ICPC

Overview

The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a multi-tier team programming competition for students enrolled in degree-granting higher education institutions. It runs from local university contests up to regional contests, and teams from the highest regional contests advance to the ICPC World Finals. The rules below are the ICPC Regional Rules for 2026/27, which lead to the 2027 World Finals.

Who can take part

• A team has three contestants, all enrolled at the same degree-granting institution (the team institution). A student may compete only for one team institution in a contest year.

• Each team has one registered coach, usually a faculty member, who certifies eligibility and cannot also be a contestant.

• A contestant must be enrolled in a degree programme at the team institution with at least a half-time load. Co-op, exchange, internship and extramural students are not excluded by this rule.

• A student must be willing and able to compete in the World Finals. A student who needs a visa to study at the team institution must be able to get one to travel to the Finals and to return afterwards.

• A student who has competed in two ICPC World Finals cannot compete in regionals.

• A student who has competed in qualifying regionals in five different contest years is not eligible, with a transitional exception for 2025/26 and 2026/27 for students with no more than eight semesters of full-time STEM study.

• For 2026/27, a student is within the period of eligibility if they first began post-secondary studies in 2022 or later, or were born in 2003 or later. Eligibility is set as of the first qualifying contest or 1 October 2026, whichever favours the student. A coach can petition the ICPC Eligibility Committee at least three weeks before the contest to extend this period.

• The ICPC assigns each institution a home region, which decides its path to the Finals.

Exam pattern

Each regional contest is a team contest. The rules set these common features:

• The contest language is English; regions may also use other languages.

• A contest typically lasts five hours, though the regional director can change the length.

• At least six problems are posted.

• A team shares a single workstation. The programming languages should at least include Java, Kotlin, Python 3, C and C++.

• Each regional director decides whether teams may bring materials. At the World Finals, no printed materials or electronic devices are allowed in the contest area, apart from a team PDF of up to 25 pages of notes that is printed for the team.

Marking and results

A problem counts as solved when judges accept a submission. Teams are ranked by the number of problems solved. Ties are broken by total time, then by the time of the last accepted submission. The time for each solved problem is the time from the start to the first accepted run plus 20 penalty minutes for each earlier rejected run on that problem, except runs rejected for a compilation error. Unsolved problems add no time.

How to apply

Register in the ICPC Registration System. The coach and every team member must be fully registered before the team competes in any qualifying regional contest, and registration cannot be done retroactively. The coach must register the team no later than 7 days before the contest, and the regional contest director must accept it. Dates, fees and local rules are set and posted by each regional contest, so read your own region's website.

After the exam

The highest-level regional contests advance teams to the World Finals under each region's advancement rules, and extra teams may be invited as wild cards. Only one team per institution can advance, and it must keep the same three members. The coach must complete team certification within five days of notification. Teams that need visas must start the process within ten days of invitation. At on-site registration, contestants show a picture ID and proof of enrolment during the term of the regional contest where they qualified. The 2027 World Finals is more likely to be held in September 2027, with exact dates to be announced.

Preparation tips

• Practise as a team: agree who reads which problems and who types.

• Train with past regional problem sets, which many regions publish.

• Learn standard algorithms and data structures and practise writing them quickly and correctly.