Competitions and challenges

Listed here: very brief details of all known relevant programming competitions, quoting contact details and age groups. The backup URLs will contain all you really need to know!

Please add any others you either know about or have used with your students

• This resource (prev updated 2021) may also be useful.

• In October 2024, CAS Board member Dr. Peter Kemp and collegue Alex Hadwen-Bennett published a report: "Programming in Secondary Education - A Technical Report" which includes, page 22, a section on the most popular competitions entered by schools (and compares state vs private entry statistics).

All Phases

• Experience AI:  the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new AI-themed challenge in partnership with Google DeepMind. Young people aged up to 18 will learn how to make a classifier using machine learning that organises data types like audio, text, and images into different groupings that you specify. Once they have learned the basics, they will use their new skills to create their own project. No previous programming knowledge is needed.
• Coolest Projects: Coolest Projects Global is an online showcase where young people up to the age of 18 can share their ideas through technology. It's free to enter and accepts projects in English from anywhere in the world.
• The Bebras contest is an annual competition (the International Contest of Informatics and Computer Fluency) held in November in many (around 50) different countries world-wide. It originated in Lithuania. It consists of an online (language independent) test which focuses on computational thinking via problems, tasks, puzzles etc. Informatics in Lithuania is the same as Computer Science. Countries can choose to run the competition for a range of different age-groups from primary upwards. The tasks are set by an international committee which meets annually.  This competition has been run in the UK since 2012 and is now a regular fixture on the UK school timetable. Further details about the UK Challenge can be found here: bebras.uk

Primary

• Astro-Pi: Mission Zero: Mission Zero offers young people the chance to have their code run in space! Write a simple program to take a reading from the colour and luminosity sensor on an Astro Pi computer on board the International Space Station, and use it to set the background colour in a personalised image for the astronauts to see as they go about their daily tasks.  Entries for Mission Zero 2024/25 are open from 16 September 2024 to 24 March 2025.
• Wonder League Robotics: "Give your students ages 6-9 and 9-12 hands-on experience coding and problem-solving, while competing globally.  Through a series of story-based missions, teams develop problem-solving skills, a growth mindset, and tap into their creativity all while learning to code. This unique competition highlights the amazing role robotics and coding play in solving real-world problems, and prepares your child or student for the jobs of tomorrow. Also, all registered coaches receive exclusive access to a 30% off discount code to be used on robots and accessories at our online store!*"
• Grok Code Quest: Grok Code Quest is an annual friendly competition run over 5 weeks in November where thousands of secondary school students come together to learn to code. Grok Code Quest offers an introductory BBC micro:bit stream in Python, as well as Beginners and Intermediate streams in Python 3, and a Newbies stream in Blockly (visual drag and drop language) for younger students.

