Latvia at BOI 2026 (Espoo)

Since 1995, Latvia has participated in the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics (BOI). This year, BOI 2026 took place in the Helsinki metropolitan area—at Aalto University in Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland—from April 15 to April 19, with 10 regular participating countries and Ukraine attending.

Latvia was represented with great results by students from schools in Druva, Riga, and Mārupe:

• Edgars Andersons
• Kārlis Cīmurs
• Jelizaveta Deņisova
• Ričards Jansons
• Ilgvars Ročāns
• Tomass Ščadro

We are especially proud of Ričards, Edgars, and Jelizaveta, who won bronze medals 🏅. The full competition results are available online at boi2026.cses.fi/results/. We are also very proud of Kārlis, who received an honorable mention.

Beyond the contest, BOI also had a great social program. We played a Jet Lag–style hide and seek variant: one person hides, and the teams try to find them by asking questions (with a penalty for each question). To keep it fair, there was a whitelist of allowed question formats. We also visited laser tag, and contestant team defeated team leader team.

Finally, a thank you to sponsors who supported BOI 2026 - see the official list of supporters and Latvia’s state education development agency for providing airplane tickets and managing paperwork.

From left to right: Valters Kalniņš (DL), Tomass, Ričards, Kārlis, Edgars, Jelizaveta, Krišjānis (me, TL), Ilgvars.

Photo after award ceremony, which included a beautiful violin solo and a vocal student quartet.