The Macedonian pupils year by year continue their sequence of successful participations at the international competitions in informatics. Our pupils recently achieved yet another success, by winning in total 1 silver and 4 bronze medals at the 26th Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI 2018) and the 12th Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (JBOI 2018), which took place as parallel events from July 7th till July 13th, in Timisoara, Romania.

The winner of a silver medal for Macedonia at BOI 2018 was Martin Dinev, while both Vladimir Maksimovski and Andrej Velichkovski won a bronze medal. The fourth Macedonian contestant in this regional competition was Josif Tepegjozov. At JBOI 2018, Blagojche Pavleski and Teo Kitanovski won bronze medals, and the other two members of our team were Kristina Taseva and Marko Tanevski.

The Macedonian team at BOI 2018 was led by Emil Stankov and Marko Paloski, while the JBOI 2018 team was led by Vladislav Bidikov and Darko Martinovikj, from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE) in Skopje. The contestants from both teams were selected through a year-long competition cycle organized by the Computer Society of Macedonia, with the support of the Agency of youth and sport of Macedonia, and the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje.

Main organizer of the two events was the Ministry of Education of Romania. A total of 39 of the best high school students in the area of computer science participated at BOI 2018, having been selected through the annual national programming competitions in the following countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. Additionally, as representatives of guest countries at BOI, there were teams from Italy and Turkmenistan. These teams competed unofficially.

At JBOI 2018, teams of at most 4 contestants from the following 8 Balkan countries competed: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania and Serbia. JBOI is an annual competition that gives younger competitors (up to 15.5 years of age) the opportunity to show their knowledge in computer science and programming.

The official web site of BOI/JBOI 2018 is: http://boi2018.ro. The next, 27th Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI 2019) will be held in Greece. However, the Macedonian pupils have some other big challenges ahead of them this year: the European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI 2018), to be held in Kazan, Russia, at the end of July, and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2018), to be held in Tsukuba, Japan, in September.