Overview
Bebras is an international initiative that promotes informatics and computational thinking among school students. It is run through national organisers. This page follows the USA organiser, whose site was read directly. Participation there is free and no preparation or studying is needed.
Who can take it
Students aged 6 to 18 take part, supervised by teachers, on computers or mobile devices. The United States uses six age categories: Kits (6 to 8), Castors (8 to 10), Benjamins (10 to 12), Cadets (12 to 14), Juniors (14 to 16) and Seniors (16 to 18).
Exam pattern
Students have 45 minutes to complete as many tasks as they can and are not expected to finish all of them. Each category has its own tasks in equal numbers of easy, medium and hard: 3 of each for Kits, 4 of each for Castors and 5 of each for the four older categories. Other countries may run a different format.
Important dates
The world-wide Bebras week for task solving is in the second week of November. The USA challenge in 2026 is scheduled for 9 to 20 November.
How to apply
In the United States, a coordinator, usually a teacher, registers on the USA Bebras site and gets students ready. Elsewhere, register through your school and your country's national Bebras organiser.
Preparation tips
Try the practice challenges on the national site; no programming knowledge is needed.
Do I need to know programming?
No. The tasks cover problem-solving and informatics ideas such as breaking tasks down, algorithm design and pattern recognition.