Secondary

• The Perse Coding Team Challenge is a new one hour team coding competition in which teams of four (max 2 year 10 as oldest) compete online, invigilated by a non-specialist teacher at their school. Prize money and the Braben cup is provided by David Braben, OBE FREng, co-founder of Raspberry Pi. It aims to help bridge the gap to the British Informatics Olympiad
• The Young Games Developer of the Year:  Every year BAFTA runs the Young Game Designers competition to inspire and support those who are passionate about games.  Entrants for the Game Concept Award must submit an original game idea created by themselves or with a team of up to two other people.
• CyberFirst Girls competition run by the UK National Cyber Security Centre. The CyberFirst Girls Competition is made up of two parts: the first is a set of online challenges covering four main cyber security topics. We want to offer girls a fun yet challenging gameplay experience. The puzzles can become progressively harder allowing girls to stretch their learning and gain further knowledge that could help them in their everyday lives.
• First Lego League is brilliant for encouraging team work and problem solving with a practical real world application (the scenarios always have a theme connected to the environment or something like that)
• Astro-Pi: Mission Space Lab: Mission Space Lab offers teams of young people the chance to run scientific experiments on board the International Space Station. Registration is open from 16 September 2024 to 24 February 2025.
• 3Dami is an annual summer school for aspiring 3D animators. To enter students must submit a successful portfolio of their work. They then form a mini-dev studio and create their own film in 8 days.
• The Oxford University Computing Challenge is an invitation event which aims to encourage students who have achieved a top 10% score in the UK Bebras Challenge to develop their skills further and produce programmed solutions to computational thinking problems.  The annual challenge is held online, in schools and supervised by teachers.
• The National Cipher challenge: Cipher Challenge is a cryptographic competition organised by Southampton University School of Maths. Competitors attempt to break cryptograms published on the competition website. It is organised into eight challenges, which are further subdivided into relatively simple cryptograms for beginers and later challenges that are harder to break.
• Alan Turing Cryptography Competition: The Alan Turing Cryptography Competition is aimed at secondary school children in the UK up to Year 11 (England and Wales), S4 (Scotland), Year 12 (Northern Ireland). You don't need to be a computer whizz or a mathematical genius — you just need to keep your wits about you and be good at solving problems!  This is a great competition for higher attainers. Most will be able to do the first challenge or two. The last one usually takes a lot of effort. There are Amazon voucher prizes for the first, second and third place for each challenge and a “spot” prize which is allocated to a randomly selected team that has completed the challenge.
• Wolfram Challenges:  Not a competition but a collection of 140+ computational thinking challenges for people of all ages, with topics including algorithms, geography, geometry and sequences. Here is Stephen Wolfram's CAS post describing it, and his accompanying blog post.
• FXP competition. An exciting computer game design and build competition for secondary school and college students (12 – 19 years old) in Cambridgeshire, developed by Rizing Games, Conscious Communications and Jagex.Games oriented, Year 9 upwards. First ran in the East of England in 2016, national in 2017.
• PA Consulting annual Raspberry Pi Competition. This year we are challenging students to use the Raspberry Pi to drive innovation in sport and leisure. From creating wearable performance-monitoring technology through to developing a crowd-control app for use in stadiums, your imagination really is the limit! We have three categories: Primary School Award: academic years 4-6, Secondary School Award: academic years 7-11, Sixth Form and College Award: academic years 12-13. If you would like to discover more about the competition please register your interest and we will be in touch soon to let you know how to sign up.
• Grok Code Quest: Grok Code Quest is an annual friendly competition run over 5 weeks in November where thousands of secondary school students come together to learn to code. Grok Code Quest offers an introductory BBC micro:bit stream in Python, as well as Beginners and Intermediate streams in Python 3, and a Newbies stream in Blockly (visual drag and drop language) for younger students.
• Grok Web.Comp Web.Comp is an annual friendly competition run over 5 weeks in February where thousands of secondary school students come together to learn web design. Web.Comp teaches HTML and CSS, along with web design skills needed to create amazing website at a Beginners and Intermediate level.
• Technovation challenge. Part of the The Technovation Girls program that includes a global competition element. It is not necessary to submit to the competition to use the curriculum, but most of our participants do. Girls competition for ages 10-23 - links students with mentors in industry.
• DressCode run regular competitions which are great for encouraging creativity and diversity. The competitions are designed to encourage more girls to get involved in Computing but they’re open to any student.
• First Robotics is like a more advanced version of Lego League to really stretch students’ design and coding skills
• CanSat lets students design, code and launch a drinks can sized satellite that gets blasts up to 1000ft up in a rocket before parachuting down, transmitting sensor data using a raspberry pi pico
• Girls Robotics Challenge: Space to Explore. The UK's first robotics competition for girls! In this exciting programme run by King's College London, teams of girls and non-binary students in Y8-Y11 compete to design, code and build robots, supported by King's' scientists and engineers. The challenge runs from November to April, with students both visiting the university in person and being supported at their school by visits from King’s students.

Sixth Form

• Advent Of Code: Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as a speed contest, interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, or to challenge each other.
• The (British) Informatics Olympiad is at the upper end of the spectrum, aimed at students "under 19". The first stage is a 3h exam at school, in which students solve problems with the aid of a computer and marked by a teacher. Based on the results, the top 15 competitors are invited to the BIO final in Cambridge during the Easter holidays.
• MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge is a free online competition for sixth form students in England and Wales, and high school juniors and seniors in the U.S. Working in small teams, students devise a solution to a real-world problem using mathematical modeling. £79,000 in scholarship prizes – a total of 37 monetary prizes – is up for grabs. Registration is open until February 21, 2025. The competition will take place Feb 28 to March 3, 2025. For more information and to register, visit http://m3challenge.siam.org
• PA Consulting annual Raspberry Pi Competition. This year we are challenging students to use the Raspberry Pi to drive innovation in sport and leisure. From creating wearable performance-monitoring technology through to developing a crowd-control app for use in stadiums, your imagination really is the limit! We have three categories: Primary School Award: academic years 4-6, Secondary School Award: academic years 7-11, Sixth Form and College Award: academic years 12-13. If you would like to discover more about the competition please register your interest and we will be in touch soon to let you know how to sign up.