A global competition that brings strong programmers together

We run DragonByte because we like hard problems, good competition, and people who enjoy both.

DragonByte 2025 brought together competitive programmers from around the world. This year, 1,300 engineers signed up for the challenge. The largest groups came from the UK, Poland, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Hungary, and Czechia, with many more participants joining from Spain, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, and beyond.

From everyone who signed up, 266 engineers qualified during the July online round. Each qualifier received a custom DragonByte T-shirt designed for this edition. From there, 20 finalists were invited to Bratislava for the Onsite Finals.

The problems were prepared by a well-known competitive programmer from the Codeforces community, together with a team of 10 volunteers who helped make the contest happen.

The Finals Weekend in Bratislava

The finalists arrived in Bratislava on Friday evening for a welcome dinner. Many of them already knew each other from previous contests, and some had met at the ICPC World Finals just a week earlier. That changed the atmosphere quickly. It was competitive, but not anonymous. People came to win, and they also came to spend time with others who care about the same kind of problems.

Saturday started with registration at 9:00. Participants settled in, took photos, and voted on coding quotes. The most popular ones were:

• “Friends don’t let friends code in Java”
  
• “Brute force is my baseline”
  
• “TLE is my cardio”
  
• “Happiness = Accepted in one submission”
  
• “I’m here for FUN.”

You can see photos of participants on our Instagram channel at @wincent_co.

At 9:45, we introduced the challenge. At 10:00, the 3 hour 30 minute contest started.

The room became quiet very quickly. Everyone was focused on the same thing: understand the problem, find the edge case, write the solution, get Accepted.

After the contest, we had lunch and board games before the evening program.

That evening, we gathered at a local restaurant for the awards ceremony. The top three finalists won:

• 1st place: €10,000 Kevin (ksun48)
  
• 2nd place: €5,000 Andrew (ecnerwala)
  
• 3rd place: €2,500 Dilhan (dnialh)

After the ceremony, the group continued the evening at a bar. It was a good ending to a hard day of competition.

On Sunday, the finalists explored Bratislava with local guides who shared stories about the city’s history. After lunch, we visited the UFO tower and looked over the city from above. It was a slower end to a weekend that had started with a scoreboard and a countdown timer.

The feedback from participants was strong. On average, they rated:

• Organization: 9.6/10
• Venue: 9.5/10
• Food and restaurants: 9.0/10
• Overall recommendation score: 9.4/10

Every participant said they would like to join DragonByte again next year.

DragonByte is a programming competition, but the onsite weekend makes it more than that. It brings together people who usually only meet through leaderboards, handles, and contest results. For one weekend, they get to compete in the same room, talk in person, and build the kind of community that is hard to create online.

We shared photos and highlights from the weekend on Instagram at @wincent_co.

See you at DragonByte 2026.