The Baltic Olympiad in Informatics (BOI) is a programming contest for secondary school students. The BOI was founded in 1995, with three participating countries. Since then, it has grown to include 10 countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden. In addition, teams from other countries are sometimes invited as guests. Each country is invited to send up to 6 participants to the Olympiad, and the host country usually sends two teams.
BOI follows the competition format of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). It consists of several challenging algorithmic tasks which must be solved individually during 2 competition rounds each lasting 5 hours. Students write their programs in C++ programming language. During each round their programs are evaluated automatically, scoring points for efficiency and correctness.
This similarity between BOI and IOI is intentional, as for many participants BOI is a bridge between national Olympiads organised in their home country and the International Olympiads in Informatics. In BOI these students have a chance to get their the first experience of participating in a cosy, small but yet international event. Here they can find out to some extent what they will experience when they go to IOI. This is one of important goals of BOI.