SuperCon 2026 — 32nd Supercomputing Contest held for high school and technical college students
Together with the University of Osaka's Digital Design, Datability, and Decision Intelligence (D3) Center and the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), Science Tokyo’s Center for Information Infrastructure (CII) and the Supercomputing Research Center within the Institute of Integrated Research hosted the 2026 Supercomputing Contest (SuperCon 2026) for high school and technical college students from August 17 to 21. This year's contest was the thirty-second of its kind.
During SuperCon, teams of two to three students from high schools or technical colleges attempt to solve challenging problems using a supercomputer. With a focus on both accuracy and speed, the teams have four days to create programs that address these problems.
This year’s contest was held online using Fugaku, the supercomputer at R-CCS. The finals included 20 teams — 55 participants from 17 schools — who had won in the preliminary rounds.
Challenge: Packing disks of various sizes efficiently
The main question in this year’s finals focused on the task of packing — or jamming — rigid disks that do not change in shape or size into a specified square area without allowing them to overlap. The challenge was to find the optimal arrangement of the disks according to the given conditions and determine how to achieve the highest possible packing density. The participants worked diligently to achieve a valid configuration that met the strict upper limits specified by the problem.
Results and closing ceremony
The results of the contest were announced in conjunction with the closing ceremony on August 21, where joint organizers made remarks on the participants’ efforts. CII Director Masahiko Tomoishi and R-CCS Deputy Director Kengo Nakajima offered their comments, while Executive Vice President Takao Onoye from the University of Osaka sent in a video message to the participants.
Noriko Akazawa from the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) and Tetsuo Shibuya from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) also shared their greetings. Director-General Atsuyuki Asano of the Research Promotion Bureau at Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology delivered a video message commending the participants for their hard work.
Next, Professor Takeshi Kawasaki from the University of Osaka’s D3 Center provided an explanation of the final round challenge and offered comments on each team’s solutions. Each participating team then presented their approaches to the challenge and shared their impressions. Following that, SuperCon Committee Chair Hajime Yoshino, a professor at the University of Osaka, announced the top three teams.
SuperCon 2026 winners
- 1st place
- Team LogConst, Toyama Prefectural Toyama Chubu Senior High School
- 2nd place
- Team Greedy, Hamamatsu Technical High School
- 3rd place
- Team MCHGirls, Morioka Chuo High School
Team LogConst was also announced as the recipient of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award. This year’s Supercomputing Encouragement Award from IEICE and the Young Researcher Encouragement Award from IPSJ went to Team MCHGirls. In addition, this year, the SuperCon Committee Special Award was presented to Team sabotage from Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba.