The Eighth Computational Linguistics Competition for School Students will take place on 26 April 2026 (Sunday), from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The competition will be held online through the Educational Platform of the Institute for Bulgarian Language “Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin” at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The competition is open to students in lower and upper secondary education and does not require any specialised prior training. Participation requires above all language awareness, logical thinking, and an investigative mindset.
Although students from mathematics and science high schools have traditionally made up the majority of participants, the results show that the competition is equally accessible to students from schools with different educational profiles. The average performance of participants from different types of schools is comparable, confirming that the tasks primarily foster logical reasoning, observation skills, and an interest in language.
Students who would like to familiarise themselves with the format of the tasks in advance may visit the Computational Linguistics Competition page, where practice tasks are available. Since March, a series of short language challenges has also been offered to help participants prepare for the competition.
In 2025, the competition attracted students from 35 schools in 20 towns and cities across Bulgaria, as well as two participants from abroad, demonstrating the growing interest in this interdisciplinary field.
The Computational Linguistics Competition is organised annually on a non-school day in the spring by the Department of Computational Linguistics of the Institute for Bulgarian Language “Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin” at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. It forms part of the Institute’s “The Written Word Remains. Write Correctly!” project.
Over the years, the initiative has been supported by the programmes “Introducing Modern Methods in Education and Working with Young Talents” (2017-2018) and “Education with Science” (2019-2020), as well as by the National Research Programme “Education with Science” (2024-2028) of the Ministry of Education and Science and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
In 2026, the competition has once again been included in the National Calendar of Activities by Interest for Children and Students of the Ministry of Education and Science.
Participants will solve tasks that involve analysing unfamiliar languages, identifying patterns, and applying logical reasoning. In this way, the competition encourages interest in language, science, and technology while demonstrating the connections between linguistics, mathematics, and computer science.