The International Collegiate Programming Contest is an annual global competitive programming competition. ICPC contests are team competitions, and normally, each team consists of three students. Teams are required to solve 10~14 algorithmic problems by programming, in 5 hours using one computer, and they will be ranked by the problem they solved successfully ('Accept'), and by their penalty when there is a tie.

Every year, regional contests will be held in many places in the world. In a regional contest, you will meet other participants from nearby regions and compete with them for a medal. The teams in different regional contests are ranked respectively. Normally, each student can participate in at most two regional contests every year, however, in some specific contests like China Finals and East Continent Finals, under EC bonus regulations, some students, in this case, can participate in up to three contests.

World Final is held annually. Teams are required to be ranked high in regional contests to be qualified in the World Final, and you will meet the top-level participants from everywhere in the world. Participation and winning a medal in the World Final is always the ultimate goal for participants of the programming contest.

You can go to the Achievement Page to see our programming teams' performance in ICPC contests for the past few years.

Normally, a regional contest will be held on a weekend between October and December, and the corresponding world final will be held in a specific week between April to June.

According to the regulation, the universities in Hong Kong are classified into Asia East Continent Region. So normally we will participate in the regional contests held in Mainland China and HKSAR.

In 2021, we participated in the Shanghai Regional remotely.

In 2020, we participated in the Shanghai Regional, Nanjing Regional and Jinan Regional remotely.

In 2019, we participated in the regional contests held in Shenyang, Shanghai, Shenzhen(Hong Kong Regional).

You can view the schedule of upcoming regional contests here.

You can view the eligibility requirements here. Following are some selected highlights for participating the regional contests in 2024.

• A student must be enrolled in a degree program at the team’s institution with at least a half-time load.
• A student who has competed in two ICPC World Finals is NOT eligible to compete.
• A student who has competed in qualifying regional contests during five different contest years is NOT eligible to compete.
• A student who meets the Basic Requirements and FIRST began post-secondary studies in 2020 or later is eligible to compete.
  A student who meets the Basic Requirements and was born in 2001 or later is eligible to compete.

ICPC contests are team competition for students representing institutions of higher education. In HKU, for participation, you have to join the HKU Programming Contest team.

Normally, we will conduct a selection contest in September to recruit students for participating in regional contests held between October and December. For the information of the selection contest, you can refer to the homepage of our website.