IOI 2026
8,9 August - Arrival (Laetitia)
Because for some reason we had to, as usually, be at the airport 3 hours early the journey started somewhere in Flüelen, located in the Canton of Uri, which is 3.819 times larger than the Republic and Canton of Geneva. But once at the train station, it seemd like SBB had turned into Deutsche Bahn, as the train was announced to be 7 minutes late (also the earlier train was cancelled because of "construction work"). When it finally arrived it was completely full, despite it being a doubled train, which is unusual because usually it is not people coming from Ticino on Saturday mornings, but the other way around. But apparently there was a major event happening in Zurich which caused the train going there to be overflowing. At every further stop, the train conductors had to go out and shout at the people on the platform to enter at the back of the train where you could still maybe find a place to stand, and they also talked about how incomprehensible they found it that people only enter at the front on a train going to Zürich HB, where there are stairs at all parts of the platform. But the train eventually arrived at Zürich HB in Deutsche Bahn fashion. From there, the next train to Zürich Flughafen departed, in which some other members of the Swiss IOI team were already sitting. We then exited the train at Zürich Flughafen.Unfortunately, unlike CEOI'25, this time we had to depart from Zürich Airpot instead of Geneva Contrin International Airport, Bâle-Mulhouse Airport, or the great Kägiswil Aerodrome right next to Sarnen. After checking-in we decided to eat lunch at a place called "Marché" (🇫🇷🥖🍷). We were very confused about how the food worked there but eventually we got something to eat. Afterwards we made our way to the E gates, for which we had to take the "Cow Train". When we arrived, we were immeasurably disappointed by the fact that the only symbolysms of cows transferred to us were by means of mechanical waves instead of electromagentic ones. Also Myriam, despite having one, never knew that the Cantons in the Swiss Passport were ordered by the height of mountains. This ordering proved that Uri is better than Geneva, as Uris mountains are 3.6 million millimeters high (7.035 times higher than Geneva). Eventually we were able to board the plane. During that process we obtained some secret knowledge about the TSAT and TTOT, using which we were able to determine that the plane was going to be 17 minutes late, which turned out to be accurate. On the plane we were able to play Monopoly (2 players with 2 computer players). Despite being exactly the same, it was way better implemented than the Iberia version. Whenever there was an annoucement (which was very common), it would simply pause the game, while on Iberia planes it would immediately kick everyone out and end the game. Still the computer's strategy was slightly confusing, as they would be willing to straight up sell everything immediately, which gave a significant advantage to the human player going first. This resulted in Player 1 being very rich but having no actual property, while the mysterious and powerful Player 4 somehow managed to amass some property they were unwilling to sell. We also discovered that the game is taking place in the USA as there were expensive hospital and school fees. Yet that information was slightly inconsistent, as when we wanted to go to prison, it was surprisingly difficult. Eventually the mysterious Player 4 managed to make all my money disappear, which surprisingly resulted in them taking over all the property. This resulted in Myriam getting all of her property taken over by Player 4 as well not long after. After seeing that capitalism would result in AI supremacy we realised the benefits of Communism.
Then we arrived at Istanbul Airport where we were able to enjoy the Ultimate Istanbul Airport Experience consisting of going straight on for half an eternity. Also Discord is banned in Türkyie, which was probably orchestrated by the Smiling Imp 😈. After going through security again, where of course our playing cards were flagged as suspicious once again and Andrej was subjected to a thurough screening in a super fancy futuristic machine, we made our way to the gate. There we met some other IOI teams, from Mexico, Austria, Germany and some others, some of which discovered us because of Celeste. The Austrians of course knew William, whom Myriam surprisingly didn't (doesn't) know. The plane to Tashkent, which surprisingly was a pretty big one, was of course mostly IOI people. When arriving in Tashkent, the organisers even organised a dedicated passport control lane just for us, which eventually grew larger than the other lanes (luckly we were at the front). Afterwards we were greeted by some very interesting figures in traditional clothes and with giant heads, who invited us to try some traditional Uzbek bread. Our landing was scheduled for about 2:00 in the morning and at around 5:00 we arrived at the Surxondaryo Hotel in the Olympic Village. Since unlike in Europe, the time zone in Tashkent actually makes sense we were surprised to see sunlight at 5:00 already. But we swiftly went to sleep and unfortunately had to wake up soon after. Because we arrived so early our actual hotel was not ready yet when we arrived, but we now had to transfer to the Jizzax hotel a few meters away from our current hotel. The leaders had to go to a dormitory, because the organisers didn't book the hotels early enough and now two of them were occupied by the Asian Youth and Junior Weightlifting Championships. The hotel WIFIs were also very secure, as the password for the first one was simply 00000000, and for the second one the guest password was the same as the staff one. After a neglible amount of sleep we went to the registration, where surprisingly they listed Israel, Russia, Belarus, and Turkmenistan instead of IOI1-4. There we also received an enormous amount of gifts: Traditional clothes (for which the hat of the female version was way too small), two (2) backpacks, a bag, a way too big T-Shirt and shirt, a fan (Andrej got scammed, as will be common this week, and got a different one unable to stand), three (3) bottles (plus another one from our leaders which said "Turn Left, Turn Left"), five (5) armbands, one of which said "Never Gonna Give You Up", some writing utilities, an umbrella, numerous plushies, and probably a lot more I don't recall. Also our badges were incredibly fancy. Afterwards we played some Hanabi and The Crew. During Lunch and Dinner we also got some early access to the hearing loss of the opening and closing ceremony.
