Coding competitions take programming out of the classroom and into the real world! They offer kids a fun challenge where they can push themselves to learn and apply their knowledge in a meaningful way. Entering a coding competition for middle school students will make your child’s coding journey more interactive, social, and exciting.
Middle school is a prime time to explore if coding is right for your child. Kids who have a competitive spirit can build real-world skills, practice teamwork and communication, and add to their college resume. Not only that, they walk away with awards and gain recognition for showcasing their hard work and skills.
To get started, I’ve rounded up 7 exciting coding competitions designed for middle school students.
Get Ready for Middle School Coding Competitions
Many of these coding competitions utilize Python and JavaScript, two of the real-world programming language we teach in our Middle School Core Track.
Students who learn to code at CodeWizardsHQ have the support of their instructors and our community as they compete. Not only will they learn the technical skills, but the perseverance, critical thinking, and creativity to win top prizes.
We even host our own Logic Challenge for grades 3-12 and a Code Challenge in our student platform. Students get to compete weekly with coding questions they answer to win prizes, one of the many ways we have gamified our coding program. This is one way we encourage and motivate kids to keep learning.
Learn more about our Middle School Coding Program and how we teach coding to kids ages 11-13.
Coding Competitions for Middle School Students
- American Computer Science League (ACSL)
- Congressional App Challenge
- Cyber Patriot
- Bebras
- FIRST LEGO League Competition
- NASA App Development Challenge
- Scratch Olympiad
Coding Competitions for Middle School Students
1. American Computer Science League (ACSL)
Participants: K-12 Grades
Dates: Nov – May
Location: Virtual
Cost: $50-$150 per team
Prizes: Prizes, Certificates
The American Computer Science League (ACSL) organizes computer programming and computer science contests for K-12 schools, organizations, and local groups. Students join as a team led by a teacher or parent advisor, but complete the tests as individuals. The season is divided into four contests conducted through HackerRank over the academic year. At the end, the top-scoring students are invited to compete in an invitation-only Finals.
The Junior Division is for junior high and middle school students (up to grade 9) who are learning programming or who have coding experience. The contests test students on fundamental concepts in computer science, ranging from Number Systems to Boolean Algebra to Digital Electronics. In this division, there is also a problem to solve using programming in Python 3, Java, or C++. Each contest consists of a short answer test and an online programming problem to solve.
The ACSL tests students on their coding knowledge and application. It’s ideal for kids who want to learn throughout the year and deepen their understanding of computer science concepts.
2. Congressional App Challenge
Participants: 6-12 Grades
Dates: May – Oct
Location: Virtual, U.S. Congressional Districts
Cost: Free
Prizes: Display in the US Capitol, #HouseOfCode Event Invite
Both sides of Congress can agree on the importance of computer science and STEM education. This competition is for kids who feel inspired to use technology to get involved in their community. It gives them a chance to explore STEM and coding through hands-on practice.
The Congressional App Challenge is a US-based competition hosted by members of Congress to promote STEM education among today’s youth. Middle school and high school students work individually or in teams to code an original application, written in any programming language, that addresses a problem locally, nationally, or globally. Winners from each congressional district are invited to Washington, D.C., for the annual #HouseOfCode event, where they showcase their apps to lawmakers and the tech community.
The goal of the app challenge is to encourage students to learn to code and inspire them to pursue careers in computer science. The competition engages students from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the tech community and also emphasizes making coding more accessible. Apps are graded on creativity, concept, and design, and don’t have to be technically sophisticated to win.
Visit Congressional App Challenge website
3. Cyber Patriot
Participants: Middle & high school students
Dates: April – October
Location: Virtual
Cost: $50,000 scholarship
Prizes: $205 per team
The National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, hosted by CyberPatriot, puts teams of 2-6 students in the position of newly hired IT professionals managing the network of a small company. Teams are given virtual operating systems and compete in multiple rounds to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services. Each team, with the support of a coach and mentor, has to complete two challenges during their six-hour competition period: The Network Security Challenge and The Cisco Networking Challenge.
The competition provides access to 12 training modules and 4 practice rounds before the scored competition kicks off. They have access to archived training materials on the public side of the website. The top teams in the nation win a trip to the National Finals Competition. There they earn national recognition and scholarship money, like $50,000 from Northrop Grumman.
There are very few competitions that cover cybersecurity in-depth. The structure of this competition provides a lot of training, education, and practice along with mentorship.
4. Bebras
Participants: 6-18 years old
Dates: November
Location: Virtual, In-person
Cost: Free
Prizes: Certificate
Bebras is an international initiative aimed at promoting Informatics (Computer Science, or Computing) and computational thinking among school students from 6 to 18. The Bebras Challenge tests your child’s logic and computational skills through a set of fun and challenging problems. These are the same problem-solving skills that software engineers use to write programs and apps.
