Hi, Codeforces!

December is the perfect time to wrap up the year, and we’re happy to invite you to follow the final stages of the most important school and student team competitions in competitive programming. Mark your calendars: from December 15 to 17, the 26th Russian Team Olympiad in High School Programming Contest and the ICPC Northern Eurasia Finals 2025 will take place.

The official opening of the championships will be on Monday, December 15. The detailed schedule is available on the website.

On our accounts, we’ll be sharing updates about the participants and their results. As usual, we’ve put together a list of useful materials in a single post; it will be updated gradually so you can conveniently follow the progress of the competitions and cheer for your favorites. By the way, who do you think will become the champions of RTO HSPC and NEF?

ICPC Northern Eurasia Finals

The ICPC semifinals in our region celebrate their 30th anniversary this year — three decades of algorithmic contests that have brought together thousands of participants, hundreds of practice contests, months of preparation, multi-stage regional selections, and bright, inspiring victories. What anniversary surprises have the organizers prepared this year? Stay tuned for the news — it’s going to be exciting!

This season, nearly 3,000 teams took part in all qualification stages, and only 341 of them made it to the Northern Eurasia Finals. You can see how the regional contests went on the ICPC NERC page for this season on icpc.global, as well as in our gallery, where we’ve collected photos from the quarterfinals and qualification rounds. We also gathered team reactions from Saint Petersburg and Moscow during the quarterfinals — you can find them here.

The student team championship, as in previous years, is held in a distributed format across Saint Petersburg, Almaty, Novosibirsk, and Tbilisi. Already on Wednesday, December 17, the teams will face a crucial intellectual battle that will determine the finalists of ICPC 2026, who will represent Northern Eurasia on the world stage. The venue of the next final has not yet been announced, but we’re eagerly awaiting the news and guessing where it might take place.

For those who are not participating in the NEF, there will be an opportunity to solve the same problems in the “mirror” contest here on the platform. Registration is already open!

Join the live stream of the ICPC Northern Eurasia Finals contest on Wednesday, December 17, at 10:00 (utc+3), and the live stream of the closing ceremony scheduled for 17:00, to be the first to find out everything!

RTO HSPC 2025

On Tuesday, December 16, the main round of the RTO HSPC 2025 school team championship will take place. Based on the qualification results, 266 teams have been invited to compete. As with the student contests, the final round is held in a distributed format across several cities: 156 teams will compete at Lakhta Hall in Saint Petersburg, 72 teams in Almaty (Kazakhstan), 28 teams in Novosibirsk, and another 10 teams in Sirius.

The main round of the Russian Team Olympiad in High School Programming Contest, along with the live stream, will start on Tuesday at 10:00 Moscow time — join us to watch the next generation of young talents. We will find out who becomes the RTO HSPC champion later the same day during the closing ceremony live stream at 17:00.

Tag your favorites in the comments and wish them good luck!