2025 ICPC Northeast North America Regional Contest - Montreal site

The School of Computer Science is excited to host a site for the regional qualifier for the International Collegiate Programming Contest on Sunday November 9, 2025. Open to all educational institutions in US and Canadian that are in close proximity.

Location: McGill University, Trottier Bldg, 3630 Rue University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B3

Contact information

For any questions regarding the event, contact David Becerra at david.becerra@mcgill.ca. Please write “ICPC” at the front of the email’s subject.

Tentative schedule of events:

Registration opens: 8:30am EST
Opening Ceremony: 9:45am EST
Contest start time between 11-11:15am EST
Contest lasts: 5 hours (roughly until 4pm EST)
Closing ceremony: about half an hour after the end of the contest, lasting about half an hour.

*** Instructions to register your team for McGill University ICPC Regional Qualifier ***

What is ICPC?

The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a multi-tier, team-based programming competition headquartered at Baylor University. The contest involves a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ICPC World Finals.

Participation has grown to several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from more than 3 thousand universities from over 111 countries. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure.

Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

When is registration?

Initial registration is open until midnight on November 2, 2025 to all educational institutions interested in registering teams for the contest.

How many teams can compete?

The School of Computer Science can comfortably host up to 30 teams.

What is the cost to attend the ICPC Regional at McGill University?

There is a early registration fee of US$150 per team, or US$200 per team after the cut-off for the T-shirt order deadline. If this fee amount is beyond your university's budget, the coach may contact the Regional Contest Director to request a reduced amount. This fee also includes T-shirts and lunch at the host site for the team and coach.

What is the deadline to sign up for the ICPC Regional at McGill University?

Initial registration: deadline November 2.

The contest will be held on November 9, 2025.

Where will the Programming Contest be located?

Trottier Bldg, 3630 Rue University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B3 on 3rd Floor

What is the Programming Contest environment?

The contest environment will be an Ubuntu 24.04 image derived from the 2026 World Finals image. Lab computers will be provided with the required image already installed.

What programming languages will be permitted?

Following the ICPC Programming Contest rules, the following languages will be permitted: C (gcc), C++ (g++), Python 2, Python 3, and Java.

External access to the internet is not permitted.

Any other competition restrictions?

Teams are limited to 25 page document which is a pdf that teams can create themselves including whatever they want to put as long as it is in font legible to anyone with reasonable eyesight.

The students should be aware that they are not allowed to browse the Internet, not on their computer and not on their phones/tablets, with the exception of Javadocs and manual pages for C/C++ and Python and the virtual judge of the competition .

Additional helpful tidbits for all competing teams.

Possible pitfalls to avoid when trying to compile code for regional final problems. As well, we suggest teams review the following help page http://open.kattis.com/help:

• If you are using C/C++, make sure to compile using the options that Kattis uses (see open.kattis.com/help for details).
• If you are using Python (2 or 3), make sure to put the shebang line (#!/usr/bin/python or #!/usr/bin/python3) at the top to make sure Kattis knows which version you are using.
• Regardless of language, if you use any exit calls, make sure they produce exit code 0 (i.e. System.exit(0) or the like), or else Kattis will say you have a run-time error (even if you print the correct output first).