and SilverZone does not say how the two fit together, so for iSSO treat 28 October and 1 December as the sittings a school can still enter for.

Can I register my child for SOF or SilverZone myself?

For SOF, no: SOF takes registrations from schools only. SilverZone’s default is the school route too, and the “online” sittings above describe how the paper is sat, not who registers. SilverZone does also run a public individual registration form at r.silverzone.org, which its own page labels “for individual registrations only”. Which papers that form offers, and whether it has a last date of its own, we have not been able to confirm, so ask SilverZone before counting on it.

What should I ask my child’s school?

Three questions settle almost everything. Put them to the olympiad coordinator, or to the class teacher if the school has no coordinator.

• Are you entering SOF or SilverZone this year, and in which subjects? If the answer is no, the dates above do not apply to your child at all. Skip to the next section.
• Which date have you picked for each paper? For SOF this is what fixes the cutoff, and it cannot be changed afterwards. For SilverZone iSSO, ask whether the school is entering the 29 September sitting or a later one.
• By when do you need my form and fee? A school has to collect forms and fees before it can send them, so its own collection date is the one a parent actually has to meet. We cannot see it from here; only the school can tell you.

What if the school is not entering my child?

Then the September dates above are not your deadlines, and nothing has closed on your child. Other bodies will take a registration straight from a family, among them CREST, Indian Talent Olympiad’s individual online route, Unified Council’s NSTSE online, and Humming Bird. They do not all cover the same subjects. For Hindi the one direct route is Humming Bird, and for Social Science the one direct route is Indian Talent Olympiad’s online route, whose first slot has a registration date of 30 October 2026. Our guide to olympiads you can register for without the school goes through each route in detail.

Which registration dates come after these?

In date order through October 2026, for the same five subjects: Indian Talent Olympiad’s school route has a published Set B date of 10 October 2026. SOF’s rule then gives 18 October for a 17 November IEO, 20 October for a 19 November ISO, 24 October for a 23 November IHO, 27 October for a 26 November IMO and 31 October for a 30 November ISSO, each only if the school picks that sitting. Indian Talent Olympiad’s individual online route has its first-slot date on 30 October 2026. Our 2026-27 olympiad calendar keeps all of these in one place, with the date each body was last re-read.

Where do these dates come from?

Every date in this post was read off the body’s own site on 17 September 2026: sofworld.org/exam-schedule for SOF, SilverZone’s own exam-date data behind silverzone.org/olympiadsdates, and indiantalent.org/offline-olympiad-exam-schedule for Indian Talent Olympiad’s Set B. Bodies move these dates without notice, and two of them did so in the first week of September. If a date matters to your family, check it with the school or the body before you act on it.

Whichever sitting the school picks, the useful work between the registration date and the paper is the same: getting used to the way an olympiad asks about a chapter, which is different from the way a school test does. Twenty minutes most days on olympiad-pattern questions does more for that than any choice between two bodies.