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The 7th OCPC (Winter 2026) has concluded last week, and as usual, I'd like to write a blog with some closing remarks.

Winners

Onsite winners (overall and upsolving)

Overall, we had 81 teams that had submitted at least one problem, of which 19 teams participated onsite in Osijek.

We'd like to congratulate the overall winners of the camp, according to the rated scoreboard (thanks to BigBag for maintaining it!):

Also congratulations to the team "🥶" (Matistjati, Haire, Eradax) from the Chalmers University of Technology, who won the upsolving portion of the camp, by solving over 40 problems after corresponding contests were over!

Very impressive results, I hope you all the best in the upcoming official ICPC events 😊

Osijek site

Shared area with souvenirs and printer

Participants at contest site

What? Where? When? game

As usual, we did our best to ensure that onsite participation is not only educational, but also fun and memorable. Besides regular contest and live post-contest discussions, the camp included:

• A lot of souvenirs from the camp and sponsors (t-shirts, water bottles, and even sweat pants!);
• Laser tag and escape room sessions on first leisure day;
• Karting and What? Where? When? intellectual game / quiz on the second leisure day;
• Exclusive camp hoodies for onsite winners (overall, and by upsolving counts).

I generally hope and believe that the camp provides a great opportunity not only to grow as competitive programmers (which it of course does too!), but also to meet new people and broaden connections across different cultures.

Teams at laser tag

Participants and organizers at closing dinner

Retrospective

Overall, I think the camp went fairly well, and without major issues. We're very thankful to the contest authors for high contest quality, and high level of responsibility when preparing them, and of course to participants for placing your trust in us.

Unfortunately, in this camp we had some issues involving AI usage by participants, which we resolved promptly by disqualifying teams, and/or contacting their coaches where appropriate. I hoped there would be no need for this, but I have to remind everyone considering participating in the future that discussing anything related to the problems with people outside your team (and organizers), or with large language models, is not allowed, as we try to replicate the environment of main official events.

That aside, this time around we tried introducing some discounts, that is, instead of 198€ general price per team, we offered:

• 147€ per team for "early bird" registrations;
• 99€ per team for (self-assessed) "hardship" cases.

Overall, I think both experiments were positive. "Early bird" discounts allowed us to assess number of participants much sooner, while allowing flexibility to those who need more time to decide. Correspondingly, relatively small amount of teams picked the "hardship" option, which we consider a signal that participants treat the option responsibly and do not abuse it. As such, we may hopefully consider lowering the "hardship" price tag in the future to ensure better accessibility and broader reach.

Unfortunately, we still have cases (up to 10-15 teams each season) of people registering for the camp, and then not responding to our emails at all (not even canceling the registration), often coupled with choosing a wrong cost tier (e.g. claiming discount for camp contest authors while ineligible for it). We try to be flexible and allow anyone to cancel their registration, but chasing such registrations takes a lot of effort, so we'd be grateful for anyone who has changed their mind about participation to notify us in a timely manner.

Future plans

Okay, now the important part! We hope to keep organizing camps in the future. As it is largely a community-driven effort, it means we always need some help that you might be able to provide. This includes some paid work for future editions of the camp, as well as some help with growing our connections. Here are the things you can help with:

• Finding sponsors. We try to keep financial burden on participants as small as possible. The more (stable) sponsors we have, the better we are able to do so! Do you work at, or have contacts at a company that is known (or likely) to support competitive programming (or generally STEM) events? Hit me up with a message, so we can try approaching them!
• Authoring contests. Do you have experience making ICPC-style contests, and have some ideas to make up a full ICPC-style problemset? Hit me up with a message if you'd like your contest to be used at OCPC (paid). This also applies to reasonably non-public contests that were used before somewhere else (but needs to be discussed individually).
• Finding hosts. Do you want to participate in person, but OCPC happens too far away from you? Do you have a place nearby (typically, a university) that is enthusiastic about competitive programming and may be interested in hosting a mirror site in your region? Hit me up with a message!
• Presenting solutions. Are you good at competitive programming (let's say, at least IM on Codeforces) and presenting information to live audience? We might need some (paid) help with live after-contest discussions. Hit me up with a message to discuss details.
• Testing contests. Our authors often want somebody else to try out or discuss the contest in advance to help ensure its quality. Are you good at competitive programming, and would like to help? Hit me up with a message! This is currently not paid, but you get early access to all contests ahead of camp time, and without having to pay participation fee.
• Help with outreach. Over time, we collected some amount of contacts to send our invitation emails to, as a lot of relevant people don't read Codeforces regularly. Unfortunately, universities are not particularly stable, so some people move on with their lives, and are no longer relevant contacts. You can help us to keep our outreach relevant by telling me who would be an appropriate contact person at your university. Additionally, we may sometimes offer some options to make universities more enthusiastic about supporting your participation (e.g. trying to organize it via a mobility program), so don't hesitate to reach out if you'd like to discuss it.
• Help with scheduling. If you are potentially interested in participating onsite this year, please fill this form! If you know anyone potentially interested in participating, please send them the form. Scheduling in summer is extremely challenging, we need all the information we can get.

If you can help us with any of the above, we'd really appreciate it!