2025-2026 Competition Schedule Released

Our 2025-2026 competition season will be structured slightly differenly from past years, with three on-line contests in early 2026 followed by a proctored invitational championship contest. The online contests will follow the same format as past online contests, with gold and platinum results being "certified" (carrying greater weight) when a competitor starts the contest within the first 15 minute of opening (Saturday noon Eastern time during the larger 4-day contest window). Top USA competitors from the online contests will be invited to participate in the final proctored contest; detailed logistics for this are still being worked out and will be announced later. Results from the proctored contest will determine who is invited to our 2026 camp as a finalist, as well as the four individuals who will represent the USA at the 2026 EGOI (this year the EGOI is held prior to our camp, necessitating an earier selection process; the EGOI team and top EGOI prospects for future years will still be invited to our camp for training).

This year will be somewhat transitional as we gain experience with how to most effectively implement our final proctored contest. The same (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) division structure will remain in place this year for stability, but this may possibly be tweaked slightly in the future to place more emphasis on yearly results stemming from the final proctored contest.

To recap the details about "certified" contest results: In the gold and platinum divisions, problems will be first released at 12:00pm (noon) eastern time (ET) on the Saturday of the larger Friday-Monday contest timeline. Any student who begins the contest between 12:00pm and 12:15pm ET on that day will receive a certified score (treated by USACO staff as having higher potential credibility and weight than a non-certified score). Certified results are only possible in gold and platinum; the bronze and silver divisions will run as in the past, with problems available at the beginning of the Friday of the contest timeframe. In order to promote from gold to platinum, your score must be certified. In order to earn an invitation to our final proctored contest, USA-based students should have at least 2 and ideally 3 certified scores from on-line contests this season (USACO coaches will consider any exceptional situations outside these parameters on a case-by-case basis).

Excellent Results at 2025 IOI and EGOI

2024-2025 Finalists Announced

The USACO is pleased to announce its finalists for the 2024-2025 season, all invited to participate in our training camp in late May to compete for selection for the USA teams attending the International Olympiad in Informatics and the European Girls Olympiad in Informatics.

Our Mission

• Hundreds of hours of free on-line training resources and historical contest problems (complete with solutions) that students can use to improve their programming and computational problem-solving skills.
• On-line programming contests (four per year) for students at all levels.
• An intensive summer training camp, to which the top students in the USA are invited to further improve their skills and learn advanced material.
• The opportunity for the top four students in the USA to represent their country at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the most prestigious international algorithmic programming competition at the high-school level. We also select a team of the top four female high-school students in the USA to compete at the European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI), a competition of similar prestige modeled after the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad.

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2025-2026 Schedule