A New Round

There will be a new SOI round, starting this September.

Benjamin Schmid
News

This year, we will continue our transformation of the competition structure which we started last year. We will introduce a new round and rename some of the existing rounds.

The new round, which will be called ‘First Round’, will run from 2025-09-01 until 2025-09-26 and will be the new start into the SOI year. The exam takes 40 minutes and will be solved in school, with the goal being that the whole class participates. The questions in the exam will not require any programming knowledge, just logical thinking to figure out answers to algorithmic problems. In case you do not have the opportunity to participate at your school there will be an option to take part individually.

We rely on teachers to participate in the First Round with their classes. So, please let your computer science or maths teacher know about the new round at SOI and motivate them to provide the opportunity to their classes to take part at school. While we will also inform the teachers in the mailings we send out later this summer, having students talk to their teachers directly is much more effective.

We will provide more details on how to participate as a class or as an individual on our website shortly before the round starts.

The best participants from the First Round will progress to the Second Round, which will run from 2025-10-01 until 2025-11-30. This will be the same format as the Qualification Round last year, this is just a renaming. You will have two months to practically solve interesting algorithmic problems from home. As in the past, we will organize workshops in parallel to teach some important algorithms.

The Second Round serves as qualification for both the training camp in Sarnen from 2026-02-07 until 2026-02-14 and the Finals in March. From here on, the structure stays the same as last year, with the Team Selection in May concluding our national competition.

TL;DR There will be a new First Round in September which will be solved in school. Please let your teachers know and convince them to participate with the whole class.