Hello Codeforces!
I think many of us have felt this: you’re excited for a contest, but the timing ends up clashing with school, work, or just life. Some contests appear randomly, and it becomes hard to plan ahead.
That’s why I believe we need two things back on Codeforces:
Weekend contests – A lot of people (especially students and full-time workers) are only free on weekends Back when we had more contests on Saturdays/Sundays, participation was higher and the atmosphere felt much more “global” Many regions have weekdays packed with exams, jobs, or classes, so weekends are the sweet spot
A predictable schedule – Imagine if contests followed a fixed plan, for example:
Sundays = Educational Rounds
Fridays = Div. 2 rounds
Once a month on Saturday = Div. 1+2 combined (Just an example)
There might be some contests outside the main schedule, But we can have a global schedule too!
Of course the exact schedule can be debated, but the idea is simple: consistency If people know in advance what day usually hosts which type of contest, it’s easier to manage time and avoid missing contests
I think both of these changes would make Codeforces even more fun and accessible
Questions for you all :
Do you prefer contests on weekends or weekdays?
What would be your ideal weekly/monthly schedule?
Maybe if this blog gets enough attention, the Codeforces team will consider experimenting with this idea
Please share your ideas in the comments!
UPD:
Some people raised a good point in the comments — a strict contest schedule might clash with someone’s weekly commitments To address this, I thought of an adaptive schedule:
Every month, Codeforces could run a quick community vote on the contest timing.
It would be guaranteed that two consecutive months can’t have the same timing (the schedule must change).
This way, even if a schedule doesn’t work for someone in one month, it won’t repeat the next month. Plus, we’d still keep random-time contests and virtual contests, so nobody is locked out completely.
I think this makes the idea more flexible while still keeping the benefit of planning ahead.
What do you think about a voting system?
Exactly it would make practicing more fun
In my opinion, 2 contests a week is a sweetspot : one in the weekend and one on a weekday. Preferably, one Div.2 and one Educational round each week. And, twice a month, one Div. 3 / Div. 4 / Div. 1+2 can also be included in the week. I too think, having a fixed schedule will help in planning for contests better, like taking time out from college, work, school, etc.
Well at least one contest should be fixed like Atcoder does.
recently so many contests have been on weekdays so I can't participate because of classes :(
I disagree with having a strict contest schedule. If someone has a weekly commitment at contest time every week, it would be impossible for them to do rated contests. Perhaps having an alternating schedule could fix that (e.g. weekend contests alternate between Saturday and Sunday)
You’re right Having a strict, unchanging schedule might not work for everyone
But as I mentioned, the idea isn’t to remove random-time contests—those can still exist The goal is to add a global schedule on top of that, so people can plan ahead The chance that the schedule conflicts with someone’s weekly routine every single time is actually very low, which is why I think it’s worth testing
To make it even better, we could try an adaptive schedule:
Each month we have a community vote for the new contest timing.
It’s guaranteed that two consecutive months cannot have the same timing (the schedule must change).
This way, if a person can’t participate in one month’s schedule, they only miss a bit—but they still have virtual contests, random-time contests, and probably some weekend contests too. The chance that two months in a row are impossible for the same person is extremely small.
Updated the blog too!
I like the way it is, random and surprising.
There were 112 contests in 2024, only considering the first 8 types of contests from the filter bar. This also means that on average there were almost 2 contests per week. Hence it's fine.
The first 8 types are : Div1, Div2, Div3, Div4, Div(1+2), Global, CodeTon.
Yeah but it sucks that they are not on weekends.
The blog is not about the amount of contests
Ok LLM build a histogram showing the number of Codeforces contests of each division in a given year, grouped by the day of the week
And?
As I live in the western hemisphere, any contest not on the weekend = automatic skip for people like me, who work/study.
The current standard Codeforces round time is also not the best one, being 10:35 EST, as it is too early for people in PT. I remember the golden age, when the contests were almost always at 19:35 UTC +3, and I still do not know the reason this was changed.
Given that the div1 contests are already as rare as they are, I find it sad that you schedule > 40% of them during the work week.
Given that you are a grandmaster, it should be very easy for you to solve this problem.
What schedule of a Codeforces contest would minimize the total population on the globe that are unable to take the contest? For simplicity, assume that person A is unable to take a Codeforces contest if the time window intersects 3:00AM on their time zone.
What do you think?
dude looks 10 stop asking him for opinions
I think that the contest times should have some variance, instead of being constant.
Sensible answer, though not the optimal answer for the question that I asked you. The world we live in simply does not work that easily.
See, anyone might complain whenever a contest is at a time they cannot participate in. Those complaints happen absolutely everywhere in the globe. If you changed the contest time and caused slight inconvenience for Americans, a lot of them would complain. Same goes for any geographic region, literally anywhere.
For the service provider, it is almost always better to minimize their own hassle, and more complaints mean more hassle for them. This principle applies to any service. Youtube, TikTok, Netflix, Twitch, Spotify. There are almost infinitely many entries of this list, and I cannot enumerate all of them for you. More hassle means more manpower wasted, meaning more money and time wasted.
Now back to the original question. What schedule of a Codeforces contest would minimize the total population on the globe that are unable to take the contest? In other words, how will you minimize the total amount of complaints? Surely the optimal answer is "to schedule it so that the most inconvenient time happens in the region with the least total population". Variation of contest times won't optimize it further, there will always be more complaints if you schedule it on a different time.
Sure, I understand your cause, I truly empathize with you. But sometimes, things aren't as simple as you may think it is. Just hoping that next time you would be careful what you wish for.
That is true. So we (almost) always ask the authors to choose the contest time (and date btw) as they wish. Sadly most of them find the "standard" time the most convenient.
The graph is showing 1 Sunday div1 contest last year, but after a quick check round 980 and EPIC Institute of Technology Round August 2024 (Div. 1 + Div. 2) both fall on Sundays.
Right, But i think Div. 1 + Div. 2 rounds are usually counted as Div. 2.
Agreed, I don't have time for any contests except saturday and sunday
Unlike AtCoder or LeetCode which has regular contest schedule, Codeforces is not a corporation. This means that Codeforces doesn't have employees who design, test and contribute to contests regularly. Instead, the contests are completely contributed by the community.
Therefore, a regular contest schedule cannot be ensured as the contributors are volunteers in the first place.
In other words, a possible measure is to recommend coordinators to schedule more rounds in the weekend, but an impossible measure is to say like we must have 4 div 2 rounds and 1 div 1 round in this month.
There is a big drawback. If most of the contests will held on the fixed days of the weekend, some people will miss them always. For example AtCoder Beginner Contests held only on Saturdays, when I do not have a time. So now I am missing every ABC round.
Thats why schedule is adaptive
I made a post about this a while ago. It's even worse if you are M+, my last contest is more than 2 months ago (the same thing happened after Feb 2 contest this year, another 2 months+ gap).
the weekend rule sounds right, and obviously some would find it problematic with their weekend plans but i think most would agree that weekdays are busier for them than weekends so lets go with the majority
Even if someone cant participate there will be weekdays contest the idea is not about dont have weekdays contest