Which olympiad should my Class 6 child take?

There is a version of this question that treats Class 6 as a trial year — the idea that the real olympiads start later and this one is for getting used to the format. It is worth putting down first, because the Class 6 paper list is not a reduced version of anything. Twenty-five papers carry verified 2026-27 dates at Class 6, and fourteen of them will take a registration straight from a parent. At Class 7 the numbers are twenty-five and fourteen. At Class 8, twenty-five and fourteen. The same papers, from the same six bodies. Nothing opens up later.

Is Class 6 too early to start olympiads?

The opposite, on the bodies’ own arithmetic. SOF publishes a split for its maths and science papers: roughly 60% of the questions come from the current class syllabus and about 40% carry over from the class below. A Class 6 child sitting SOF IMO in late October is therefore being asked a substantial share of Class 5 material — content they finished months ago. The year that looks too early is the year the paper leans hardest on what a child already knows.

The other half of the answer is what these exams are not. A Class 6 olympiad is not a qualifier for an admission, a scholarship or a later exam. SOF does run a second level for its maths, science and English papers, open to Classes 3 to 12, so a Class 6 child can qualify for it — but that second level qualifies them for nothing beyond itself either. What Class 6 actually buys is a habit, and a habit is cheaper to start at eleven than at thirteen.

Which olympiads can a Class 6 child actually sit?

Six bodies, twenty-five papers, five subjects. The division that decides your year is not by body or by subject — it is who is allowed to enter the child. SOF takes no family registration at all, and SilverZone’s default is the school route — it also runs an individual registration form at r.silverzone.org, but which papers that form offers we have not been able to confirm. So if your school runs neither, count those ten papers as unavailable until SilverZone tells you otherwise. CREST, Unified Council, Indian Talent Olympiad and Humming Bird will take you directly, though not for every paper they run, which is why the check belongs at the paper rather than at the body. Indian Talent Olympiad is the clearest case: it takes families for six papers and its Hindi paper is not among them.

Here is what entering your child yourself costs at Class 6, from each body whose direct route we have confirmed.

One row in that table once carried a warning that was not about money. When this post was first written on 7 September, Humming Bird’s site had not answered a request from us for six days. It answers again: we read its registration form on 22 September 2026, and it still lists ₹150 a subject. That row matters here more than anywhere else on the page, for the reason in the next section.

Which subjects can I register for myself?

Maths, science and English from any of the direct bodies in that table — that part is genuinely open, and it is where the price comparison above is worth making. Hindi and social science each have a single direct route we have been able to confirm, and they are different routes. The only direct Hindi route we have confirmed at Class 6 is Humming Bird’s. The only direct social science route we have confirmed is Indian Talent Olympiad’s online paper, at ₹500. SOF’s IHO and ISSO and ITO’s own NHO run through a school or do not run for you at all. SilverZone’s ABHO and iSSO go through the school by default; its individual form may offer them, but we have not been able to confirm which papers it takes.

This is the most useful thing to know before planning a Class 6 year, and it is what a subject list printed beside a body’s name quietly gets wrong. Not one of these six bodies takes a family directly in every subject it runs. If Hindi or social science is the subject your child actually wants, that is a conversation with the school coordinator, not a form you can fill in tonight.

How many olympiads should a Class 6 child sit?

Fewer than the number available, and the binding constraint is the calendar rather than the fee. The Class 6 papers cluster between late September and mid-January and several land within days of each other: SilverZone’s maths paper is on 8 October 2026 and its science paper on 14 October 2026, six days apart, while SOF’s science paper sits on 30 October 2026. Two papers eight weeks apart are two real attempts. Two in the same fortnight are one attempt and one tired afternoon, and the second teaches nothing the first did not.

A workable Class 6 shape is one paper in the subject your child already likes, plus one more only if the school is running it anyway and the dates are genuinely far apart. Start from the subject they like rather than the subject you would like them to improve at — a first olympiad that goes badly in a subject a child dislikes is the one that ends the habit before it forms.

What is closing next for a Class 6 family?

Three bodies publish something you can act on and three publish no cutoff at all. On 7 September 2026 the position is below, and "no cutoff published" means exactly that — it is a fact we checked, not a gap in the research.

Set A on 10 September 2026 was the earliest of those — three days from the date on this page. It moved twice before it fell — 31 August 2026, then 5 September, then 10 September — and Indian Talent Olympiad announced neither extension. It did not move a third time. That history is why this page keeps sending you back to the bodies themselves rather than to a date you were told: behind Set A sit Set B on 31 October 2026 (extended from 10 October, then from 22 October), Set C on 10 November 2026 and the individual online route on 30 October 2026, and the one that matters to you is whichever of them is still ahead of you on the morning you act.

So which one should you pick?

Ask the school first, and ask something specific: which olympiads are you running this year, and which date have you picked for each. That one answer removes most of the decision, because a school-route paper is either available to your child or it is not, and no amount of comparing SOF’s pattern against SilverZone’s changes which. If the school is running something in a subject your child likes, that is your answer and the rest of this page is background.

If the school runs nothing, work down the direct table by subject rather than by reputation. A ₹150 Humming Bird paper is not a lesser exam than a ₹500 ITO one; they are different bodies with different reach, and at Class 6 the reach is worth nothing to your child. And either way the preparation gap here is not knowledge. It is that an olympiad asks about a chapter differently from the way the school test asks about it — and with forty per cent of the paper drawn from a class your child has already left, the gap is almost entirely about the shape of the question. Twenty minutes most days on olympiad-pattern questions closes more of it than any choice between two bodies will.