Frequently asked questions

The UK Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (UKAIO) is the United Kingdom's official qualifying competition for the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (IAIO) — a global event bringing together talented young minds to compete in theoretical and practical artificial intelligence challenges.

You are eligible to participate if you:

• are 20 years old or younger as of 1 July of the competition year;
• are not a full-time university student in the competition year;
• are a UK citizen, a permanent resident, or a student (full-time or on a short-term course) in the UK.

Additional requirement for the UK National Delegation. To advance and represent the UK as part of the National Delegation, you must be a UK citizen, a permanent resident, or a full-time secondary school student studying in the UK.

The competition has two phases:

1. National Qualifiers — identify talented students with the potential to represent the UK.
2. UK Delegation Selection — choose the final team to compete in the IAIO Finals.

See the schedule for dates.

UKAIO follows the syllabus of the International AI Olympiad, covering areas such as data preparation, supervised and unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, search, logical reasoning, model evaluation, constraint satisfaction, kernel methods and recommender systems. Programming is in Python.

See the full topic list.

Following IAIO 2026 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Olympiad moves to Southeast Asia for the first time. The next edition takes place from 25 February to 2 March 2027 in Vietnam. Further details will be announced in due course — see IAIO 2027 and iaio-official.org.

Complete the registration form to take your first step. Once we review your application, we'll guide you through the next steps.

Yes. UKAIO welcomes group registrations from schools, colleges, and other educational institutions. Institutions can register multiple participants together and manage their participants' information through a dedicated registration link. See group registration.

Yes. Schools and educational institutions are encouraged to organise and supervise the examination sessions for their registered participants. Institutions should ensure that the examination is conducted fairly and in accordance with UKAIO's examination rules and instructions.

Detailed requirements for the individual examination environment will be published once the examination system has been finalised. Participants should check the official UKAIO website for the latest instructions before the examination.

Detailed requirements for group examination environments will be published once the examination system has been finalised. Participating institutions should ensure that their examination venues and equipment meet the requirements specified in the official UKAIO instructions.

Yes, under certain conditions. Students outside the UK may apply if they are UK citizens or permanent residents. Students who are not UK citizens or residents may also apply if they are studying in the UK, either full-time or on a short-term course.

• Review the competition syllabus.
• Practise Python programming and AI fundamentals.
• Explore online learning platforms such as Coursera, edX and Kaggle, and our free resources.
• Work on small AI projects to build problem-solving skills.

UKAIO is organised by Cambridge Dream in collaboration with the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad Committee. Cambridge Dream has been officially authorised by the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (IAIO) to host the UK national competition.