9ος Παγκύπριος Διαγωνισμός Δεξιοτήτων SkillsCyprus 2026

Three days, not one — and three of the twenty-two specialities are straight ICT. SkillsCyprus 2026, the ninth National Skills Competition, runs Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 October 2026 at the State Fair in Nicosia. It is free to walk into, and it is the qualifying event for the Cypriot national team heading to EuroSkills Düsseldorf 2027. This listing is a correction of the dates. The competition occupies the full 29–31 October window, not 29 October alone. Both the official competition site at skillscyprus.gov.cy and the OEB announcement give the three-day run. The programme has also grown. Earlier announcements put the competition at 18 specialities; the official site and OEB now both say 22 specialities, laid out across roughly 20 competition zones built to mimic real working conditions. Tasks are written with industry experts and company representatives rather than by the organisers alone. For anyone reading this site, the relevant three are:

• Web Development (Ανάπτυξη Εφαρμογών και Ιστότοπου)
• IT Software Solutions for Business
• IT Network Systems Administration

The rest of the floor is the usual broad SkillsCyprus spread — graphic design, mechanical design (CAD), plumbing and heating, cooking, restaurant service, entrepreneurship and more. If you have never been, that mix is the point: the ICT booths sit next to the welding bays, and the comparison is unusually instructive. Format. These are individual competitions, not team builds — one competitor per speciality, scored against a published task over the three days. Eligibility is capped at 24 years old (born after 31/12/2001). The competition is organised biennially by the Cyprus Productivity Centre (KEPA) under the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance, under the auspices of President Nikos Christodoulides. One caveat on the times above. The organisers publish the dates but not a precise daily schedule; the 09:00–17:00 bracket in this listing marks the days, not the hours. Check skillscyprus.gov.cy for the daily timetable and for the declaration-of-participation deadlines, which are posted there rather than in the press announcements. Why it is on this list. It is not a hackathon — nobody ships a prototype over a weekend here. It is on the list because Web Development and IT Software Solutions are national-level competitive events with a European final attached, and because the EuroSkills 2027 team selected in Nicosia at the end of this month is the closest thing Cyprus has to a public ranking of its young technical talent.

Event website