Call for tasks

The IOAI International Scientific Committee (ISC) invites AI researchers worldwide to contribute to the design of competition tasks for IOAI 2026.

The IOAI is the premier annual AI competition for high school students, focusing on topics including but not limited to machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing.

The competition consists of three stages

At-Home Round: Students work on three tasks over one month at home. This round is educational and does not affect the final results.
Contest 1: Continuation of the at-home tasks.
Contest 2: Features novel tasks, unrelated to the at-home stage.

Contest 1 and Contest 2 are individual contests, which will take place during IOAI 2026 in Abu Dhabi, UAE (August 2–8, 2026).

Task requirements

The proposed tasks must:

Be aligned with the IOAI Syllabus.
Be original, unseen by IOAI 2026 contestants, and not reused from other competitions.
Be tailored to the capabilities of top high school students representing national teams, striking a balance between theoretical understanding and practical application.

You can find IOAI 2024 and 2025 tasks here.

This year we invite contributions in two tracks: complete task and task idea, where the former constitutes a fully developed task, while the former constitutes a partially developed or undeveloped task idea.

Complete task

Submissions for this track should follow the task template and include a full task statement and code for data loading, baseline solution and evaluation function.

Authors of complete tasks selected by the ISC for use in IOAI 2026 will receive recognition at IOAI 2026 and will be invited to IOAI 2026 as Jury members.

Task idea

Submissions for this track can follow the task template, or can be submitted in free text form. They do not need to include a full task statement or code, and can instead be a pointer to an interesting dataset, for example, with some suggestions for possible task definitions around it.

Authors of task ideas selected by the ISC for use in IOAI 2026 will receive recognition at IOAI 2026.

Submission process

Complete tasks and task ideas should be submitted through this Google form. If the form is not accessible in your region, please fill out this PDF form and email it to tasks@ioai-official.org.

Task selection criteria

Hammer resistance

Good tasks are not easily solved with off-the-shelf, general-purpose methods (hammers) or brute force, but instead require problem-specific adaptations and creative thinking.

Multiple insights and partial solutions

Good tasks require multiple insights for a complete solution, and have scope for progressively rewarding partial solutions.

Educational value

Good tasks reward rigorous understanding, teach useful skills, and inspire students to learn more.

Fast iteration cycles

Good tasks do not require lengthy training or processing steps, so more time can be spent on problem-solving instead.

Suitable data

Good tasks rely on data of adequate size, quality and alignment with the task (unless the task is explicitly about tackling issues with data properties).

Originality

Good tasks are inventive, focus on atypical applications, go beyond standard problem settings.

What happens next...

The Host Scientific Committee (HSC) and ISC will carefully review all submitted tasks and select six main tasks (three for Contest 1 and three for Contest 2), along with three backup tasks. At-home tasks will be derived from Contest 1 tasks.

Once the selection process is complete, all authors will be promptly notified (no later than March 15, 2026) whether their task is among the nine chosen or not. Unselected tasks may be immediately used or submitted to other competitions.

All nine selected tasks must remain confidential until the conclusion of IOAI 2026.

The ISC will further refine and develop selected tasks to ensure the quality of test data, solutions (both optimal and sub-optimal), and all grading materials. To support this process, the ISC may invite the task author to collaborate. Please note that while submitted tasks may inspire or inform ISC-led developments, not all proposals will be adopted in their original form.

Authors of complete task proposals will receive an invitation to attend IOAI 2026 in Abu Dhabi, UAE (travel expenses to be covered by the authors; accommodation provided by IOAI).

The names and affiliations of the authors of the final set of six tasks that are used for Contest 1 and 2 will be formally recognized during the General Assembly meeting of IOAI and showcased on the official website, IOAI-official.org.

After IOAI 2026, all at-home tasks, Contest 1 and Contest 2 tasks, along with training and test data, official solutions, and other grading materials, will be published on the IOAI platform under the Creative Commons BY-SA license.

Creative Commons BY-SA

The three unused tasks from the nine selected will be returned to their authors immediately after IOAI 2026, allowing authors to resubmit them for the next IOAI (provided confidentiality is maintained) or use them in other competitions.

For any questions or clarifications regarding the Call for Tasks, please contact the ISC at task@ioai-official.org.