The International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) is an annual International Science Olympiad in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) for secondary education students under the age of 20. The first IOAI was held in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2024. The competition includes an Individual Contest covering areas such as machine learning, NLP and computer vision, as well as separate Team Challenge. Each country or territory may send up to two teams, each consisting of up to four students supported by one leader. Participants are selected through a multi-stage National Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (NOAI) and/or a Regional Olympiad such as the NAOAI or APOAI. Participants at the IOAI compete on an individual basis. The Olympiad has expanded substantially since its first edition. Nearly 200 students participated in the inaugural competition in 2024, followed by more than 300 participants in Beijing in 2025. The third edition, held in Astana, Kazakhstan, from 2 to 8 August 2026, brought together 466 contestants representing 108 countries and territories and was described as the largest edition of the Olympiad to date. The fourth edition is scheduled to be held in Singapore in 2027.
History
2024 - Burgas The inaugural IOAI was held in Burgas, Bulgaria, from 9 to 15 August 2024. Nearly 200 students from dozens of countries participated in the first edition. The event established the Olympiad as an international competition focused specifically on artificial intelligence for secondary-school students. The event featured nearly 200 students from 32 countries and territories from 6 continents, organized into 41 teams. In the Team Challenge, the students worked in the space of AI and art, creating a single cover and video for the remix of the song "Love" by Bulgarian singer Maria Ilieva.
2025 - Beijing The second IOAI was held in Beijing, China, in August 2025. The competition expanded substantially from its inaugural edition, with more than 300 students representing over 60 countries and territories.
2026 - Astana The third IOAI was held in Astana, Kazakhstan, from 2 to 8 August 2026. At the opening, media reports described more than 500 students from 106 countries as attending the event. Final participation figures listed 466 contestants representing 108 countries and territories. The 2026 competition was the largest edition in the Olympiad's three-year history. The Olympiad was held under the patronage of UNESCO. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev attended the opening ceremony, where he spoke about artificial intelligence and Kazakhstan's digital-development strategy. The competition included two individual contest rounds covering areas such as machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing, as well as a separate Team Challenge. Artem Gorokhov of Russia placed first in the individual competition, followed by Dauzhan Beketov of Kazakhstan and Shao Zixi of China. Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian country to host the IOAI.
2027 – Singapore Singapore is scheduled to host the fourth IOAI in 2027. Singapore's Ministry of Education announced in 2025 that the country had been selected as host of the fourth edition. The 2027 Olympiad is expected to be jointly hosted by Nanyang Technological University and AI Singapore.
Editions
Competition structure The IOAI consists of three contests: the Individual Contest, the Team Challenge, and the GAITE contest. Medals are awarded based solely on the Individual Contest.
Individual Contest The Individual Contest is the main competition of the IOAI in which contestants compete individually on separate computers and are not permitted to communicate during the contest. Medals are awarded solely on the basis of the total score from the two-day Individual Contest. The Individual Contest consists of two on-site contest days (six hours per day), preceded by an at-home practice round and an on-site practice session. In IOAI 2025, three at-home problems were released for preparation approximately one month before the on-site contest. Results from this at-home round do not affect final results. The first on-site contest day (Individual Contest 1) comprises three tasks as extensions and continuations of the at-home tasks, while the second day (Individual Contest 2) comprises two or three tasks which are novel and different from the at-home tasks. The Individual Contest tasks span various AI domains such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. The IOAI 2025 contest rules describe tasks as requiring typical machine-learning workflows, including writing code, fitting models on training data, and running inference on test data, using identical local machines and GPU resources (minimum 24 GB RAM). Tasks, datasets, and submissions are handled through a contest platform (Bohrium), including a web-based Jupyter notebook environment for GPU access. Internet access is restricted to a whitelist of documentation sites and an integrated compact large language model accessible within the platform. The use of external APIs is prohibited unless a task explicitly allows them. In IOAI 2025, each contest task was scored up to 100 points and could include multiple subtasks. Scores are normalized using a baseline solution and a maximum score derived from either a Scientific Committee solution or the best contestant submission. Contestants can view only their own scores during the contest; a live scoreboard may be available publicly outside the contest hall but is not permitted to be viewed by contestants during the contest. For non-English-speaking teams, the IOAI holds a translation session beginning three hours before each contest day, during which team leaders review and may amend machine-translated task statements. Translations must match the English original and are published after the contest. During these sessions, quarantine rules prohibit contestants and team leaders from using phones, laptops, or other communication devices.
Team Challenge The Team Challenge is a collaborative component of the IOAI in which contestants compete as teams rather than individually. Its results do not affect the distribution of individual medals, and the format varies between editions. In 2024, teams used AI image- and video-generation tools to produce a visual interpretation of a music track. In 2025, the challenge involved programming robots to perform assigned tasks.
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