1676 François Bouchy Performances of the Near-Infrared Adaptive-Optics assisted high resolution NIRPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6m The Near-InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) is a new ultra-stable near-infrared spectrograph that is being installed on ESO 3.6-m Telescope in La Silla, Chile. Aiming to achieve a precision of 1 m/s, NIRPS will operate together with HARPS. NIRPS has been designed to explore the exciting prospects offered by the M dwarfs, focusing on three main science cases: 1) High-precision RV survey of M dwarf aiming at detecting Earth-like planets in the habitable zone; 2) Mass (and density) measurements of planetary candidates orbiting M dwarfs from transit surveys, and 3) Atmospheric characterization of exoplanets via transmission spectroscopy. To achieve its science goals, NIRPS is operating in the Y-, J- and H-bands with continuous coverage from 0.97 to 1.8 mum. It will ensure high radial velocity precision and high spectral fidelity corresponding to 1 m/s in less than 30 min for an M3 star with H = 8.4. NIRPS is part of a new generation of adaptive optics (AO) fiber-fed spectrographs. NIRPS uses a 0.4-arcsecond multi-mode fiber, half that required for a seeing-limited instrument, allowing a spectrograph design that is half as big as that of HARPS, while meeting the requirements for high throughput and high spectral resolution. A 0.9-arcsecond fiber is used for fainter targets and degraded seeing conditions. The entire optical design is oriented to maximize high spectral resolution, long-term spectral stability and overall throughput. Using a custom R4 dispersion echelle gratin in combination with a cross disperser made of a series of five refractive ZnSe prisms that rotate the beam by 180°, the instrument covers the 0.97 to 1.81 mum domain on 69 spectral orders with a 1 km/s pixel sampling and a spectral resolution of 80,000. A four-lens refractive camera focuses the beam on a Hawaii 4RG 4096 × 4096 infrared detector. The spectrograph is installed inside a cylindrical cryostat (1.12-m diameter, 3.37-m long) maintained at an operating temperature of 80 K with a stability of 1 mK and an operating pressure of 1.E-5 mbar. In return for the manpower effort and financial contributions of the consortium to design, build, maintain and operate NIRPS for five years, ESO will grant the consortium a period of Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) corresponding to 40% of the 3.6-m Telescope time, leaving ample time for community-driven science topics. Its first light is scheduled for June 2022. We present here the performance of the spectrograph in the lab and first tests on sky.