Europe's First Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence
Europe now has its own olympiad in artificial intelligence!
Europe's First Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence in Romania
Europe now has its own olympiad in artificial intelligence. The first edition of the European Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (EUROAI) took place from 14 to 19 July 2026 at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, bringing together more than 90 secondary-school contestants from over 20 countries, including 18 European delegations alongside guest and remote delegations from further afield.
The competition was founded jointly by Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It was initially launched under the name Central European Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence, but was renamed ahead of its first edition after applications and accreditation requests arrived from delegations across the globe, far beyond the region the original name described. Organisers say this is a signal of how quickly AI has moved from an elective curiosity to a core subject in European secondary education.
EUROAI does not allow contestants to call large language models or assemble off-the-shelf solutions. Over two competition days, students had to design, train and optimise their own machine-learning models from scratch, working against previously unseen datasets and task statements. This year's tasks spanned model interpretability, optical character recognition, mathematical and physical modelling, computer vision, and the security of machine-learning systems through steganographic techniques. These are tasks with no standard solutions, testing analytical judgement and adaptability as much as technical knowledge.
Opening and programme
The opening ceremony was addressed by John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair in Artificial Intelligence and President of the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (IAIO); Sorin Costreie, Adviser to the President of Romania; Emil Boc, Mayor of Cluj-Napoca and many others.
Beyond the two competition days, the week included a cultural and social programme designed to put delegations in contact with one another: guided visits to Cluj-Napoca's historic centre, team-building activities, partner-run workshops, and an excursion to the Turda Salt Mine. The edition was delivered by a collaboration of universities and non-governmental organisations with a team of more than 40 volunteers, and backed by local and international sponsors listed at euroai-official.org/2026.
Governance
EUROAI is directed by three standing bodies elected by the annual General Assembly of member nations. The International Committee oversees the organisation and continuity of the olympiad: it identifies future host countries, monitors preparations, evaluates past editions, maintains the competition's public identity, and issues accreditations to participating countries and organisations. The International Scientific Committee adapts the competition format and safeguards academic quality, ensuring tasks are fair, rigorous and properly differentiated, proposing and beta-testing problems, and deciding on the syllabus and problem-design standards. The International Technical Committee is responsible for the infrastructure the competition runs on: the judging platform, the contestant environments and the technical conduct of the competition days.
Between them, the committees that served the 2026 edition drew on universities in five countries, on industry and clinical research, and on the leadership of three other international olympiads across three continents.
The International Committee for the first edition included Fredrik Niemelä, a member of the International Committee of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) and president of the International Cybersecurity Olympiad (ICO), providing a direct line to the two movements from which competitive informatics and cybersecurity education in Europe grew. Alongside him were Marek Adamczyk of the University of Wrocław, who chaired the International Scientific Committee; László Gulyás of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and Chris Luntraru, both members of the International Committee of the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (IAIO); Miruna Zavelca of the University of Bucharest and member of the International Scientific Committee at the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI); and Bogdan Miron of Babeș-Bolyai University, representing the host institution. Luntraru led the competition's technical platform through its first edition.
The Scientific Committee reached further still, mixing academic research, industry and the olympiad movement. Nurdaulet Akhanov, one of the founders of Kazakhstan's competitive programming federation, and Tan Nian Wei of the Malaysian Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence brought experience of building national AI olympiad programmes outside Europe, while Paulina Tomaszewska of the University of Warsaw and chair of the Polish Olympiad in AI also sits on the Scientific Committee of the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI). They worked alongside Tamás Takács of Eötvös Loránd University, Witold Drzewakowski of the University of Warsaw, Vasile Lup of Google Zurich, Lucia Pășcuți of Sector Labs and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and Carla Crivoi of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurovascular Disease. Every task at EUROAI 2026 was proposed, written and beta-tested inside this group before a contestant ever saw it.
The full composition of the 2026 committees, with mandates, is published at euroai-official.org/2026/committees. The committees that will carry the olympiad into the Serbian edition have already been elected by the General Assembly, and their composition is published at euroai-official.org/2027/committees.
Competition infrastructure
The competition ran on Nitro AI Judge, an open-source (AGPL) evaluation platform for AI olympiads built and maintained by the Nitro Association. The system gives each contestant an isolated, GPU-backed notebook environment for the duration of the competition and applies automated scoring to submitted model outputs. It has been in development since 2024 and is already used as official infrastructure by national AI olympiad stages in several countries, including Georgia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Syria. EUROAI 2026 was its first deployment at an international olympiad. The Nitro Association team was on site for both competition days, administering the technical stack and assisting with the wider organisation. On-site technical operations, including contestant machines, network and competition environments, were run by Susan Margine and Alex Kiraly.
Both competition days remain open on the platform now that the event has finished. Any student can attempt the EUROAI 2026 problems in the same software environment the contestants worked in (the same image, the same libraries, the same tasks and the same automated scoring), running on their own machine rather than on the competition's GPU nodes. Earlier national competitions hosted on the platform stay available on the same terms, so the archive grows with each edition.
In a field where few countries have an established training pipeline, that gives students without a national programme behind them a way to prepare at the level the olympiad sets.
Students reach those environments through Nitro CLI, a companion open-source tool that handles setup and distribution. It began as a side project by a student who competes on the platform, and was adopted by the organisers for EUROAI. Competition environments for both days remain available, and the full task set is published at euroai-official.org/2026/tasks.
Results
The official member ranking of the inaugural European Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence is headed by three different countries. Roman Mielamud of Ukraine took first place with 323 points out of a possible 600, thirty clear of the field; Lovmar Teo of Sweden placed second and Michał Masny of Poland third. Gold medals also went to second contestants from Ukraine and Sweden, and to a contestant from Georgia.
The official results, including the full medal table, individual rankings and per-task scores, are published in full at euroai-official.org/2026/results.
Next edition
The olympiad already has its next two hosts confirmed: Serbia will host EUROAI 2027, and the Czech Republic EUROAI 2028. Dates and host cities will be announced by the International Committee at euroai-official.org.
Media resources
- Official results: euroai-official.org/2026/results
- Tasks and datasets: euroai-official.org/2026/tasks
- Competition Day 1: judge.nitro-ai.org/competitions/ceoai/ceoai-2026-day-1
- Competition Day 2: judge.nitro-ai.org/competitions/ceoai/ceoai-2026-day-2
- Photographs (free to use with credit): Google Drive
Press contact
EUROAI International Committee: [email protected]
Nitro Association Press Team: [email protected]
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