IIOT 2025 Review

Recently the eighth edition of the International Informatics Olympiad in Teams concluded and with it, the fifth year in which I have been involved as part of various scientific and organizing committees (take note that I have also competed twice back when I was in high school, in 2018 and 2019). This was a great year in my opinion, as we made good progress towards growing the contest internationally, while ensuring a smooth organization both as far as the scientific work as well as the organization process of the onsite international final and the various national finals, for which I am grateful to everyone who could make these events possible.

Why IIOT?

IIOT is a programming contest with a unique format, being the only international high school team informatics olympiad which focuses on competitive coding and follows the same contest format as the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). It has grown considerably over the last few years and it now involves thousands of contestants across the world who compete in their respective national selections, for their country's slots at the international final, which takes place traditionally around May every year.

It allows teams of 4 students who live in the same geographical area (depending on the country, either from the same school or from the same city/region) to compete together and compete, learn and have fun together with challenging and interesting problem sets for everyone in the team. The team can use up to two computers to write the solution codes, so having a good team cohesion and chemistry is essential. In order to attract more people towards problem solving and competitive coding, each team can have at most 1 top student (the definition differs from country to country, but usually it refers to the strongest students who earned awards or similar achievements at the previous edition of the individual national informatics olympiad from their country).

In addition, as the problems are prepared by an experienced international scientific committee, the quality and the standard of the contest are kept at the highest level, with well known figures being part of the process. Since the problems are prepared together, there is no need of resources being spent on new problems, so for a new country who wants to join the contest, it gives them a big opportunity to challenge their students as preparation for the other competitions later in the academical year.

From my experience as having been the Romanian scientific coordinator since 2020-21 season, the staff members are very friendly and open to new ideas, which is a result of the diverse backgrounds the scientific staff and the national referents have. Therefore, these factors help us gain a huge advantage over other contests, as we used our long experience to help the contest grow while also integrating new countries as regular members.

Another important advantage IIOT has is given by its schedule, as the qualification and the national finals are held before the national individual olympiads, which over the last 8 years, has been very useful for the participating countries in terms of assessing the level of preparation the students have as well as improving the national competitive programming scene in their respective countries.

If you want to find out how to participate, you can click here for more details.

Improvements and Challenges Ahead of Us

As far as the biggest improvements year over year go, we managed to recruit several high profile members in the international scientific committee, among others contestants who have previously earned medals at top level competitions such as IOI, CEOI and APIO, while also being among the top users on Codeforces, the largest competitive coding platform worldwide. In addition, several sponsors have joined our project, most notably Jane Street for the international event and on a lesser scale, JetBrains and Algolymp for the various national events out there. Last but not least, several new countries have joined the competition, among others the USA, Vietnam and Bulgaria are some of the most notable nations if we judge by their historical results at IOI. In total, 10 nations and 23 teams have participated at the recently ended international round which took place in Budapest, Hungary.

However, this was not a year without its challenges, especially caused by the exponential growth of AI's capabilities when it comes to coding as well as the need for further clarity when it comes to key definitions behind certain aspects of the rulebook. All in all, I am still optimistic about the prospects of the contest's growth, as we provide a great experience for the countries and teams involved, while also preparing a significant amount of contests which can be used by the participating teams towards their practice for the individual Olympiads.

Qualifying Rounds and National Finals

For the four qualifying rounds and the various national finals, we have used the same system we have applied over the course of the last few years. Each of these competitions has been held at the same time in all countries, with the problem sets being common across these contests. The contests have once again been challenging, with scores being far from the perfect for the most part. As far as Romanian results are concerned, there have been only a few instances in which a team managed to solve every single problem during the preliminary competitions.

You can see the complete Romanian results here, with the problems visible on Kilonova. Unlike some of the other countries in the event, Romania's qualifying rounds have only 7 problems, instead of the usual 9, as the easiest two problems are being skipped.

Each country has then its national finals, usually taking place in March (in Romania they took place in the first week of March) and the best teams qualify to the international round. I have talked about this year's Romanian event in an earlier post on LinkedIn, so I invite you to check out that post as well.

IIOT 2025 - International Round (Budapest, Hungary)

This year's event took place in Hungary and the organizers prepared for us 5 days of events, excursions as well as a pleasant stay at one of the better locations in the city. I will review Budapest in more detail in a subsequent blog but for now I will mainly focus on the contest activities.

We stayed at Ibis Styles City hotel in Budapest, a four star hotel close to the important touristy areas of the city, which given that among others, I also took my newly bought camera with me, it was a great opportunity to take some nice shots as well as learn more about the city which once was an imperial capital back in the days of the Habsburgs. The rooms and the food we ate there was pretty good, with the breakfast being given to us in a buffet setup, and the double rooms being quite spacious and newly renovated. The contest venue was the Fakekas High School in Budapest, a high school with a rich history and competitive tradition, who welcomed us with open arms to this year's edition.

As far as the most important events go, as usual for an olympiad, we had the opening ceremony, the practice round, the competition day and the award ceremony. In addition, we had the chance to visit Budapest thanks to the guides, take part in a quiz event as well as have free time where we could explore around, meet new friends and have useful discussions.

From my perspective, as I was practically in a category on my own at the event (not a contestant, teacher or team leader), I started off with catching up to my friends from the scientific committee as we talked about our trips here, the last minute details regarding the problems as well as ideas that can help us improve the competition overall for the future.

The days going into the key post contest meetings are often ways in which the committee members discuss these suggestions and we had a lot of productive discussions as we assessed the progress we made during the year and the challenges we faced trying to promote the contest to a wider audience. We also talked about the feedback we got from our friends across the world and personally, I always feel great whenever I discuss these things with my friends across the world.

The contest went smoothly, as we prepared a high quality problem set as shown by the score distribution and the clear hierarchy created by the 8 problems we chose. Nobody got a perfect score and every problem was solved by at least one team, which are two metrics often mentioned when talking about the quality of a competitive coding contest. Ultimately, the top teams represented Vietnam, Bulgaria and Romania, with the full standings being shown here.

Later on, we had the GA and IC meetings, where we reviewed the contest, discussed the challenges and the changes ahead of us and agreed on future plans that are going to improve the contest and its rules, as some sections needed clarifications and improvements, showing once again the resilience and the serious plans we as an organization have. In particular, having these meetings and the constant communication which helps us gain solid feedback from each country is crucial towards the success of our Olympiad.

After everything formal finished, we had the chance to also visit Budapest's most famous attractions, which were interesting and insightful. At the end of the five days, we all traveled back home to our respective home destinations, with fond memories and great things to remember.

As usual, I'm looking forward to the next edition of IIOT and if you or your country are interested in joining our competition, please check out our international website for more details, or reach out to me if you need any help in the process.

Stay tuned as I will share with you a more detailed review of Budapest as well!