Zalán András Szörényi, a student at Földes Ferenc Gimnázium in Miskolc, won a bronze medal at the inaugural European Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (EUROAI) held in 2026. The competition took place in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and gathered some of Europe's most talented high-school competitors in artificial intelligence.
The Hungarian team and leaders
Members of the Hungarian team:
- Hegyi Erik
- Podlipnik Ádám
- Zalán András Szörényi (bronze medal)
Team leaders: Szabó Barbara Noémi, Szalay Gergő and Csibi Zsolt.
Nature of the tasks
Contestants solved practical problems such as hiding messages in neural network weights and object-recognition tasks similar to the Dobble game. The challenges covered a range of AI applications and required skills in data processing, model building and solution optimization. Comparable problems and preparatory materials are available through the Hungarian AI Olympiad (HAIO) website and its competitions.
Preparation and organization
The Hungarian team was selected and trained by the Hungarian AI Olympiad (HAIO) program, operating with professional support from the Faculty of Informatics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). HAIO's mission is to identify and develop high-school students interested in artificial intelligence and to secure Hungary's participation in international AI olympiads.
The John von Neumann Computer Society (Neumann János Számítógéptudományi Társaság, NJSZT) also played a significant role in the initiative; the society has long supported Hungarian IT talent development and international competition preparation.
Significance
The bronze medal is particularly notable because EUROAI was organized for the first time in 2026 with the aim of creating a prestigious European-level contest for high-school AI talent. Hungary's result indicates that domestic talent-development efforts — the cooperation between HAIO, ELTE Faculty of Informatics and NJSZT — were able to produce an internationally recognized outcome at the first European AI olympiad.
Source: NJSZT
