Hi all!
It has been quite a while since my last post about the Universal Cup, so here is proof that we are still alive and kicking :) We are excited to announce that The 4th Universal Cup Semifinals will take place on October 11th, 2026!
As in previous seasons, the Semifinals will be held online, and top-performing teams will have the opportunity to advance to The 4th Universal Cup Finals, which we hope to hold in 2027.
Starting this season, we are introducing the new contest format: the Semifinals will be 6-hour contests. The idea of extending the contest duration was first discussed before The 3rd Universal Cup Finals, and we would like to use this opportunity to see how well a longer team contest format works for our competition. Based on how the Semifinals go, we will decide whether to adopt a similar format for The 4th Universal Cup Finals.
The draft of the detailed rules can be found here. But if you do not want to go through the full document, here is the TL;DR:
- The contest will be a 6-hour team programming contest with approximately 10–15 problems.
- The contest will start at 10:00 UTC on October 11th, 2026.
- As always, there will be no partial scoring, and the scoreboard will be live.
- The scoreboard will be frozen 4.5 hours after the start of the contest.
- Recordings are required for all teams wishing to qualify for the Finals. We require screen recordings of every workstation used by the team, as well as video recordings of all team members during the contest. These recordings will be used solely to validate contest performance and will not be published or shared with anyone outside the Universal Cup.
- All Universal Cup Contest Rules, including the rules regarding the fair use of AI models, continue to apply.
We look forward to seeing you in the Semifinals!
(And stay tuned for our next blog post about Season 5 soooooon)