NOTICE
Due to extensive lobbying done by the Smiling Imp, some content, including the best part of this blog, the game, are currently unavailable. We are working on overturning this as soon as possible.Expected time:
10 August - Opening Ceremony (Andrej)
Once upon a time, there was a hotel room in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Inside that room, there was a shelf [1]. Accessorily, there also happened to be two sleeping Swiss IOI participants in that same room. On a beautiful Monday morning, they woke up, looking forward to the practice session and the opening ceremony [2].
While they may have been looking forward, they were certainly not looking up, and this is how came to be the fateful meeting with the aforementioned shelf [3]. That meeting was fairly painful, and should have discouraged them from trying again. One of the participants, however, was not that smart, and hit his head against it a second time, and a lot harder. Unsurprisingly that second encounter was a lot more painful.
So, time for the incredible plot twist. That lucky participant was in fact I, the author of this blog post. As I was quickly told by Jason, my roommate, the epic confrontation between my head and the shelf had left me a bleeding wound as a souvenir. What a great way to start IOI!
So we quickly went to get breakfast, and I told my guide about what happened. After telling this story some five more times to different people, someone called medical staff, who took 15 minutes to arrive. As it turns out, not many people in Uzbekistan speak English [4], the most common languages being Uzbek and Russian. As I do not speak any of these, I had a fun time trying to explain to the medical team that I am allergic to chlorhexidine, which happens to be a very common disinfectant for wounds. I somewhat managed with our guide translating. So I got my blood pressure and heart rate taken, got some mysterious disinfectant put on the wound, and finally I was given an injection that was supposed to prevent allergic reactions (I still have no clue what they understood of me trying to tell them I was allergic to chlorhexidine).
Anyway, after all that they decided they should take me to the hospital. An ambulance was called and arrived after some time, while the other participants left for the practice session. Now that ambulance was a pretty wild ride. It was giving very strong post-Sovietic vibes, with most of the medical equipment inside looking as if it was some 30 years old, and the seatbelts being broken. After driving for about 5 minutes, we stopped at a petrol station, and the driver went out. Now clearly they had to refill the fuel tank right? Nope. After 5 minutes the driver walked back to the ambulance, holding a 1.5L bottle of Fanta, and we kept on driving. That ride was also incredibly slow for an ambulance, as we were stuck in traffic for most of the time [5].
After driving for what felt like forever, we arrived at the Republican research center for emergency medicine N°16 (yes that was the name of the hospital). It looked about as trustworthy as the ambulance, if not less, and I had to retell the fable of the shelf and the SOI participant three more times to hospital staff [6]. Eventually I was taken to a very suspicious looking hospital room, got my bandage replaced, and some more disinfection applied (this time I knew what it was!), before they gave me another injection, labeled Анатоксин [7].
Well after that wonderful experience, we took a taxi back to the IOI venue. That taxi ride was about 30% faster than the ambulance… make of that what you will. I arrived at the practice contest 30 minutes before its end, but I still got to test that most stuff [11] worked, and I already knew the tasks from last year’s practice session (actually fairly cool tasks too). Once it was done we got lunch while again listening to last-minutes rehearsals, and after some waiting it was time for the ceremony to start.
