Hello Codeforces!
DragonByte 2026 is over.
From September 18–20, Bratislava hosted the Wincent DragonByte Finals 2026. Competitors faced a 3.5-hour contest with challenging problems. No internet, just pure skill, logic, and creativity.
Our goal was simple: make DragonByte genuinely hard, even for very strong competitive programmers. We think we managed that.
During the finals, misof, who led the team behind the problems, looked at the preliminary standings and said:
“The TOP 3 is OK, but I expected them to have +100 more points on average. The rest is suffering.”
That was a pretty accurate summary of the day.
The podium
Was it hard enough? Apparently, yes. After the contest, Petr told us:
“The challenge was much harder than I expected.”
We also asked Errichto what he thought:
“A few years back, for us competitive programmers there was a competition called Google Code Jam. For us, it was ‘The Contest.’ I think DragonByte is, in terms of quality, the closest thing to Google Code Jam, and nowadays the hardest individual coding challenge that exists.”
That was probably the best validation we could ask for.
Want to try the problems? The DragonByte archive is here.
Give them a try. And if they make you suffer a little, that is probably working as intended.
Thanks to everyone who registered, competed, discussed the problems and helped us make DragonByte 2026 happen.
Want to be among the first to hear when the challenge returns next year? Drop your email address here
