The IOAA voted with an overwhelming majority the following resolution on 18 August 2025, during its annual meeting:
IOAA will not stop students from Israel and their mentors from participating in future events. They may participate as “Individual Olympiad Participants (IOP)” under the IOAA flag. However, use of country name (Israel), national flag or any other national identifiers will remain suspended for this team.
Date: 29 August 2025
On 18 August 2025, during its annual meeting, the international board (IB) of IOAA deliberated on the issue of participation of Israel. The discussions that took place during the meeting and decisions taken by the board are purely of internal nature. However, in the last 10 days there have been several news reports published regarding this issue and there has been a flurry of social media posts around it. Given this, the executive committee of IOAA would like to put the following facts on record.
The world of today sees a lot of conflicts in different corners, which may be either short-lived or disproportionate, prolonged, and/or indiscriminate. Whenever such matters are brought to the IB’s attention, the IB adheres to established processes to duly note and address them through appropriate discussions and vote.
The issue of Israel’s action in Gaza was first briefly discussed during IOAA 2024 held in Brazil. However, since neither Israel nor Palestine had ever participated in IOAA, no action was deemed necessary. In IOAA 2025, both Palestine and Israel expressed interest in the pre-registration phase. However, only Palestine completed the registration and participated, but Israel withdrew their expression of interest. Hence, the IOAA clarifies that no Israeli student has ever participated in any of the 18 editions of IOAA held so far, and no Israeli national was ever stopped from participating in IOAA.
During the IOAA held in Mumbai, the issue of Israel’s participation in IOAA was discussed at length in a fair, transparent and democratic manner. The current IB includes more than 120 individuals from 63 different countries. However, the IB members participate in IOAA deliberations in their individual capacity and their views do not necessarily reflect the official position of the countries they come from. At the end, the following resolution was passed with an overwhelming majority:
IOAA will not stop students from Israel and their mentors from participating in future events. They may participate as “Individual Olympiad Participants (IOP)” under the IOAA flag. However, use of country name (Israel), national flag or any other national identifiers will remain suspended for this team.
The present classification of Israel as IOP can be changed in future when the IB deems such a change is warranted.
It is not the first time that the IOAA IB has taken such a step. In 2022, similar strictures were passed against Russia and Belarus for their role in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. It is also noted that IOAA becomes the second International Olympiad after the International Olympiad on Informatics (IOI) to pass strictures in case of Israel and multiple International Olympiads have passed similar strictures in other cases.
It is clarified that the IOAA international board is an international body founded on democratic principles, and deliberations in its meetings are independent of the host country of IOAA. The host country and the local organizing committee/host institution have no role to play in setting the agenda of the board meeting, do not participate in the discussion, and hence cannot influence its decisions in any way.
IOAA Executive Committee