And well, it was very interesting ceremony to say the least. We got all the classic stuff, so random musical performances, boring speeches from officials, and us throwing chocolate at everyone when Switzerland was called. Now for some of the more funny highlights:
If you want to make an IT company, come to Uzbekistan. Why? Because if you have an IT company in Uzbekistan, you pay no taxes.
- Uzbekistan minister of digital technologies
We are very grateful to Ubezkitan for hosting IOI 2026.
- IOI president
- tourist gives a speech
- Telegram NFTs as prizes for medals
- Orchestra performs The Incredibles’ soundtrack
After all that we had dinner, then came back to the hotel and had a good night’s rest before the first contest day.
| [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov’s_gun |
| [2] | which was extremely promising given the ridiculously loud music we kept hearing the day before as they rehearsed |
| [3] | i.e. they both hit their head against it |
| [4] | this would become a recurring trend at this year’s IOI |
| [5] | the drivers turned on the siren a few times, just for fun (it did nothing about the traffic of course) |
| [6] | who actually spoke some questionable English, which is better than none! |
| [7] | i.e. Anatoxin [8] [9] |
| [8] | I thought it was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoxin-a, “also known as Very Fast Death Factor (VFDF)” |
| [9] | actually it was most likely a tetanus vaccine [10] |
| [10] | my arm hurt for the next 3-4 days |
| [11] | thankfully my brain also seemed operational |
11 August - Contest Day 1 (Laetitia)
Of course today we had to wake up early for the contest but we decided to just sleep some more even after our guide woke us up. However, things went slightly different for Andrej since the Ambulance team determined that his head bandage had to replaced once a day and they found right in the early morning to be the most appropriate time to do so. Because we woke up later than scheduled we had eat breakfast very quickly, which once again consisted of oversalted potatoes. Afterwards we went to the buses, which acted as if they were Deutsche Bahn. Because of some difficulties half of us did not bring anything (including bags) to the contest site.As is customary, once arrived at the contest site, we had to wait quite long before being allowed into the contest room, where we had to wait for another 20 minutes. Because of the previously mentioned difficulties, I did not have any extra water beside the one bottle placed on the desk. Therefore I put up the sign to ask for extra water, but I was not very optimistic as they informed us during the practise session that they did not have any water. A guide came to my desk and confusingly stated that water was not allowed (?). They went to talk with another guide and a bit later another guide came anyway with a water bottle. When I tried to drink it, however, a committee (ITC? HTC? HSC? all I know is that the badge hat the same orange as the ITC ones) told me that drinking is only allowed after the contest started, which is a bit weird. Despite that, many other contestants were happily drinking their water without being interrupted. Anyways, a bit later the contest started.
The first task was an interactive task about a secret tree you needed to find.
Redacted by the Smiling Imp
The second task unfortunately was a normal task and thus was quite boring. It was about some monuments needing to be moved. The third task was once more an interactive task. It was apparently pretty easy, but also a bit 😈. Firstly I spent very long on some complicated algorithm when you could just do some stupidly simple stuff. Also Jason skill issued on this task.
Redacted by the Smiling Imp
During lunch we were once again able to enjoy hearing loss. In the afternoon we were able to go to the fun zone. There you could play games on gaming computers, paint plates and canvases, aswell as making pottery. But most importantly you could get a lot of free stuff which is always nice. You could get a flower plushie from Codemao, a Rubik's Cube and another plushie from Huawei, IOI team member trading cards and a plushie from Cognition, an assortments of "random" items from Uzum, which you could actually influence, an ice cube destressing ball from HRT (what a very coincidental name), and some other stuff. Fitting all of that into our suitcases would turn out to be quite the challenge. In the evening we played some The Crew and suffered from sleep deprevation.
NOTICE
We are sorry to inform you that this blog entry, too, has been subjected to extensive lobbying conducted by the Smiling Imp. Therefore some content is currently redacted. We are working on overturning this as soon as possible.Expected time:
12 August - Excursion Day 1 (Myriam)
Wednesday was the first excursion day. As usual, we woke up, ate breakfast (with probably oversalted potatoes), and then we arrived on time at the buses. The first excursion was the Magic Safari. But what’s a Magic Safari? Well, it’s just a zoo with a fancy name and weird animal statues at the entrance:
We also got carrots to give to the animal and could measure how social they were: at the opposite of the llamas, the giraffes didn’t let us pet them even after we bribed them! Also, for some animals, they were for some reasons fake sceneries representing a plane crash.
