Four Balkan medals, an IOI silver and an EGOI gold: Cyprus' informatics olympiad has quietly had its best year — and the prep courses are free

Cyprus' competitive-programming pipeline does not get written about much, and it has just had its strongest year on record. The Cyprus Computer Society has confirmed the autumn's results, and they are worth reading as a set rather than as separate announcements.

Balkan Olympiad in Informatics Junior 2026 — Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 22–28 September. Alexis Tsagaris took silver; Konstantinos Nikolas Lioudakis took bronze. The team also included Andreas Charalambides and Christoforos Pittalis, led by Afroditi Hadjimarkou and Andreas Constantinou.

Balkan Olympiad in Informatics 2026 — Tirana, Albania, 14–20 September. Mariza Paspalli and Alexander Minko both took bronze. The team also included Alexis Tsagaris and Sofoklis Andronikou, led by Fr Antonios Georgiou and Aris Tziapouras.

And at the global level. The same programme produced one silver and one bronze at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) and a gold medal at the European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI 2026). For a country of this size, a gold at EGOI is the single most remarkable line in the list.

Here is the part nobody tells sixteen-year-olds. There is exactly one door into those teams: the Cyprus Olympiad in Informatics, run by the Cyprus Computer Society in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth, and open to secondary school pupils in both public and private schools. The preparation courses are free and they run in every district. Details and sign-up sit at coinformatics.org.

What the competition cycle looks like. In the most recent published cycle it ran as an online first round over the Christmas break (four tasks), an onsite second round in late March (four tasks, four hours), a separate EJOI selection contest in April, and a third round in May (four tasks, five hours) — with the national teams drawn from the top of that. The 2026–27 dates have not been published yet, so treat that as the shape rather than the calendar, and watch the Computer Society's announcements over the next few weeks.

Why this sits on a hackathon calendar. Because it is the island's only free, state-backed, year-round training route into competitive software — and because it feeds the same ecosystem everything else here covers. The Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge does the equivalent job for security and sent this year's squad to the European Cybersecurity Challenge in Bochum, where Cyprus finished 24th of 42, up four places. WRO Cyprus and Robotex Cyprus do it for robotics. If you are a parent or a teacher reading this, the informatics olympiad is the cheapest of the four to start: a laptop, a free district course, and a December contest.

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