Benchmark Almanac

FrontierScience-Olympiad

Seed2.1 Pro 75% Only in system cards

Models solve olympiad-style physics, chemistry and biology problems at the level of IPhO, IChO and IBO, written by medalists and coaches. Graded on short final answers.

The Olympiad track of FrontierScience. The open gold set has 100 Olympiad problems. Labs report it apart from the Research track, with much higher scores.

In the authors’ words

We introduce FrontierScience, a benchmark evaluating expert-level scientific reasoning in frontier language models. Recent model progress has nearly saturated existing science benchmarks, which often rely on multiple-choice knowledge questions or already published information. FrontierScience addresses this gap through two complementary tracks: (1) Olympiad, consisting of international olympiad problems at the level of IPhO, IChO, and IBO, and (2) Research, consisting of PhD-level, open-ended problems representative of sub-tasks in scientific research. FrontierScience contains several hundred questions (including 160 in the open-sourced gold set) covering subfields across physics, chemistry, and biology, from quantum electrodynamics to synthetic organic chemistry. All Olympiad problems are originally produced by international Olympiad medalists and national team coaches to ensure standards of difficulty, originality, and factuality. All Research problems are research sub-tasks written and verified by PhD scientists (doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, or professors). For Research, we introduce a granular rubric-based evaluation framework to assess model capabilities throughout the process of solving a research task, rather than judging only a standalone final answer.

Abstract of FrontierScience: Evaluating AI's Ability to Perform Expert-Level Scientific Tasks (arXiv:2601.21165, CC0)
Made by OpenAI Released Dec 2025 Science olympiads Public tasks plus a private test set Last in a system card Jun 2026 Last model added Jun 2026
Level
Competition The strongest students, in olympiad-style contests
Scored
Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
Answers
Short answer A number, word or short string matched to a key.
2
Models scored in lab cards
2
System cards report it, from 1 lab

Seed2.1 Pro leads with 75%

Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.

  1. 1 Seed2.1 Pro 75%
  2. 2 Seed2.0 Pro 74%
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 Seed2.1 Pro 75% Jun 2026 Model card
2 Seed2.0 Pro 74% Feb 2026 Model card

Scores over time

All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.

Reported by the lab in its model card Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Seed2.1 Pro Seed2.0 Pro 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Seed2.1 Pro

Labs report it only in system cards

We read the headline results of 479 launch posts from 51 labs, and none of them list this benchmark. Some system cards do, below.

2 system cards report it, from 1 lab

Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.

DateDocumentScoreAs the document writes itSection
23 Jun 2026 Seed2.1 Pro model card 75 FrontierScience-Olympiad (Table 11) Capabilities
14 Feb 2026 Seed2.0 Pro model card 74 FrontierSci-olympiad (Table 3) Capabilities

More in Science and reasoning

All 88 in Science and reasoning
  • GPQA Diamond In use 198 graduate-level 'Google-proof' multiple-choice questions in biology, chemistry and physics. Gemini 4 Argon 96.4%
  • Terminal-Bench-Science In use 70 scientific research-workflow tasks across five science areas, run in Harbor containers. Hidden tests give the resolution rate. GPT-6 Astra 68.1%
  • FrontierScience In use Models solve physics, chemistry, and biology problems in an Olympiad track graded by short answer and a Research track graded by 10-point rubrics. Intern-S2-397B 87%
  • BioMysteryBench In use Bioinformatics problems on anonymized real datasets that require real analysis with tools. Rubric-graded, with human-solvable and human-difficult splits. Claude Opus 5 90.1%
  • HiPhO In use Models solve theory problems from 2024 and 2025 physics olympiad exams, some with diagrams. Official marking schemes grade answers and steps, mapped to medal levels. Gemini 3 Pro 78.3%
  • LABBench2 In use 11 biology research sub-tasks (literature, figures, tables, patents, trials and more) with tool access. Macro-averaged accuracy. GPT-5.2 60.9%