Silver and bronze: Cyprus takes two medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics

Cyprus is coming home from the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2026 with two medals. The competition ran in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from 9 to 16 August 2026.

The medals

• Mariza Paspalli - Silver
• Alexander Minko - Bronze

The Cypriot delegation also included Alexis Tsagaris and Sofoklis Andronikou, and the Cyprus Computer Society singled out the whole team, along with the team leaders and mentors who prepared them.

Why this is a bigger deal than a medal count

IOI is the toughest algorithmic contest school students can enter: two competition days, five hours each, problems that most working developers would not finish. A silver here puts Mariza in roughly the top quarter of the strongest young programmers on the planet.

It is also the second international result for Cyprus this summer. In July, a Cypriot school team took four bronze medals at its debut International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence in Astana. Two different competitions, two different squads, one pipeline.

How you get there

The route runs through the Cyprus Olympiad in Informatics, organised every year by the Cyprus Computer Society with the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth, and supported by XM, Oracle Academy and ICDL. School students qualify through the national rounds, then train with mentors before the international final.

If you are at school in Cyprus and you write code, this is the ladder - and it is open. Details at coinformatics.org.

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