Competition rules 2027

1. Organizer

1. 1.1.The competition is run by the non-profit association Gervigreindarkeppni Íslands (GKÍ), reg. no. (kennitala) 470826-1420, Hléskógar 26, 109 Reykjavík, Iceland.
2. 1.2.Questions about the rules, privacy or how the competition is run go to contact@gki.is.

2. Dates

All times are Iceland time, which is the same as UTC.

Kickoff

Thursday 14 January 2027, 17:00–19:00

Competition starts, challenges published

Thursday 14 January 2027, 20:00

Final test opens; registration and team changes close

Tuesday 19 January 2027, 20:00

Email to the top 20 teams of each division (see 8.1)

Wednesday 20 January 2027, 20:00

Competition ends

Thursday 21 January 2027, 20:00

Award ceremony in Gróska

Friday 22 January 2027, 15:30–17:00

Results published on the website

Friday 22 January 2027, 16:00

1. 2.1.The competition takes place online. A workspace is offered at Mýrin in Gróska.

3. Eligibility and divisions

1. 3.1.There are two divisions: the university division and the open division.
2. 3.2.University division: a team competes in the university division if every member is enrolled in a degree programme at an accredited university at some point during the competition week (14–21 January 2027). One-year diploma programmes count; single courses and continuing education do not. Students of Icelandic universities count, including those on exchange abroad, and so do exchange students at Icelandic universities. Students of universities abroad count if they are Icelandic, meaning they are Icelandic citizens or completed upper secondary school (stúdentspróf or equivalent) in Iceland. Other students of universities abroad are welcome but compete in the open division.
3. 3.3.A team in which one or more members do not meet the university division's conditions competes in the open division.
4. 3.4.Open division: anyone who meets the age requirement in 3.5 may compete in the open division, regardless of residence or nationality. Prize conditions for the open division are in section 9.
5. 3.5.Minimum age: participants must turn 18 during the competition year at the latest. For the 2027 competition this means a participant must be born in 2009 or earlier. Participation with parent or guardian consent is not possible. If in doubt, the organizers may ask a prize winner to confirm their age (see 8.5).
6. 3.6.A team that does not meet, or cannot confirm, the university division's conditions (see section 8) competes in the open division.
7. 3.7.GKÍ organizers may compete as a separate organizer team, which is not ranked and cannot win prizes. Organizers have access to hidden data and must not use it.
8. 3.8.When joining, each participant answers the question "Are you enrolled as a student at an Icelandic university this year?" and the answer decides their division. The answer can be changed until the participant or their team has made a submission, but not after the competition has ended.

4. Teams

1. 4.1.Teams have 1–3 members. Competing alone is allowed.
2. 4.2.Each participant may be on only one team.
3. 4.3.Until registration closes on Tuesday 19 January 2027 at 20:00, anyone can register, create a team or join a team that is not full. After that, members cannot be added and nobody can switch teams.
4. 4.4.From the start of the competition until it ends on Thursday 21 January 2027 at 20:00, nobody can leave a team.
5. 4.5.Scoreboards show team names, members' full names, division, scores and rank. Per-challenge scoreboards also show the logos of members' universities. Team names and scores are also posted automatically to the competition's Discord server. The privacy policy has the details.

5. Accounts and registration

1. 5.1.Each person may have only one account.
2. 5.2.Confirming an email address is not proof of enrollment. Enrollment is confirmed only as described in section 8.
3. 5.3.A participant in the university division confirms when joining the competition that they study at an Icelandic university and can show proof of enrollment if their team is in contention for a prize.
4. 5.4.An email address can belong to only one account. The address of a deleted account cannot be used for any account for three years. The same applies to an account's previous address after it has been changed, including for the same account. The privacy notice has the details.

6. Challenges, submissions and scoring

1. 6.1.The competition has three challenges. They are realistic machine-learning tasks, which may include areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, time-series analysis and forecasting, recommendation systems, multimodal learning or reinforcement learning. Each challenge has its own description with its metric, time limits and any challenge-specific rules.
2. 6.2.A team runs its solution on a server with a public HTTPS address. A team member enters the address and API key on the website and confirms the submission with a passkey. Only a person on the team may start a submission; automated agents may prepare it but not confirm it. The team is responsible for keeping its server running until evaluation finishes.
3. 6.3.Validation: during the competition, teams may submit on the validation data and see their scores on the public scoreboard. Validation is for practice and does not decide the results.
4. 6.4.Each team may have only one queued or running submission per challenge at a time.
5. 6.5.Validation submissions have a daily limit per team and challenge. The submission page shows how many are left, counted from 00:00 UTC. Submissions that fail because of the website or the evaluator, or that never reached the team's server, do not count.
6. 6.6.The "Test connection" button sends one made-up example to the team's server. It is not a submission and uses neither a validation submission nor the final-test attempt. You can test once a minute for each challenge.
7. 6.7.Final test: each team gets one attempt at the final test per challenge. A started attempt counts as used, even if it fails. An attempt the evaluator refuses before contacting the team's server does not count, and the team may try again. If an attempt fails because of a verified failure on the organizers' side, the organizers may give the team a new attempt.
8. 6.8.The team's server is never told whether a request belongs to validation or the final test.
9. 6.9.Final-test scores stay hidden until results are published.
10. 6.10.Scoring: raw scores for each challenge are computed with that challenge's metric. They are then normalized to between 0 and 1: the challenge's best published baseline scores 0 and the best ranked team scores 1, using (score − baseline) / (best − baseline). Scores below the baseline become 0. If the best ranked team does not beat the baseline, a team scores 1 if its score is at least as good as the best ranked team's, and 0 otherwise. A team's overall score is the mean of its normalized scores across all challenges; a challenge with no submission counts as 0.
11. 6.11.Results are decided by the overall score on the final test. Rankings are computed separately for each division.
12. 6.12.The organizer team, AI agent teams and baselines appear on the scoreboard labelled "not ranked". They do not affect normalization or ranking and cannot win prizes.

