Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Social Science · Class 8
Indian Talent Olympiad National Social Studies Olympiad (NSSO) Class 8: syllabus, dates and exam pattern (2026–27)
Everything you need in one place — the exact NCERT chapters this paper tests, its published exam dates, the registration window, and the full marking scheme. Updated for the 2026–27 session.
Last verified against Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO)'s own site on 6 September 2026. Exam dates re-checked on 22 October 2026.
2026–27 exam dates
Through school — Set A
6 October 2026
Through school — Set B
27 November 2026
Through school — Set C
8 January 2027
Individual online — slot 1
7 December 2026
Individual online — slot 2
5 January 2027
The three Set dates are the school route — the school picks one Set for the subject and the child sits it with the class. The two slot dates are the individual online route a family can take without the school, and they are separate sittings on separate dates, not alternatives to the same paper. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes the online dates as tentative, stating that the final exam schedule will be updated 20 days prior. Once a Set or a slot is chosen it cannot be changed.
Registration: Two routes, two separate deadlines. Through the school, registration closes on three published dates: 10 September 2026 for Set A, 31 October 2026 for Set B (extended from 10 October, then from 22 October) and 10 November 2026 for Set C. Set A has moved twice — it read 31 August 2026 until 1 September, then 5 September, and Indian Talent Olympiad extended it to 10 September on 5 September itself, both times on the morning the old date was due to close and neither time with an announcement. The school collects ₹175 per student per subject, keeps ₹25 for organising costs and sends ₹150 to Indian Talent Olympiad. Read the school deadline as a postal one rather than a form-filling one: the body's fee page requires the completed registration form, the student list and the fee as a demand draft to reach its Mumbai office by the cutoff, by registered post or courier. Directly, without the school, individual online registration for Classes 1 to 10 closes 30 October 2026 for slot 1, at ₹500 per subject — and for social science this is the only direct family route on this site, across all six bodies we track. Slot 2 has no published cutoff at all.
The deadline is set by your school, not by you
Most parents find the exam date and assume they have until then. The registration window closes long before it, and for some papers it has already started closing. Here is how it actually works.
- Your school registers your child and your school picks which of the 2–3 dates the class sits. The family does not choose.
- For SOF papers, registrations must reach SOF exactly 30 days before that chosen date — and once the school has chosen, the date cannot be changed.
- Most bodies register through the school. These do not have to: CREST (online, no published cutoff), Unified Council — directly for NSTSE itself at ₹350 against ₹150 through a school, and on three online sittings, NSTSE-Online, UIMO-Online and UIEO-Online, at ₹354 each including GST — Indian Talent Olympiad on its individual online route (its own later dates — Slot 1 closes 30 October), and Humming Bird (online, ₹150 a subject, no published cutoff — its two dates are picked as you register). CREST is the simplest of them. SilverZone also runs an individual registration form alongside its default school route; which papers it offers we have not been able to confirm.
Closing next
SOF IHO (Hindi) — if your school picks 23 November 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 24 October 2026
SOF IMO (Maths) — if your school picks 26 November 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 27 October 2026
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — Individual online route — Slot 1
Registration closes 30 October 2026
SilverZone Foundation — Every SilverZone paper
Registration closes 31 October 2026
The body publishes this date but has not marked it final — confirm with your school before treating it as fixed.
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — School route — Set B (extended twice, from 10 October)
Registration closes 31 October 2026
Or read the full calendar on the site — no sign-up
Every deadline in this box was re-read against the exam body's own website on or after 22 October 2026. Each table carries its own source link and its own date. Bodies do move dates, so check against the body's own site before you act on one.
Exam pattern
How the ITO-SST paper is structured
| Section | Questions | Marks per question | Section total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section 1 — Subjective (syllabus) | 35 | 1 | 35 |
| Section 2 — Logical Reasoning | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Section 3 — Higher Order Thinking (HOTs) | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Total | 50 questions | — | 50 marks · 65 minutes |
The 65 minutes above is the school route. Indian Talent Olympiad gives the individual online route 45 minutes for the same 50 questions — both figures are the body's own, in identically headed rows on its two schedule pages, and neither page mentions the other. If you are registering your child directly rather than through the school, plan for 54 seconds a question instead of 78. Section 3 is not a separate syllabus: the body states that the Higher Order Thinking questions are drawn from Section 1, so 40 of the 50 questions come from the chapter list below and 10 do not.
All 50 questions carry one mark, including the five Higher Order Thinking questions, so the paper is not weighted towards its harder end. Section 2's ten reasoning questions are a fifth of the marks and come from no social science book — series completion and missing characters, alpha-numeric sequences, analogy and classification, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, logical Venn diagrams, puzzles, mathematical operations, analytical reasoning, mirror and water images, embedded figures, figure matrices, ranking, and construction of squares. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes no current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers. On this paper that silence is doing a lot of work: much of the published list is the previous class's book, and the body says nothing about how the two are weighted.
