Happy New Year to everyone who's already stepped into 2024, and to those of us still hanging out in 2023! I usually like to spend a bit of time looking back at the year that's been. So, let's dive into this little trip down memory lane together and see what 2023 had in store for us!

• On January 19th, the Universal Cup was launched as an alternative to the OpenCup, primarily to facilitate systematic training for teams with a focus on preparing for the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). In its inaugural season, the Universal Cup attracted participation from 750 teams, representing over 300 organizations worldwide, which participated in 22 stages.
• From February 18th to 26th, the first edition of the Osijek Competitive Programming Camp took place. A total of 74 teams participated, with 13 teams attending the event in person in Osijek, Croatia. The second edition of the camp occurred in September.
• Also in February, Google announced the discontinuation of its Coding Competitions (Code Jam, Kick Start, and Hash Code) after two decades. The final, farewell rounds were conducted on April 15th.
• Around the same period, it was revealed that the Topcoder Open 2023 would be the final event of its series, initially planned to be held virtually. However, this virtual event was later canceled entirely.
• The 3rd European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics was held from July 15th to 21st in Lund, Sweden. The event saw participation from approximately 50 delegations, with prvocislo from Slovakia emerging as the winner.
• The International Olympiad in Informatics 2023 took place from August 28th to September 4th in Szeged, Hungary. The competition was narrowly won by Rebelz from China, with a one-point margin over fellow Chinese competitor cnnfls_csy. Additionally, it was announced that IOI 2026 would be hosted in Uzbekistan.
• A week later, the European Junior Olympiad in Informatics was held in Kutaisi, Georgia, from September 8th to 14th, marking the 7th edition and the first on-site event post-pandemic. The winner was andreystefanov from Bulgaria.
• On September 8th and 9th, the AtCoder World Finals were conducted in Tokyo, Japan. This event marked the first significant international open on-site competition post-pandemic, featuring top competitors from AtCoder Race Rankings between 2019 and 2022. jiangly secured victory, earning a prize of ¥500,000.
• On October 27th, the ICPC World Finals organizers announced the postponement of the 2022-2023 World Finals, initially scheduled for November 12-17 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to late Q1 or early Q2 of 2024, with exact dates yet to be confirmed.
• The Yandex Cup World Finals took place on December 2nd in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The algorithmic competition was won by ksun48 of Canada, who received a grand prize of ₽500,000.
• Finally, on December 9th, the final round of Meta Hacker Cup (formerly Facebook Hacker Cup) was held as an online event. The winner, tourist, achieved a perfect score of 100 points, claiming a $20,000 prize.

I skipped some of the smaller events, for instance APIO or ICPC regionals, as I tried to keep only the biggest event for each audience. Please let me know in the comments if I forgot about something else.

Thanks for reading and being a part of this community!