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ACM Programming Jam 2026 // Section 02

<Competition Day/>

No tutorial this time. You build it.

Competition day puts everything from the workshops into practice. A team receives the challenge, plans a solution, builds a working web application, adapts to a mid-event change, and presents the result. The brief stays locked until the challenge is released.

01 / Receive

Teams receive the official application challenge and requirements.

02 / Plan

Understand the requirements, divide responsibilities, design the solution, and decide how the application will work.

03 / Build

Turn the plan into a functional web application.

04 / Adapt

Respond to new information or requirements introduced during the competition.

05 / Submit

Finalize the application and submit the required project materials before the deadline.

06 / Present

Demonstrate the finished application and explain the team's engineering decisions.

Scoring — 100 points across seven categories

20%
Functional Completeness

Does the application meet the provided requirements and function correctly?

20%
Technical Implementation

How effectively were authentication, persistent data, application logic, GitHub, and deployment implemented?

20%
Problem Solving & Adaptability

How effectively did the team debug problems and respond to the unexpected requirement change?

15%
UI/UX & Design

Is the application intuitive, coherent, responsive, and easy to use?

10%
System Understanding & Planning

Can the team explain its Excalidraw diagram and how the major parts of the system interact?

10%
Production Readiness & Performance

Has the application been deployed correctly, connected to a domain, prepared for search discovery, and evaluated with PageSpeed Insights?

5%
Final Demonstration

Can the team clearly demonstrate and explain its solution?

The day

check_inTime TBD
challenge_releaseTime TBD
planningTime TBD
developmentTime TBD
change_eventTime TBD
final_buildTime TBD
submissionTime TBD
presentationsTime TBD
resultsTime TBD
Expect change. Real software projects rarely stay exactly as planned. A new requirement is introduced mid-event, and teams have to adapt the application they already built.

What judges check

  • 01 Required evidence. A working production URL, the GitHub repository, the final application, the Excalidraw system plan, and evidence that the team tested and measured the result.
  • 02 Live verification. Judges may navigate the deployed application, test core requirements, review authentication and persistent data, inspect responsive behavior, and ask the team to explain implementation decisions.
  • 03 Team demonstration. Present the problem, demonstrate the main user journey, explain the system, show how the change request was handled, and identify one challenge the team investigated.
  • 04 Completion check. Confirm required tasks are complete, roles are clear, accounts and access work, materials are ready, and the final production build has been verified.

Submission checklist

  • Live production website
  • Custom domain or subdomain
  • GitHub repository
  • Excalidraw functional diagram
  • Working Firebase authentication
  • Working persistent data
  • Required application features
  • Completed change request
  • Google Search Console setup
  • Bing Webmaster Tools setup
  • PageSpeed Insights result