Syllabus
Social Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8, 2026-27)
Ch 1. Natural Resources and Their Use
Olympiad syllabus label: Natural Resources (ITO chapter 16)
Ch 2. Reshaping India's Political Map
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — its post-1947 history stops at India gains Independence (5)
Ch 3. The Rise of the Marathas
Olympiad syllabus label: Wars (6), for the Anglo-Maratha wars only — the Marathas are on ITO's Class 7 list
Ch 4. The Colonial Era in India
Olympiad syllabus label: British rule (3); Colonialism (7); Wars (6) — Plassey, the Carnatic wars, Dual Government in Bengal
Ch 5. Universal Franchise and India's Electoral System
Olympiad syllabus label: Our Constitution and Parliament (12), in part; Caste System (15) for its social half
Ch 6. The Parliamentary System: Legislature and Executive
Olympiad syllabus label: Our Constitution and Parliament (12)
Ch 7. Factors of Production
Olympiad syllabus label: Economic Activities (17), in part — ITO names factors of production on its Class 7 list, not here
Ch 8. World Geography: Some Glimpses
Olympiad syllabus label: Vegetation and Wildlife (18); Inside and Outside of the Earth (19); Structure of Ocean Floor (21) — ITO puts world-regional geography on its Class 7 list
Ch 9. India's Long Road to Independence
Olympiad syllabus label: Freedom Movement (4); India gains Independence (5)
Ch 10. A Journey Through Indian Architecture
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — Architecture and Literature is chapter 7 of its Class 6 list
Ch 11. The Role of the Judiciary in Our Society
Olympiad syllabus label: Judiciary System of India (14)
Ch 12. Citizenship: Rights and Duties
Olympiad syllabus label: Human Rights and UNO (13), in part — ITO carries Citizenship and Human Rights on its Class 6 list
Ch 13. Dynamics of Population
Olympiad syllabus label: Population (20)
Ch 14. India's Urban Landscape
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list
Ch 15. Cultural Currents: 13th to 17th Centuries
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — Bhakti and Sufi movements is chapter 2 of its Class 7 list
Read this page together with our Class 7 one, because the two lists are the finding. Indian Talent Olympiad's Class 8 social studies list is ancient India — the rise of Jainism and Buddhism, the Mauryas, Kushans, Guptas and Vardhanas, and the southern dynasties — which is what the 2026-27 CLASS 7 book teaches. Its Class 7 list is medieval and modern, which is what the Class 8 book teaches. Searching every field of the Grade 8 curator sheet rather than only its chapter titles, "Gupta", "Maurya", "Kushan", "Vardhana", "Chola", "Jainism" and "Buddhism" each return zero rows, and so do nine of the dynasty names in ITO's chapter 11 — Kadambas, Pallavas, Shatavahanas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Badami, Kanchi, Manyakheta and Dwarasamudra. The Hoysalas are the exception and do appear, once, so this is fifteen names rather than all of them. Four more ITO chapters have no chapter in the Class 8 book on the same test: Ancient Civilization of India and World, Geographical Features and Pre-historic India, Money-Saving and Investment, and National Income and Sectoral Aspects — "saving", "investment", "national income" and "ocean floor" all return zero rows at Class 8. Not everything is a gap, and it is worth saying which things are not: Natural Resources, Population, the Judiciary, Our Constitution and Parliament, the Freedom Movement, British rule and Colonialism all map cleanly onto chapters of the book, and ITO's Caste System chapter is covered inside the book's Universal Franchise chapter. So roughly half this paper is the child's own year and roughly half is last year's. A Class 8 child who did well in Class 7 social science is better prepared for this paper than the Class 8 book alone would make them, which is an unusual thing to be able to say and the practical reason to revise last year's history rather than skip it. One oddity to know about before you print the list: ITO's Class 8 page runs from Chapter 7 straight to Chapter 9 and then numbers on to 24, so it publishes twenty-three chapters under a numbering that implies twenty-four. Nothing on the page says whether a chapter was withdrawn or lost in an edit, and we are not going to guess — ask the body if the difference matters to your preparation.
Try it yourself
Today's social science question
Practice
Practice in the ITO-SST format
No — OlympAI does not publish a practice paper for this exam. OlympAI’s question bank covers maths, science and English. We hold no social science questions yet, so there is no social science paper to give you — for this body or any other.
Frequently asked questions
Related guides
Other olympiad syllabus guides
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 7
ITO-SST Class 7 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 6
ITO-SST Class 6 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 8
ITO-H Class 8 — hindi syllabus, dates and pattern
SilverZone Foundation · Class 8
ABHO Class 8 — hindi syllabus, dates and pattern
Keep reading
Guides that answer the next question
Which olympiad should my Class 8 child take?
The Class 8 paper list is the same 25 papers offered at Class 6 and Class 7. What changes is that the bodies stop agreeing on what Class 8 means — one paper we mapped chapter by chapter is roughly half last year’s book. The routes, the dates and the syllabus catch, read off each body on 8 September 2026.
SOF ISSO vs SilverZone iSSO: which social science olympiad
Two papers with almost the same name, built on opposite principles: SilverZone iSSO spreads its marks evenly across the five themes of your child’s book, SOF ISSO puts 45 of its 50 questions in one undifferentiated section and draws 30 per cent of them from last year. Their calendars barely overlap, and a third body takes a family without the school. Here is the side-by-side for Classes 6, 7 and 8, read off each body’s own surface on 29 September 2026.
Or see every 2026-27 exam date and registration cutoff in one table, or browse all the papers we cover.
Practice these exact chapters, free
Free forever: 3 practice quizzes a day in each subject, 10 olympiad-pattern questions each, and 5 with your choice of length and difficulty on OlympAI PRO — for Class 8 social science, generated from the same NCERT chapters above and written to the shape of the real olympiad papers, then automatically checked before they can be served.
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