Rules of the 2026 Bolivian Programming Championship

Before competing in any phase of the national contest, the coach and all team members must be fully registered in the ICPC Registration System. A national contest is understood to be one that allows teams to qualify for a regional contest. Registration cannot be done retroactively, and any incomplete registration, or any circumvention leading to incomplete or false data, is grounds for immediate disqualification.

The ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest is an extracurricular competitive programming sport for the world's universities. ICPC contests give talented students opportunities to interact, and to demonstrate and improve their teamwork, their programming and their problem-solving skills.

The national contest in Bolivia is a two-phase event designed to select the teams that will represent the country at the Regional.

Both national phases are held in person and simultaneously, and they run at the 14 national sites with the same problem set. The Bolivian Programming Championship – Phase 1 begins the process, and Phase 2, together with Phase 1, determines the final qualifying teams through a combined ranking.

In Phase 1 the language of the contest will be English, and all problem statements will be in English, in order to align the experience with the standards of the Regional and of the World Finals. In Phase 2 the language of the contest will be Spanish, and all problem statements will be in Spanish. Where an English term may have multiple interpretations, these must be defined to ensure that all contestants are clear about its meaning.

All team members must be enrolled at the same degree-granting higher education institution, hereinafter referred to as the "team institution". A member of the team institution, typically a faculty member, must be designated and registered as the "team coach". The coach must certify the eligibility of the contestants and be the official point of contact with the team before and during contest activities. A team may have only one registered coach, and that coach may not also be a contestant.

The coach must fully register the team in the ICPC Registration System within the deadline set by the rules, before the contest begins. A team is not eligible to compete until the National Championship Director has accepted it in the web registration system. Teams that fail to meet any of these requirements will be declared ineligible to compete. Each team must keep the same name registered in the ICPC Registration System throughout both phases; changing the team name between Phase 1 and Phase 2 is not permitted.

Only registered reserves may be substituted for contestants. Such substitutions must be duly communicated to the Site Director and to the National Championship Director before the contest begins, and they may be made in Phase 1 as well as in Phase 2. As regards their playing roles (starter or reserve), each student may be registered in only one role and on only one team; therefore, the same student may not appear as a reserve (substitute) on one team and as a starter on another. This restriction does not apply to the coach, who may be in charge of more than one team and may even be a student, provided that they do not act as a contestant (starter or reserve) on any team. Every team must be made up of three contestants, who must satisfy all eligibility requirements; competing with teams of fewer than three members is not permitted. For the more complex cases, the ICPC eligibility decision tree may be used.

In cases of force majeure in which a student or a team cannot appear complete with all three members, the coach must coordinate in good time with the National Contest Director, who will authorize or determine how to proceed in each case. No team may compete incomplete without this express authorization.

An eligible student must be willing and able to compete at the ICPC Regional and, potentially, at the World Finals. As regards academic load, the student must be enrolled in a degree program at the team institution. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that whoever competes is a regular student of the team institution. As regards participation limits, a student may compete only on teams from one and the same institution during a single contest year. In addition, under the World Finals rule, a student who has already competed in two ICPC World Finals is not eligible to compete in the qualifying contests. Likewise, under the Regionals rule, a student who has already competed in regional qualifying contests during five distinct contest years is also not eligible to compete.

As regards the eligibility period, a student is eligible who meets the basic requirements and began post-secondary studies in 2022 or later, or was born in 2003 or later. For the more complex cases, the ICPC eligibility decision tree applies.

In order to increase participation in the national phases, these ranges for year of birth and for the start of post-secondary studies may be extended on an exceptional basis, subject to a request and the approval of the National Championship Director. This flexibility applies only to participation in the national phases and does not alter the official ICPC eligibility requirements for the Regional or for the World Finals.

See the official rules and the registration system at icpc.global.

This section applies to both Phase 1 and Phase 2. All sites compete in person and simultaneously with the same problem set. System support staff may advise contestants on system-related problems, such as explaining error messages from the system itself, but not on the logic of the problems.

When a contestant detects an ambiguity or an error in a problem statement, they may submit a clarification request; if the judges agree, a clarification will be issued to all contestants. During the contest, contestants must not talk to anyone except the members of their own team and the designated staff. A team may be disqualified for any activity that jeopardizes the contest, such as unplugging cables, modifying materials without authorization, or behaving in a way that distracts other teams.