7. Allowed tools and fair play

1. 7.1.Any programming language, library, pre-trained model, API and AI assistant may be used unless a challenge's rules say otherwise. The server must respond within the challenge's time limit.
2. 7.2.It is not allowed to try to obtain hidden validation or final-test data or their answers, or to use such data if obtained.
3. 7.3.It is not allowed to use more than one account or to compete on more than one team.
4. 7.4.It is not allowed to attack, overload or try to bypass the security or limits of the website, the evaluator or other teams.
5. 7.5.The organizers watch for signs of rule breaking, such as duplicate accounts or teams using the same server. Such signs never lead to automatic exclusion; a person reviews them and may contact the team and ask for an explanation, such as the solution's code. The organizers have the final say.

8. Eligibility checks

1. 8.1.On Wednesday 20 January 2027 at 20:00, when 24 hours of the competition remain, the top 20 teams of each division on the public scoreboard (validation) receive the same email asking them to confirm their eligibility. The email does not mean the team has won a prize; it only says the team is in the top 20 on the public scoreboard.
2. 8.2.University division teams that receive the email send proof of enrollment to skolavist@gki.is by Friday 22 January 2027 at 12:00 at the latest. Any team may send proof earlier on its own initiative.
3. 8.3.A team in a prize place that has not confirmed its eligibility after final scoring is contacted with a deadline to reply. If the team does not confirm in time, the next team moves up.
4. 8.4.Enrollment (university division): proof of enrollment is always required for university division teams in a prize place. Each member sends proof showing their name, school and courses for the spring 2027 semester, for example a screenshot from Ugla, Canvas or MySchool, or a free certificate of enrollment from the school. GKÍ never requires a paid certificate. A student card, an old transcript or an acceptance letter is not enough on its own. You may hide anything else, such as your kennitala and grades. Two organizers review the proof. If in doubt, the organizers may ask for a short screen share in which the person signs in to their school system. A member who is a student of a university abroad, other than an exchange student at an Icelandic university, also sends proof of being Icelandic, for example the data page of their passport or an upper secondary school graduation certificate from Iceland. You may hide everything except your name and what shows the citizenship or the exam. The organizers review this proof in the same way.
5. 8.5.The organizers may ask a member to confirm who they are, their age (see 3.5) or, in the open division, that they have an Icelandic kennitala (see 9.3), but only when in doubt. The member then sends a document showing their name and kennitala.
6. 8.6.Proof of enrollment, proof of being Icelandic and documents showing a kennitala are deleted at the latest 30 days after the award ceremony. Only whether the team passed is kept.
7. 8.7.If a university division team cannot confirm every member's enrollment, it competes in the open division and the prize moves to the next university division team that has confirmed its eligibility.

9. Prizes

1. 9.1.The total prize pool is 2,000,000 kr.
2. 9.2.Other prizes may include UTmessan tickets, subscriptions (for example to Lovable and Miðeind's services) and summer jobs with partners. The final list is published before the competition starts.
3. 9.3.Open division prize conditions: every member must have an Icelandic kennitala. It does not matter when the kennitala was issued; it may, for example, come from an earlier stay or exchange studies in Iceland. There is no requirement to live in Iceland or to be in Iceland. The organizers check the kennitala only when in doubt (see 8.5). A team that does not meet this condition may compete and appears on the scoreboard, but the prize moves to the next team.
4. 9.4.Prize money is usually paid as gift cards. Otherwise it is paid to a bank account the team gives us.
5. 9.5.Prizes are awarded only to teams that have confirmed their eligibility (section 8). A prize that cannot be awarded moves to the next team.

10. Ties

1. 10.1.Overall scores are compared as precisely as they are computed, with more decimals than the scoreboard shows. Only if overall scores are exactly equal does the team whose scoring final-test submission was accepted earlier rank higher. Because the overall score is built from final-test submissions in every challenge, the latest-accepted of them is used. Teams never share a place.

11. Communication and privacy

1. 11.1.Official announcements are posted on the competition website and sent by email from a gki.is address. Support is offered on the competition's Discord server throughout the competition.
2. 11.2.Personal data is processed under GKÍ's privacy policy at gervigreindarkeppni.is/personuvernd.

12. Rule changes

1. 12.1.The rules are final when the competition starts. After that they are only corrected for obvious errors. Every correction is announced publicly on the competition website and by email to participants, with its date and a description of the change.