Anyway, after spending some time giving carrots to random animals, it was starting to get really hot, so we went to the only place with some shadows (except under participant’s umbrellas) of the zoo, and some of us ate ice cream.
We then went to the cinema, where we ate lunch sitting on stairs looking at film posters, the one being clearly communist being the leftmost one and the French one being the rightmost one. Then came the time to enter the actual movie theater. It was the biggest one I ever saw, but to be fair I don’t think there’s even one cinema in Switzerland big enough to have all IOI’s contestants, leaders, guests, guides and committee members at the same time. The movie we saw was the latest spiderman, and fortunately it was in English (with Russian subtitles) and no Russian with Uzbek subtitles! The movie was nice and I think most people appreciated it.
After the movie, we went back to CAEx for dinner, where there was way too loud music. (If you like reading about loud music, don’t forget to read the closing ceremony’s blogpost!) Then, Anna told us a very motivational speech, and her and Cheng went to translation, while we went back to the hotels for a good night of sleep.
13 August - Contest Day 2 (Myriam)
After a good (I guess depends on how much AC you use, but whatever) night of sleep, we were ready for the second contest day. The tasks were way more difficult on day 2 (apparently tiling from day 1 was supposed to balance it). But there was no standard task that day! Tasks 1 and 3 were interactive and task 2 was output only! There was only one batch of the whole contest! And the first task even had weak test cases that could have been avoided with subtask dependency! The second task also had a relatively easy solution for ~80 points, but actually you have an off by one when k is odd, so it’s only ~40 points and it’s really annoying to fix! So, to resume the situation, at least for me the contest felt really depressing and way too hard, but actually when we could see the scoreboard at the end of the contest it was fine. Jason and me got bronze and Laetitia and Andrej silver! It was the first time Switzerland won four medals!
After the contest, we ate lunch and when to the fun zone, where Laetitia and me spend most of our time painting a plate, and from our point of view the other just disappeared most of the time. Then we went to dinner and went back to the hotels, and there we went with Dutch, German, French, Austrian and Luxembourgish (I think) participants on an evening walk in the park because the temperature outside was finally tolerable. We were there for some time, we saw a big statue of the Uzbek bird that is on the IOI logo:
There were lights coming from the ground pointing at it so it was really visible and it was also changing color. We also met other teams and we saw a military (maybe police but it’s more fun to say it was military) patrol of a few dozen people walking around the park. After going back to the hotels, we went to sleep to be ready for the second excursion day.
14 August - Second Excursion (Jason)
After two long contest days, it was finally over. And since every one of us had won a medal, everyone was quite relaxed.
The first stop of the excursion was a museum built inside a mosque. The mosque’s dome was seriously impressive, but the waiting outside was considerably less enjoyable: standing in a queue under the Tashkent sun felt more like a form of punishment. Luckily, the AC inside the museum was strong enough to bring us back to life.
The first exhibition featured a huge mural showing scientists, mathematicians, politicians, and other important figures who had contributed to the history of Uzbekistan. The other galleries contained all kinds of Uzbek artifacts. As a country at the centre of the Silk Road, Uzbekistan seems to have absorbed influences from both East and West, which could be seen in everything from its architecture to its traditional clothing.
We then returned to the contest venue for lunch. As usual, all ten PCs in the fun zone were occupied. Not getting to play Counter-Strike with contestants from other teams during IOI remains my greatest regret. Instead, I played some chess with Cheng and members of the Philippine team before we left for the next activity: “hiking”.
At first, none of us understood why we were being made to climb a small dirt hill in 35 degrees, later discovering that the organizers had somehow built an enormous amusement park in the middle of the wilderness.
There were all kinds of activities like basketball, football, and even a mechanical bull where the goal was simply to stay on for as long as possible. I managed to be a cowboy for about ten seconds. There was also a fourteen-year-old girl playing Nirvana on stage, because apparently that was also part of the plan.
The main feature, of course, was the DJ, who got everyone extremely hyped and almost completely deaf. Eventually, we could no longer tolerate the roughly 120 dB of noise and escaped back onto the bus. Even from inside the bus, we could still see the lights from the DJ stage flashing far into the sky.
By the time we returned to the hotel, everyone was completely exhausted, so we went straight to sleep.
