Alberta has one math contest of its own, the Alberta High School Mathematics Competition, written November 24, 2026. Your school has to register by November 12, so ask a math teacher before then. The rest of the year's contests come from the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Mathematical Society.
The main contests this school year, in order
| Written | Contest | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 29, 2026 (over) | COMC, all grades | 2.5 hours |
| Nov 18, 2026 | CIMC and CSMC, Grades 9 to 12 | 2 hours |
| Nov 24, 2026 | AHSMC round one, Alberta high school | 80 minutes |
| Feb 3, 2027 | AHSMC round two, by invitation | 3 hours |
| Feb 23 and 24, 2027 | Pascal, Cayley, Fermat, Grades 9 to 11 | 60 minutes |
| Usually late March | Canadian Mathematical Olympiad, by invitation | 3 hours |
| Apr 6, 2027 | Euclid, final year of high school | 2.5 hours |
| Apr 7, 2027 | Fryer, Galois, Hypatia, Grades 9 to 11 | 75 minutes |
| Apr 13, 2027 | Team contest, at Waterloo or in school from Apr 14 | Teams |
A teacher has to sign you up
Schools order these contests, not students, and each one has an ordering date weeks before it is written. Ordering for the November 18 Waterloo contests closed on October 22. The next dates are February 9 for Pascal, Cayley and Fermat, and March 11 for Euclid, Fryer, Galois and Hypatia. If nobody at your school has asked, nobody orders, and no student there writes it that year. So the ask comes before the studying.
The Alberta High School Mathematics Competition
Round one is 16 multiple choice questions in 80 minutes with no calculator, written at your own school. Your school's top three scores form its team. Alberta high school students can write it, and junior high students can with a teacher's recommendation.
Round two is 5 full-solution problems in 3 hours. The top 50 from round one are invited, plus the top five in Grade 10 who are not already in, plus students their schools nominate, one for every 20 who wrote. This round decides the money, $1,500 for first, $750 for second and $500 for third.
A school pays $2 a student for the first 30 and $1 after that. If yours is not taking part and you live in Edmonton or Calgary, you can register to write at MacEwan or the University of Calgary until those seats fill. The competition's page names who to contact.
When the COMC is, and how long it takes
The Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge runs 2.5 hours with no calculators or devices. The 2026 sitting was Thursday, October 29, so that round is over. Preliminary scores are expected in December, with official results usually in early January. Registration for the next one opens around September 2027.
Anyone can write it, in any grade. In 2026 a school paid $30 a student for PDF papers or $35 shipped, and a student whose school was not writing it could enter through a host university. To count as an official participant you have to be under 19 on June 30, a full-time student, and writing with an approved proctor. That matters because it is the door to everything above it.
- The Canadian Mathematical Olympiad invites about the top 100 qualifying students once official COMC results are out. It has five questions in three hours, usually in late March.
- Math Team Canada is chosen largely from the Olympiad, and it writes the International Mathematical Olympiad in the summer.
Past the COMC there is no form to fill in. Invitations rest mostly on your contest record from this year and earlier ones, and Canadian rounds usually need citizenship or permanent residence.
The Waterloo contests
The University of Waterloo's Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing runs four sets of contests, plus the team one in the table. Picking between them comes down to your grade.
- Grade 9. Pascal and Fryer, plus the CIMC.
- Grade 10. Cayley and Galois, plus the CIMC.
- Grade 11. Fermat and Hypatia, plus the CSMC.
- Grade 12. Euclid and the CSMC. Younger students are welcome on Euclid too.
Pascal, Cayley and Fermat are 25 multiple choice questions out of 150. Fryer, Galois and Hypatia are 4 questions out of 40, where you write out your reasoning. You can write only one contest from each of those two groups in a school year. The CIMC and CSMC have 9 questions out of 60, six where only the answer counts and three full solutions.
Euclid, and what it does for Waterloo
Euclid is the one most students have heard of. It has 10 questions in 2.5 hours, out of 100, at $18 a student, with results in four to six weeks. In 2026, 23,985 students wrote it. The average was 52.2, and a score of 66 reached the top quarter. So a score that feels low may not be.
Waterloo says plainly that you do not need Euclid to get into its Faculty of Mathematics. It does use contest results for scholarships, and the faculty's scholarship pages say how. If you are aiming there, read those before you decide how much time to give it.
Others worth a look
- AMC 10 and AMC 12 are the American contests, 25 questions in 75 minutes, and the usual proof of math for an American university application.
- Math Kangaroo is written the same day at centres across Canada, so check that one is close enough. The 2026 contest ran March 22.
- CEMC Math Circles is free weekly math online from the same Waterloo centre. Winter 2027 registration opens in January.
- Canada/USA Mathcamp is a residential summer program in university-level math, free for Canadian families with household incomes under US$100,000.
What a result does for a scholarship application
A contest score is checkable in a way that most of a scholarship application is not. An honour roll or a Certificate of Distinction is evidence you can name, and the awards on the STEM scholarships page are the ones most likely to ask for it. If you like the format, the chemistry contests work the same way, and all of them are on the math and physics list.
Dates, lengths and rules here are from the University of Alberta's competition page, the Canadian Mathematical Society and Waterloo's contests page, checked on November 5, 2026. Confirm the current year there before you plan around it.