Math and coding competitions for kids in the USA, by grade

Sources, all read on November 1, 2026 (or on October 31, 2026 for raw copies re-checked that day): moems.org, noetic-learning.com, mathleague.com, mathleague.org, cmleague.com, mathcounts.org, mathkangaroo.org, mathcircles.org, bebraschallenge.org, firstinspires.org, robotevents.com, soinc.org, acsl.org, usaco.org, uscyberpatriot.org, societyforscience.org, girlswhocode.com and hourofai.org. AMC contests are omitted: their organizer’s site could not be read.

MOEMS. The MOEMS preparation guide suits a fourth to eighth grader who likes a short, deep puzzle, since each sitting holds only five problems. It lays out the five 2026 to 2027 windows, the award ladder and a strategy toolkit, and every problem in it was written by our teachers.

Noetic. Noetic starts at grade 2 and writes a separate problem set for every grade, so a second grader never meets fourth grade content. Our Noetic contest guide covers the fall and spring windows, the official At-Home Edition, and bar-model drawing for comparison word problems.

Math League. Two separate organizations share this name, which confuses many parents. The Math League contest guide untangles mathleague.com from mathleague.org, explains this year’s calculator reversal, and shows how a scoring rule with a penalty changes when a student should guess.

Continental Math League. CML asks students to choose between two divisions that differ mainly in how much reading the questions demand. Our CML preparation guide sets out the meet dates for grades 2 to 9 and teaches a read, restate, then solve habit for wordy problems.

Several contests compared. If you are weighing MATHCOUNTS against Math Kangaroo and MOEMS for a middle schooler, our middle school math competitions comparison puts the three side by side and shows how much time each format gives a single problem.

Math circles. Not every strong young mathematician wants a stopwatch. The online math circle guide explains what a circle is, where the US network came from, and how an exploration session differs from contest practice,.

Art of Problem Solving. Many contest families use AoPS books or classes. Our neutral AoPS comparison sets the options out by criteria rather than claims, so a parent can decide whether live small-group teaching, a self-paced platform or a campus program fits their child.

What changed this year. The Math League (mathleague.com) first said calculators would be banned from its 2026 to 2027 contests, then posted a notice dated July 4, 2026 allowing them this school year and moving the ban to the next. MATHCOUNTS, meanwhile, says it is developing a standalone program for grades 3 to 5; no dates for it were posted on November 1, 2026.

Regeneron ISEF. A high schooler with a software, math or robotics research idea should read the ISEF computer science project mentoring guide. It covers the affiliated-fair route, this season’s AI-use rules and fair comparisons across seeded trials; the research stays the student’s.

Girls Who Code. A student finishing a free club year often asks where to go next. The Girls Who Code next step page maps the Clubs and Pathways programs by grade and shows how to move from block code to Python one block at a time.

After the Hour of Code. Since the Hour of Code became the Hour of AI, many teachers and parents are unsure what follows a one-hour activity. Our after Hour of Code guide lists the free CodeAI courses by grade and teaches loops by spotting repetition, including the classic fencepost slip.

The calendar. Families entering three or more programs should keep the US competitions calendar for 2026 to 2027 open while planning, since it lists every dated deadline month by month and marks which ones need an adult to register.

Where independence rules apply. Society for Science says an ISEF project should reflect independent research done by the student and asks that any mentor’s part be set out in the research plan; FIRST’s participation rules say all work presented at events is the work of the children on the team. We follow both: a teacher explains methods and questions a plan, but never writes the code, the paper or the robot program.

1. Find the grade band. Read your child’s row in the grade table above and cross off anything outside the organizer’s published range.
2. Pick the kind of challenge. Short puzzles (MOEMS, Bebras), longer timed papers (Noetic, Math Kangaroo), team contests (MATHCOUNTS, Science Olympiad), coding with automatic judging (ACSL, USACO), or builds (FIRST, RECF).
3. Check the entry route. Ask the school first. If the school does not take part, use the routes table to see whether a parent, a homeschool group or an outside coach can register, and whether the result would be official.
4. Count the season. Mark every sitting and deadline on one calendar. A student entering three contests can easily face two in one week in November 2026, when MOEMS, Noetic and Bebras windows all open.
5. Keep one, add one. Commit to one contest for the year and try one more for a single sitting. After the season, keep whichever your child would choose to do again without being asked.

November 2026 is crowded. Bebras runs November 9 to 20, MOEMS contest 1 runs November 9 to 30 and the Noetic fall window runs November 12 to 25, all in 2026, while ACSL contest 1 has been open since October 19. For a younger child, two sittings in one fortnight is enough; spring is lighter, with Noetic’s second window from April 1, 2027 and The Math League’s grade 4 and 5 contests on or after April 15.

Our rule in class. No real contest item, sample question or answer key is put in front of a student. Each lesson takes one idea (an organized list, working backward, a loop, a base change), shows it once on problems our teachers wrote, then mixes problems so the student must choose the idea alone. The organizer’s own free samples are kept for a final timed run.