After the juniors, who won a bronze medal at the recently held 4th European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI 2020), the long-standing continuity of successful performances of the Macedonian pupils at international competitions in informatics was extended by the seniors - high school students. At the 32nd International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2020), which was held in the form of an online competition from September 13th to 23rd, the Macedonian team, composed of the contestants Blagojche Pavleski, Andrej Velichkovski, Andrej Sekerov and Teo Kitanovski, led by the leaders, Emil Stankov and Bojana Koteska from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), won three bronze medals. With this achievement, our young students once again proved that Macedonia should be proud of them.

IOI is the most prestigious annual international high school programming competition traditionally held in one of the IOI member countries. Each year, national programming competitions are being organized in about 90 countries around the world, in which a total of more than 400,000 students participate, all with the sole motive – to have the great honor and privilege of representing their country at the IOI. According to the medal distribution principle, IOI as a scientific Olympiad in informatics is the most rigorous compared to the top scientific Olympiads in other sciences (Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology).

The official host of IOI 2020 was Singapore, and the main organizer was the National University of Singapore, with the support of the Ministry of Education of Singapore. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year the International Olympiad in Informatics was held online for the first time in its history, with competitors from each national team being supervised by their leaders. The Macedonian team competed from the premises of the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), which provided all the conditions for quality technical connection to Singapore.

This year, a total of 343 students from 87 countries around the world participated at IOI. In this extremely strong competition, the three bronze medals for Macedonia were won by Blagojche Pavleski from Prilep, Andrej Sekerov from Skopje and Andrej Velichkovski from Kumanovo.

Since its first participation at IOI as an independent country in 1996, Macedonia has among the best results in terms of countries of similar size as well as in comparison to much larger IOI participating countries: 2 silver and 21 bronze medals have been won so far.

If conditions allow it, the next, 33rd in a row, International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2021), will be held next year, on the spot – in Singapore.