The UK & Ireland
Programming Contest

A part of the International Collegiate Programming Contest Series.

UKIEPC Spring Practice 2024

Date: 23rd March
See UKIEPC Spring Practice 2024

UKIEPC 2024

Date: 19th October
See UKIEPC 2024

About

What is the UKIEPC?

The UKIEPC is the UK & Ireland Subregional Contest for NWERC (the Northwestern Europe European Regional Contest), of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). UKIEPC is a practice competition, held annually (starting in 2013) to help universities pick teams to travel to NWERC. The contest does not automatically determine which teams may progress to NWERC, but universities may pitch their teams against other universities around UK and Ireland, to help decide who should be sent. NWERC typically accepts up to 2 teams from each university.

The event itself is organised in a distributed manner. It is physically hosted at several universities around the UK and Ireland. The same problemset is used at all sites. The scores are gathered electronically, and the results can be viewed against other local teams, and teams across the UK and Ireland.

The contest is suitable for programmers of almost all skill levels, from beginner to expert, as the problem set always has both very easy and very difficult problems. There are also separate score tables for the local sites, UK & Ireland level, and even against the entire Nordic contest (while we use their infrastructure). This means you can choose on which level you want to compare yourself.

All the UKIEPC locations belong to the Northwestern European region in the ICPC system. The Northwestern Europe Programming Contest (NWERC) is usually held in the middle of November.

The rules for the UKIEPC are the same as for the ICPC regional contests. In UKIEPC, you are allowed to bring any printed or handwritten material to the contest. No machine readable media or electronic equipment may be brought.

What is the ICPC?

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a world-wide contest for students and professionals, with local and regional events, and a world final. The contest is about programming skills, problem solving and teamwork. In short terms, teams of up to three students try to solve as many programming problems as possible from a given problem set, using only one computer. See example problems from our past contests or problems on Kattis to get the general idea. You can typically use C, C++, Python or Java to solve the problems, where additional languages are sometimes available.

The ICPC has grown to become very large. Thousands of teams from thousands universities world wide compete in the regional contests which lead up to the World Finals. Less than a hundred team get to go there, but many teams from UK and Ireland have been there the last years.

How do I Participate?

On the web-page for current contest there should be a list of sites hosting the contest. Choose the nearest university that you can get to and then simply register through the online registration system before the deadline.

If you want to participate but don't have a complete team of three please contact your local contest director so they can try to help you connect with other people without teams.

If your university is not on the list, or there is not a location near by, then you can encourage relevant members of staff to become a site host for the contest! Relevant staff vary, and may include student experience officers, or professors/lecturers that teach relevant classes (like algorithms and data structures). It is a great opportunity for inspiring students and showing that programming is fun. If no member of staff is available, then it is possible for PhD students and PostDocs to host a site. The barrier to being a host site is very low, with no requirement to take responsibility other than to be present on contest day in your lab.

Being a UKIEPC Host

If you want to hold a local contest at your university, please contact this years UKIEPC director (see the current contest page)

Being a host is very simple - all you need is

There is a host slack for staff, postdocs, and phd students that help to host sites.

Past Contests

UKIEPC 2022
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UKIEPC 2022 took place on the 29th October 2022, between 11:00-16:00pm. More than 350 students, in 124 Teams from 19 universities, at 16 sites, took part in UKIEPC 2022.

See UKIEPC 2022

UKIEPC 2021
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UKIEPC 2021 took place on the 30th October 2021, between 12:00-17:00pm. Around 400 students from 20 universities around the UK and Ireland, taking part individually, at 8 locations around the UK and online.

See UKIEPC 2021

UKIEPC 2020
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UKIEPC 2020 took place on the 12th December 2020, between 11:00-16:00pm. Around 250 students from 23 universities around the UK and Ireland, taking part individually, remotely from anywhere in the world.

See UKIEPC 2020

UKIEPC 2019
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UKIEPC 2019 took place on the 19th October 2019, between 11:00-16:00pm. Around 570 students from 23 universities, in 191 teams at 17 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2019

UKIEPC 2018
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UKIEPC 2018 took place on the 20th October 2018, between 11:00-16:00pm. Around 550 students from 26 universities, in 200 teams at 20 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2018

UKIEPC 2017
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UKIEPC 2017 took place on the 21st October 2017, between 11:00-16:00pm. Around 500 students from 23 universities, in 190 teams at 13 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2017

UKIEPC 2016
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UKIEPC 2016 took place on the 29th October 2016, between 11:00-16:00pm. Around 500 students from 26 universities, in 180 teams at 13 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2016

UKIEPC 2015
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UKIEPC 2015 took place on the 24th October 2015, between 10:00-15:00 BST. Around 400 students from 20 universities, in 150 teams at 12 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2015

UKIEPC 2014
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UKIEPC 2014 took place on the 4th October 2014, between 10:00-15:00pm. 67 teams from 16 universities took part in 8 locations across the UK and Ireland, thanks to support from NCPC.

See UKIEPC 2014

UKIEPC 2013

UKIEPC 2013 was the first UKIEPC, thanks to infrastructure support from the NCPC, which took place on the 5th October 2013, between 10:00-15:00pm. Around 50 teams from 14 Universities took part in 5 locations around the UK and Ireland.

See UKIEPC 2013

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