15 August - Closing Ceremony (Jason)
Today was originally supposed to be tech talk day. However, since we had somehow managed to spend the entire IOI without ever visiting the city centre, we decided to sleep a little longer and then head out, just to be informed that contestants were not allowed to go without a team leader, which sounds like a strangely familiar situation…
The Award Ceremony began in the afternoon with performances from several different bands, as well as some Uzbek-language rap. Uzbek songs tend to be very long and rhythmically quite simple, and dancing is almost always involved somehow. Have to admit that the IOI organizers invested a lot in the bands, sound system, and lighting. Unfortunately, that might be too much because Myriam’s ears started to protest and she had to wait outside until it was time to receive her medal.
The host announced that contestants would be called “in ascending order of score”, which in reality appeared to be generated by random numbers. This made it slightly challenging for us to pass the Swiss flag, but we eventually managed.
The final dinner was extremely good. After dinner, and to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the DJ returned. Since resistance was clearly pointless, we decided to join everyone else and dance.
After taking the group photos, we finally solved the chocolate problem: yes, we had at last managed to give away all the chocolate we had been distributing since the Opening Ceremony.
I travelled to the airport with everyone else, but since I’d stay in Uzbekistan for a few more days, I did not fly with the team. After inheriting Andrej’s SIM card, I just went back and slept. For some reason, that SIM card worked unbelievably well. It even maintained a connection for the entire train journey from Tashkent to Samarkand.
ps: apparently, the flight to Istanbul was delayed, which meant that the others missed their connecting flight to Zurich. School in Geneva starts on Monday, so… good luck… Meanwhile I suppose I will just have to continue my lonely holiday in Uzbekistan.
16 August - Departure (Andrej)
At last it was time to say farewell and take the bus to the airport. That airport was… an experience. We said goodbye to Jason who would stay a few more days in Uzbekistan, then went to wait in the queue for luggage check-in. And we waited. Then we waited. Then we met the Tunisian team who was waiting behind us, and talked with them while waiting. And still we were waiting. So we waited some more. And after 90 minutes or so we finally managed to check in.
What did we do after that? Of course we waited further, this time at the border control. And truly that whole process was worthy of Papers, Please: we got the exit stamp at the passport check, then another stamp on the boarding pass right after the passport check, and one last stamp when passing through security, with each border guard checking all the previous stamps.
Funnily enough the officers at the security check saw we were from IOI and started chatting with us about how the competition went, and looked at our medals. Once all that was done, we were finally able to relax, buy some water for the trip, and wait [12] at our gate. Well not quite our gate, as the door leading to D5 was locked. So we decided to wait next to gate D7.
Once it was boarding time, we tried to go and check if the door to D5 was now open. Well it was, except we were now locked inside gate D7, with arguably the most creative way to seal a door shut I have ever seen. Turns out, the crew was boarding the plane, and while that was happening they decided to lock everyone inside D7, probably for some mysterious security reason. Anna managed to speak in Russian with someone from the airport staff, and we got told they would unlock the door in 5 minutes (it was more like 15). So we waited [13] more.
Well not actually all of us were stuck inside D7, as Myriam had decided to take a walk at exactly the time when they locked the doors, so she found herself stuck on the other side, and even got to chat with the pilot.
How to lock a door
We eventually managed to board the plane after all these adventures in the Islam Karimov Internationbal Airport. So what do we do now? You guessed it, wait [14] more! The plane waited on the ground for some 90 minutes more, which might be relevant as we did not have that much time to change at Istanbul. Anyway, it eventually took off, and after a very short night (it was about 4 am) we landed in Istanbul. With 30 minutes to get to the gate.
So now was the time to stop waiting and run! We went as fast as we could, but Istanbul Airport is huge and we got to the gate 6 minutes late.
Here’s to more waiting!
So uhm I guess the silver [15] lining is that Istanbul-Zurich flights are decently frequent, but we still got to wait [16] 5 more hours. And we got a free food voucher, which might sound great until you realise it is only valid for fast food and even then only for selected meals. So well most of us got sandwiches from Subway, after waiting [17] there for 20 minutes as apparently “paying” customers have priority.
Finally, after all this waiting [18], we boarded the plane to Zurich and got there after a 3 hour long flight. And with that, IOI 2026 was over [19], and so is this blog.
See you again in Potsdam in 2027!
| [12] | you might start seeing a common theme here |
| [13] | yeah it keeps going |
| [14] | and it doesn’t stop going |
| [15] | no pun intended |
| [16] | yeah I know the joke is not that funny anymore |
| [17] | okay okay I promise I’ll stop soon |
| [18] | actually the last one |
| [19] | well if you happened to be from Geneva you had 4 more hours to get home |