Google Code Jam

Google Code Jam
Status Discontinued
Frequency Annually
Venue Online
Country Worldwide
Years active 2003–2022
Inaugurated 2003
Attendance 35,500 (2019)
Budget $15,000 for winner, smaller prizes for runners-up
Patron(s) Google
Website https://codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com/codejam (shut down on July 1, 2023)

Google Code Jam was an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors may use any programming language and development environment to obtain their solutions. From 2003 to 2007, Google Code Jam was deployed on Topcoder's platform. Since 2008 Google has developed their own dedicated infrastructure for the contest.

Between 2015 and 2018, Google also ran Distributed Code Jam, with the focus on distributed algorithms. This was run in parallel with the regular Code Jam, with its own qualification and final round, for a top prize of $10,000, but was only open for people who qualified to Round 2 of Code Jam (up to 3000 people).

Several Google Code Jam problems have led to academic research.

On February 22, 2023, Google announced that Code Jam was to be discontinued alongside their other programming competitions, Hash Code and Kick Start. A series of four "farewell rounds" took place on April 15, 2023 from 14:00 until 18:00 UTC, with all rounds taking place at the same time. Login functionality for Google's programming competitions was disabled on June 1, 2023, followed by the shut down of the competitions' hosting platform exactly one month later, on July 1, 2023. A permanent archive of all Code Jam, Hash Code and Kick Start problems is available for download on GitHub.

Past winners

Google Code Jam

Tournament Finals location Registrants Qual Advancers 1st place 2nd place 3rd place
2022 Online 28,111 Gennady Korotkevich Lingyu Jiang Kevin Sun
2021 Online 93,000 25,961 Xiuhan Wang Shogo Murai Scott Wu
2020 Online 96,000 30,221 Gennady Korotkevich Kevin Sun Andrew He
2019 San Francisco, United States 74,000 27,610 Gennady Korotkevich Makoto Soejima Andrew He
2018 Toronto, Canada 62,000 14,093 Gennady Korotkevich Kamil Debowski Makoto Soejima
2017 Dublin, Ireland 64,000 18,331 Gennady Korotkevich Konstantin Semenov Vladislav Epifanov
2016 New York City, United States 58,520 22,154 Gennady Korotkevich Kevin Atienza Egor Kulikov
2015 Seattle, United States 56,749 12,438 Gennady Korotkevich Makoto Soejima Bruce Merry
2014 Los Angeles, United States 49,066 20,595 Gennady Korotkevich Evgeny Kapun Yuzhou Gu
2013 London, United Kingdom 45,754 17,059 Ivan Metelsky Vasil Bileckiy Vladislav Isenbaev
2012 New York City, United States 20,613 15,692 Jakub Pachocki Neal Wu Michal Forišek
2011 Tokyo, Japan 21,940 10,336 Makoto Soejima Ivan Metelsky Jakub Pachocki
2010 Dublin, Ireland 12,092 8,308 Egor Kulikov Erik-Jan Krijgsman Sergey Kopeliovich
2009 Mountain View, United States 10,000 7,516 Tiancheng Lou Zichao Qi Yoichi Iwata
2008 Mountain View, United States 11,044 6,774 Tiancheng Lou Zeyuan Zhu Bruce Merry
2006 New York City, United States ? Petr Mitrichev Ying Wang Andrey Stankevich
2005 Mountain View, United States ? Marek Cygan Erik-Jan Krijgsman Petr Mitrichev
2004 Mountain View, United States ? Sergio Sancho Po-Ru Loh Reid Barton
2003 Mountain View, United States ? Jimmy Mårdell Christopher Hendrie Eugene Vasilchenko
  1. Originally scheduled to take place in Munich, Germany, but later was converted to online format in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Distributed Code Jam

Tournament Finals location Competitors 1st place 2nd place 3rd place
2018 Toronto, Canada ? Mateusz Radecki Kevin Atienza Tomek Czajka
2017 Dublin, Ireland 3,000 Andrew He Evgeny Kapun Erik-Jan Krijgsman
2016 New York City, New York, United States 3,000 Bruce Merry Yuzhou Gu Filip Hlasek
2015 Seattle, Washington, United States 3,000 Bruce Merry Marcin Smulewicz Ting Wei Chen

Results by country

Country 1st place 2nd place 3rd place
Belarus 9 1 0
China 3 4 1
Russia 2 2 7
Poland 2 1 1
Japan 1 3 2
Argentina 1 0 0
Sweden 1 0 0
USA 0 2 4
Canada 0 2 1
Netherlands 0 2 0
Philippines 0 1 0
Ukraine 0 1 0
South Africa 0 0 2
Slovakia 0 0 1

See also