Frequently asked
questions.

Teams enter one of two tracks: Undergraduate (1 to 3 undergraduate students plus 1 mentor) or Open (1 to 3 participants, any profile). At least half of each team must hold a current SMIO or ALIO-society membership; participants not in the ALIO community need SMIO membership.

Teams can have fewer than 3 members — 3 is the cap, not a requirement. Undergraduate track: 1 to 3 undergraduate students plus 1 mentor (a graduate student, professor, or industry professional). Open track: 1 to 3 participants with no profile restriction. Each person may belong to only one team.

No. You can team up with whoever you want — different universities, different cities, or different countries. The only rules are the membership requirement (at least half of each team holding SMIO or ALIO-society membership) and the per-track profile rules (e.g., undergraduates for the Undergraduate track).

Yes. Participation is international through SMIO / ALIO membership — you don't need to live or study in Mexico.

No. Any software is allowed — commercial solvers, open-source tools, or your own code. Hexaly Optimizer produces a reference baseline on all 30 instances but does not compete on the leaderboard. Free academic Hexaly licenses are available to all registered participants if you'd like to try it.

The challenge runs in two phases. First, an instance generator and a set of mock instances are released so teams can build, test, and tune their methods with no scoring pressure. Then the 30 final instances are released and teams have ~4 weeks to work on them — only this window counts toward the leaderboard and the final score.

Lead-time scoring. For each of the 30 final instances, the team holding the best participant solution accumulates points for every calendar day they hold it during the ~4-week window, plus a bonus (B = 3 days) for holding the best solution at the close of the competition. See the Competition page for the formula.

The live leaderboard opens July 6, 2026 and closes August 1, 2026 when the competition window ends — it does not stay open until CSMIO. Winners present at CSMIO 2026 in Monterrey, October 7–9. See the Timeline page for the full schedule.

All submissions go through the official web platform. Manual or email submissions are not accepted. The submission format is defined in the technical specification, available on the platform.

Solutions that set a new best are recorded but not shown on the public leaderboard until the competition ends — this prevents teams from locally improving each other's results. After the competition, final solutions (but not code) are published as part of a permanent CLRP benchmark library.

Email contacto@smiochallenge.com. We'll update this page as we receive recurring questions.