The Final Round of the 2026 Programming Olympiad was held from 2 to 4 October 2026, at Eduvos Higher Education in Pretoria, bringing together thirteen leading learners from four provinces at the apex of South Africa's national school programming pipeline. Established in 1984, the Computer Olympiad is the national programming contest for school learners. Participation is free, and selection proceeds through three rounds.
Round 1 was written between 27 and 31 July 2026, with just under 1,500 learners participating, at schools, online or on paper, and leading performers receiving gold, silver and bronze certificates were invited to proceed. Round 2, written on 26 and 27 August 2026 by invitation and under supervised school conditions comparable to the NSC Information Technology practical examination, required learners to solve algorithmic problems in C++, Delphi, Java, Pascal or Python. A cut-off was determined after Round 1, and provincial certificates were awarded to the top three learners in each province who exceeded a minimum threshold. Final Round invitations were extended to the leading Round 2 candidates, who competed over two days at Eduvos Higher Education in Pretoria, on organiser-provided computers and under International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) test conditions.
The thirteen finalists, spanning Grades 8 to 12, comprised eight learners from Gauteng, three from the Western Cape, one from the North West, and one from the Eastern Cape Province.
The gold medal and first place was awarded to Erik Senekal of Hoërskool Menlopark. David Eyal of International School of Cape Town and Shaun Luger of Reddam House Atlantic Seaboard shared the silver medals and second place. Bronze medals and third place went to Xiaoyuan Li of St John's College, Zhenxuan Liu of Redhill High and Saanuraaga Viranna of Marist Brothers Linmeyer. Honourable mentions were awarded to Youlin Chen of American International School of Johannesburg, Zixuan Liu of Redhill High, Noah Rassou of South African College High School and Pieter-Louis Schoeman of Potchefstroom Gimnasium, while Keshav Maharaj of Woodhill College, Great Ikechukwu Umejesi of Hudson Park High School and Richard Zhang of Saheti High were named runners-up.
Erik Senekal's gold followed his bronze at the 2025 Final Round. David Eyal, the 2025 gold medallist, secured silver, while Xiaoyuan Li and Noah Rassou, both honourable mentions in 2025, were again among the awardees.
The Final Round is the entry point to the national team selection process for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Leading finalists are invited to training camps, and the four-person team for IOI 2027, to be held in Germany next year, will be selected on cumulative camp performance. We look forward to seeing which four learners will represent South Africa and what they achieve. This year, South Africa's team returned from IOI 2026 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with four awards.
Mr Ian Carstens, Chief Education Specialist, Computer Applications Technology (CAT) and Information Technology (IT) at the DBE, said that the Final Round affirmed the Olympiad's role in identifying advanced computational talent, and indicated scope to broaden provincial participation, increase the participation of girls and extend reach to under-resourced schools.