The National Pension System (NPS) — India's government-regulated retirement savings scheme — is open to NRIs on broadly the same terms as resident Indians, with a PAN and standard KYC required, and a Tier-I account (the primary retirement account) available with a modest minimum contribution.
The eligibility exception worth knowing
Eligibility is based on Indian citizenship, not on the broader Person of Indian Origin (PIO) or Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status — OCIs, PIOs, and HUFs are generally not eligible to open an NPS account, unlike some other NRI investment routes covered elsewhere on this site that extend more broadly to PIO/OCI holders. If your Indian-origin status is OCI rather than citizenship, this is worth confirming directly before assuming NPS is available to you.
Funding and repatriation
Contributions must come through an NRE or NRO account, and which one you use determines the repatriation treatment: funds contributed via NRE follow the free-repatriation rule that applies to NRE money generally, while funds contributed via NRO are subject to the standard NRO repatriation ceiling and documentation. The eventual pension or withdrawal amount itself is repatriable, and — as with most Indian retirement schemes — a portion of the corpus (commonly cited around 40%) is required to be used to purchase an annuity at retirement rather than withdrawn as a lump sum.
NPS repatriation is governed by RBI/FEMA rules layered on top of the scheme's own regulator (PFRDA), which is a different combination of rules than the repatriation headroom estimator on this page (built around NRO's general ceiling) directly models — treat NPS as its own category rather than assuming the general NRO estimator captures its specifics.