During the contest, two cut-offs apply to the notification of results, both intended to keep the final result secret. At the first cut-off, typically during the last hour of the contest, public notification of submissions is suspended: the other teams stop seeing each team's results on the scoreboard, although internally each team continues to know its own verdict. When this cut-off occurs, a general announcement will be made during the contest. At the second cut-off, typically during the last fifteen minutes, both public and private notification are suspended, so that not even the team itself knows the verdict of its submissions, thereby keeping each team's final result secret.

Although the contest is scheduled for a set duration, typically five hours, the National Championship Director has the authority to alter that duration in the face of unforeseen difficulties. Should the duration be changed, every effort will be made to notify contestants promptly and uniformly at all sites.

A problem is considered solved when it is accepted by the judges, who are solely responsible for accepting or rejecting submissions (runs). In consultation with the judges, the National Championship Director determines the winners of the contest. Both the National Championship Director and the judges are empowered to adjust or resolve unforeseen events and conditions, and their decisions are final.

Teams are ranked by the greatest number of problems solved. For the purposes of awards or of determining which teams qualify for the Regional, teams that solve the same number of problems are ordered by the least total time and, if necessary, by the earliest submission time of their last accepted run. Total time is understood as the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the start of the contest to the first accepted submission, plus twenty minutes of penalty for each previous rejected submission for that problem, excluding compilation errors. No time is counted for problems that are not solved.

The official judging system for both phases will be BOCA. Each team will use a single computer, and all workstations will run the same contest distribution (official OS), identical at every site, in order to guarantee equal conditions. The Site Director is responsible for ensuring that all teams have reasonably equivalent computing resources. The permitted languages will be only C, C++, Java, Kotlin and Python3 — the same ones as at the Regional and the World Finals — and BOCA's standard responses will be used for the verdicts.

As regards materials, contestants may bring printed material to use during the contest; the amount allowed is at the discretion of the Site Director. Other items, such as food or drink, are not guaranteed: each Site Director decides at their sole discretion whether to allow them and under what conditions.

The goal is to qualify approximately 90 teams for the Regional contest, which will be held on 7 November 2026.

Qualification is built up cumulatively across the two phases and a final combined ranking. The fact that a team has already qualified under one criterion does not prevent other teams from the same institution from qualifying under the criteria that follow. Participation in both phases is mandatory: a team that has already qualified in Phase 1 must nevertheless compete in Phase 2 in order to keep its slot, and its performance in both phases feeds into the combined ranking.

Criterion 1 — Phase 1, best team from each site. In Phase 1, the best-performing team at each of the 14 national sites qualifies.

Criterion 2 — Phase 2, best team from each institution and best women's team from each site. In Phase 2, each institution's highest-placed team that has not already qualified under the Phase 1 site criterion qualifies; and, in addition, the best-performing team composed exclusively of women at each site qualifies, even if its institution already has teams qualified under the previous criteria. Because the criteria are cumulative, one and the same institution may obtain more than one slot.

Criterion 3 — Remaining slots by combined ranking of both phases. Once the slots from the previous criteria have been assigned, the remaining slots — up to the total of approximately 90 teams qualified for the Regional — are assigned according to a combined ranking: for each team, the score (problems solved) and the time penalty from both scoreboards, that of Phase 1 and that of Phase 2, are added together, and the qualification order results from that sum.

When one and the same team meets more than one criterion at once, it occupies only one slot, assigned by the criterion of highest priority (Phase 1 site > Phase 2 institution > Phase 2 women's > combined ranking); the slot corresponding to the lower-priority criteria then passes to the next team in line under that criterion.

As a general rule, no institution may exceed five teams qualified for the Regional. However, an institution may qualify up to a maximum of seven teams, only if the additional teams (beyond the five) earned their slot under the "best site team" (Phase 1) and "best women's site team" (Phase 2) criteria. In the event that a team withdraws, or of technical ties that exceed the capacity of the regional site, the final decision on the qualifying teams rests with the National Contest Director.

A team advancing to the next stage must be made up of the same three members with whom it qualified. If a member cannot, does not wish to, or is not in a position to continue competing, the coach must notify the National Championship Directorate in good time, which will decide how to proceed in each case.

During the contest, both contestants and coaches may bring complaints about irregularities or misconduct to the staff at their site, so that the appropriate measures can be taken as soon as possible.

Once the contest has ended, only coaches may file appeals, which must be addressed to the National Championship Director, who is responsible for answering them. There will be a deadline of one business day after the contest to file appeals; once that deadline has passed, no further appeals will be accepted.