The Hungarian team returned with two silver medals from the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), held in Astana, Kazakhstan from 2 to 8 August 2026. The third edition of the competition gathered 440 secondary-school students from more than 100 countries.
Nature of the tasks
This year’s problems illustrated the range and technical complexity of contemporary AI. Competitors faced tasks such as:
- distinguishing AI-generated text from human-written text;
- exploiting embeddings to game a guessing-game (barkóba)-style task;
- reconstructing shuffled dialogues;
- attempting to fool image-recognition models.
These assignments required both practical engineering skills and theoretical understanding, and allowed a variety of methodological approaches.
The Hungarian team and the medalists
Hungary’s delegation consisted of four students. Silver medals were won by Tédi Bálint (SZC Jedlik Ányos Gépipari és Informatikai Technikum és Kollégium) and Ungár Vince (Békásmegyeri Veres Péter Gimnázium). The other team members were Jurácsik Marcell (Fazekas Mihály Gimnázium, Debrecen) and Szekeres Linda (Balassi Bálint Nyolcévfolyamos Gimnázium, District XVII).
Preparation and organisational background
Team preparation was led by Gulyás László, associate professor at the Department of Artificial Intelligence, ELTE Faculty of Informatics, and vice-president of the Neumann János Számítógép-tudományi Társaság (NJSZT). His deputy was Szalay Gergő, a PhD student at ELTE’s Faculty of Informatics.
The training programme was a collaboration between the ELTE Faculty of Informatics and the Neumann Társaság’s Artificial Intelligence and Talent Development Section. Hungarian-language preparatory materials developed by ELTE IK attracted international interest among participants and organisers.
Why this matters
The IOAI is a rapidly growing international science olympiad focused on AI, aiming to inspire young people interested in artificial intelligence and to support the next generation of AI pioneers. Participation and high-level preparation equip students with practical skills—such as using modern tools like PyTorch—that go well beyond typical secondary-school curricula.
Preparatory sessions and an active Discord community provide ongoing professional and peer support, contributing not only to competition readiness but also to longer-term engagement with scientific and technological careers.
Summary
The two silver medals underline that Hungary’s talent development and university-backed training can produce internationally competitive results in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence.
