Published on: 2026-10-05
Source: Novosibirsk State University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
TechArena 2026: NSU has extended the application deadline for the team programming competition until October 15
The Faculty of Information Technology of Novosibirsk State University and the Novosibirsk Sobolev Research Center invite students, graduates of 2025–2026, and first- and second-year postgraduate students to participate in the TechArena 2026 team programming competition. Applications are open until October 15.
TechArena is a competition based on real industrial challenges. To participate, you need to form a team of three people. Students, first- and second-year full-time graduate students, as well as graduates of 2025 and 2026 from universities in Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan are invited to participate.
After registration, participants will receive a login and password for the platform with tasks, as well as a link to the chat with the organizers. On September 12, an introductory online meeting was held, during which the organizers answered participants’ questions.
The main part of the competition will take place from October 16 to 22 in an online format on the NSUts platform with automatic solution testing. On November 6, the in-person part will be held at NSU, to which the top 30 teams will be invited — 10 for each track. Participants will have discussions with the problem authors and an award ceremony. The winners will be the top 3 teams for each track — their names will be announced during the ceremony.
Competitive tracks
CASE 01. Semantic Graph of Microservice Architecture
Participants are invited to build a unified semantic graph of a distributed system that combines static code analysis (AST, bytecode, annotations) and NLP methods (TF-IDF, CodeBERT). It is necessary to type vertices and edges to provide LLM agents with a comprehensive context for assessing the impact of API changes and cascading effects. Stack: Graph RAG, Static Analysis, NLP, LLM-agents.
CASE 02. Gas pipeline construction
The task is to write a control program for a pipe layer in interactive mode. It is necessary to respond to a stream of commands — pipe laying, deletion by PID, quality inspections — and determine where to dig the trench and where to place the pipe, in real time, without the right to move the laid pipe. The goal is to maximize the KPI: the ratio of the total length of pipes to the length of the trench. Stack: Interactive, Online Algorithm, Optimization. Additional points can be obtained by submitting the solution in the Cangjie language.
CASE 03. Service Area Optimization
Participants are required to divide numerous infrastructure facilities into service zones at service offices, minimizing transportation costs along the road network and ensuring a balance between the number of facilities and the weekly load. The zones must be contiguous, non-overlapping, and convex in shape. Stack: Partitioning, Metaheuristics, Geometry, Balancing.
Prizes
Winners will receive modern electronics from the competition partners, a real case for their portfolio, recommendations from experts, and priority invitations to open positions at the partner company.
The history of TechArena at NSU
For the first time, the TechArena competition at NSU was held in 2023 as part of the first nomination of the XXIV In-Person Round of the Open All-Siberian Olympiad named after I. V. Pottosin, together with the offline TechArena contest at MIPT. In 2024, the focus was on an artificial intelligence problem — the competition in Novosibirsk was held for the Siberian region in partnership with the IIS NSU. In 2026, NSU became a partner of the competition for the third time, and the Faculty of Information Technologies served as a co-organizer for the second time. The geography expanded: teams from the Far East, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan are invited to participate. The plans include three problems of different topics for participants to choose from.
In Russia, competitions have been held since 2022 at various venues: ITMO, SPbU, HSE, and others.
Detailed information and registration — at official website
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