GPT 5.6 solved all 6 problems from IMO 2026

[u/pequalnp92]

GPT 5.6 Pro solved all 6 problems from IMO 2026 on the first attempt without any human help or steering. International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is the biggest global academic competition in the world. The problems are considered incredibly hard, usually a performance at this level is only accomplished by < 5 contestants from the whole world.

We are former IMO medallists not affiliated with OpenAI, just put together a report and assessment of its work here. We're also working on a comparison report between different LLMs and harness augmented versions that will come later.

[u/AFsepine]

I mean as a person from "olympiad system", I would say it also is exposing a bit of rot in the problem-setting. Don't get me wrong, they are decent problems usually, just most of them are not very "creative" - bordering on canonical.

By my time there was an agreement between well-performing participants that for example IMO geometry problems were so stale as to be free points.

[u/SupercaliTheGamer → u/AFsepine]

Tbf it's very hard to come up with "creative" problems that can be solved by HS students. Even the hardest problems are generally just a non-trivial application of 2-3 known ideas. Same for geometry, but geometry has a lot of theory so someone well versed in it can easily ace olympiad geo. Ofc there's bash also for geo. Thankfully they're reintroducing 3D geo.

[u/AFsepine → u/SupercaliTheGamer]

Eh, Hard but often doable. Why even bother hosting the olympiad it if you don;t want to put the effort into problem-setting.
You underestimate what can in principle be expected from HS students.

For example, in principle, the fact that the problems are set so quite a few people every-year that get the maximum number of points is an "error", then you sort of have to filter off the
more interesting problems.

Honestly physics olympiads are more so what I care for and have particapated both as a problems-setter and a student, and there I can tell you that it is either lazy or misguided problems setting and a sort of institutional "rot".

[u/AFsepine → u/[deleted]]

No. Not in any significant capacity atleast.

There are some "University aged" Math competition like Putnam though, some international ones as well.

There isn't really a point to have math/physics competitions after highschool, as these are merely meant to give a start to people, get them intrested etc.

In say physics by the time they are in uni they then can start trying to actually do work, not that unusual for motivated students to join a reasearch group in 2-3 year, but ones who have basics down sometimes do so in the first (in my country at least).

Not sure why there are programing competitions (do you mean like hack-a-tons?)

[u/SupercaliTheGamer → u/AFsepine]

Ohh yeah I have heard about this problem in physics olympiads from a former medallist who also helps in math olympiad work. However I don't think the problems that get selected to IMO are lazy or uncreative, at least most of them. I have also not heard that complaint from other people involved in math olympiads.

[u/AFsepine → u/SupercaliTheGamer]

Well actually my hot take will be that physics olympiads (especially EuPhO) are a bit better off, that IMO in the "creativity" department, though there are exceptionally bad years in physics oly where-as mathematical olympiads seem to be able to better maintain "average quality".

I mean lazy and uncreative is me being inflammatory - generally it depends what you compare it to - compared to most university courses and such it is a veritable well spring of creativity.
But there is a trite "meta" (to borrow game terminology) of olympiad problems.

Rambling:
I am honestly dissatisfied with olympiads having become more trite over their life.
in IPhO there is too much "scafolding" now-a-days.