The Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad (APMO) is an annual mathematics competition for countries in the Pacific Rim region. It started in 1989. Its aims include discovering, encouraging, and challenging mathematically gifted high school students, and fostering friendly international relations and cooperation between students and teachers across the region.
Competition format:
The APMO is one four-hour paper with five questions of varying difficulty, each worth a maximum of 7 points. Each participating country has a representative who organizes the contest locally, and students sit the paper in their own country. Countries in Oceania and the Americas hold the contest in the afternoon of the second Monday of March, and countries on the Western Pacific and in Asia hold it in the morning of the second Tuesday of March. A central committee selects the paper, sends marking schemes, and determines award winners.
Who can take part:
Contestants must have been born less than twenty years before July 1 of the contest year. They must have been normally enrolled in full-time primary or secondary education on or after December 1 of the year before the contest; home-schooled students must not have received a high-school diploma (or equivalent) and must be working toward one on December 1.
All countries on the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia and the Americas, are eligible to participate, with the support of an appropriate educational or mathematical body. The official Countries page lists participating countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
How to enter:
Students enter through their own country's APMO organizers. Any number of students may sit the exam in a participating country, and each country sends the results of at most ten students, in ranked order, for official participation.
Awards:
Every contestant receives a Certificate of Award, Honourable Mention, or Representation. Gold, silver, and bronze awards are set from the mean and standard deviation of all scores, and the total number of awards is capped at (n+1)/2, rounded down, where n is the number of contestants, with more allowed when scores tie at the cut-off. Within each country, at most one student receives gold, at most three receive gold or silver, and at most seven receive any award. Honourable Mentions go to contestants without an award who performed creditably, for example by scoring a perfect 7 on at least one question.
Recent editions:
| Year | Countries | Contestants |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 43 | 397 |
| 2025 | 37 | 335 |
| 2024 | 38 | 345 |
APMO 2026 was held on March 9 (Oceania and the Americas) or March 10 (Western Pacific and Asia). Each student sat one regional paper.
2027 dates, checked November 4, 2026: The newly linked 2027 regulations, clauses 1.1 and 3.5(b), explicitly give afternoon March 8, 2027 for Oceania and the Americas and morning March 9 for the Western Pacific and Asia. The final yearly timetable retains older 2025/2026 labels and March 10–11, so it differs from those explicit 2027 clauses. These are alternative regional sittings, not continuous attendance.
The annual November 30 Participation Form requirement is for countries that did not submit at the Annual General Meeting. It is separate from national student entry/selection, for which no universal cutoff is supplied. The 2027 rules retain the existing age, schooling and maximum-ten official results requirements. Countries bear local costs; a universal student fee is not stated.
Official sources: