NSE Introduces Pre-Open Session in F&O: What It Means for Traders?

From 8 December 2025, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) will start rolling out a pre-open session for the Equity Futures & options (F&O) segment. This NSE pre-open session F&O is going to be a big thing in the market, as the traders in the F&O segment can discover opening prices before the regular market session opens, especially in the index and stock futures segment. Currently, we have a pre-open call auction window for the equity cash market, which is 15 minutes, and something similar is being planned by NSE for the F&O pre-open session as well. 

The Timings

This F&O pre-open session will start from 9 a.m. and will end at 9:15 a.m., and then the call auction format will follow. During the first 7 minutes, that is, until 9:07 a.m., you can enter your trade orders, modification orders, and cancellation orders as well, then between 9:07 and 9:08 a.m., the order entry will close and then until 9:12 a.m., the price discovery will take place and also trade matching. Then the remaining 3 minutes will work as a buffer time until the transition to the market happens for continuous trading from 9:15 a.m.

Mechanism For NSE Pre-Open Session F&O 

Initially, the F&O pre-open session will apply to the current-month futures on single stocks and indices. In the final five days of the contract’s expiry, the mechanism will be extended to the next-month contracts as well. 

Note: You need to take note that this pre-open session timing will not be applicable for the options, spreads, and corporate-action ex-dates. 

During the pre-open session, the IOC orders and stop-loss orders are barred, while you can go for limit and market orders. During the auction, you can see indicative opening prices as well as order imbalance data in real-time format. 

If there is any unmatched limit order, then it will be moved to the normal market with the original time stamps. On the other hand, the unmatched market orders will convert to limit orders at a price which is discovered as the opening price. 

NSE also clarified that the trades which get executed during this span cannot be cancelled. Apart from this, all the orders will be margin-validated when you enter the order into the system, and all the orders will be self-trade checked as the feature will remain active. 

Note: There is a Mock Trading session organised for the new F&O pre-open session on the 6^th of December 2025. This will be a brief session for testing the mechanism before it rolls out on the 8^th of December 2025. 

Benefits of Pre-Open Session 

For traders who trade futures actively, this change can bring a lot of benefits. It can – 

• Help them position themselves in the market before the normal market opens 
• Make the most of the overnight changes in the global markets 
• The opening futures price discovery will bring transparency, contrary to the current setup, where the gap-up and gap-down method is used for deciding the opening price suddenly at 9:15 a.m.
• Help the trader get an idea of the liquidity present in the market, and also the order imbalance status 

Rationale Behind NSE Pre-Open Session for the F&O Segment 

NSE has been coming up with this mechanism in order to boost market efficiency and also solidify risk control measures. This is the need of the hour, given the rapidly growing derivatives market in India. 

During the past 15 years, the equity derivatives market has gone up unparallelly with a total turnover going up from ₹177 trillion in FY10 to a whopping ₹40000 trillion in FY25. This growth is just unthinkable, and thus, it is time to upgrade and give more transparency to the traders. 

What sets the Indian derivative market apart is that it single-handedly accounts for 81% of the total derivatives turnover worldwide, and this comes from only NSE and BSE together, against the entire stock exchanges around the world.  

NSE’s move is crucial also because within India, it holds an 80% share in derivative trading volumes (daily averages), and thus this move can help the traders to scale up with a better liquidity quotient, excellent price discovery mechanism, and all these can increase the market depth. 

Source: MoneyControl

Disclaimer: Investments in the securities market are subject to market risks; read all the related documents carefully before investing.