You can break these skills down into smaller and more familiar components like pattern recognition, algorithm design, data analysis or abstraction.
There are several age categories middle school students can play in, such as Benjamins (age 10-12) and Cadets (age 12-14). The questions are designed to help students explore their talents and passion for informatics and computational thinking with engaging challenges. Skills which can be used in many areas of school, work, and life.
During the competition, each group will get 3 sets of 5 tasks. The challenge itself is coordinated by a teacher and takes place in the classroom. The 3 sets each have a level of difficulty: easy, medium, or hard. Studentswill have 45 minutes to complete as many tasks as they can. The tasks can all be completed without any preparation or studying. The best students from each age group are invited to spend a day at a university working on more exciting tasks.
5. FIRST LEGO League Competition
Participants: 4-16 years old
Dates: August – April
Location: In-person
Cost: $275+
Prizes: Trophies, medals, and certificates
FIRST LEGO League is a STEM program and competition for children. It introduces STEM through fun, hands-on learning and robotics. Students will learn the basics of STEM and apply their skills in an exciting competition while building habits of learning, confidence, and teamwork along the way.
The program has three divisions: Discover (ages 4-6), Explore (ages 6-10), and Challenge (ages 9-16). Middle school students will compete in the Challenge division with a group. Teams practice year-round for the competition. Starting with a Kit of Parts, student teams design, program, and build industrial-sized robots to play an action-packed game. They compete on a themed field as part of a three-team alliance in the spirit of Coopertition, meaning that teams help and cooperate with each other even as they compete.
These competitions combine the excitement of a sporting event with the rigors of science and technology. The FIRST Robotics Competition season culminates with district and regional events where qualifying teams compete for awards and a spot at the FIRST Championship. The competition features a variety of awards recognizing different aspects of a team’s performance, including engineering, design, teamwork, community outreach, and leadership.
Visit FIRST LEGO League website
6. NASA App Development Challenge
Participants: Middle & high school students
Dates: April
Location: Virtual, In-person
Cost: Free
Prizes: Recognition by NASA and features on NASA platforms
Middle school students have the opportunity to be a part of something that’s out of this world! The App Development Challenge is a coding challenge in which NASA presents technical problems to middle and high school students seeking student contributions to deep space exploration missions. These innovations help NASA’s exploration to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
In previous competitions, middle school teams created an application displaying in real-time the path of the Artemis II mission and created a prioritized list of antennas which have line of access to Artemis II. There was also a bonus task of displaying and smoothing out trajectory data received.
Students compete in teams of at least 5 students and can use any programming language (Java, C#, C++, Scratch, etc.) to complete development of an application. The top teams advance to present their app at Johnson Space Center in Houston with NASA subject matter experts from the SCaN team.
Visit NASA App Development website
7. Scratch Olympiad
Participants: 7-18 years old
Dates: May – Sept
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free
Prizes: Prizes, Certificates
The Scratch Olympiad is an international competition that challenges kids to do creative programming on Scratch or RobboScratch. Each year, the Olympiad sets a central theme, for example, “Sports Mania: The Ultimate Challenge” in 2025. Kids compete individually to interpret the theme into innovative projects — games, animations, stories, or educational tool – and solve a series of challenges. The challenges will test their creativity, problem-solving skills, and understanding of programming concepts.
Middle school students compete with programmers from around the world in different categories based on their age, like My book (9-10 year old), Know-all, 11-12 year old, and Games (13-14 year old). Students with no experience can join and learn Scratch as they go.
Scratch makes learning to code a visual and event-driven experience, which is ideal for younger students. Coding in Scratch is a gateway for them from block coding into text-based programming. Without worrying about syntax, middle school students can solve problems and express their creativity in Scratch. Participating in Scratch Olympiad is not only a fun and engaging way to learn programming, but it also provides contestants with valuable skills that they can use in their future academic and professional pursuits.
Visit Scratch Olympiad website
Prepare Your Middle School Student for a Coding Competition
If your child wants to compete in coding competitions, they can learn to code with CodeWizardsHQ. Our coding program teaches students fundamental coding concepts that they can flex to win prizes and recognition.
The Middle School Coding Program is for kids, ages 11-13, to kickstart their coding journey in Python, one of the most popular languages for developers. The first course, Intro to Programming with Python, introduces fundamental programming concepts while building fun, interactive projects. Once kids have mastered the fundamentals in Python, they transition into learning other essential languages such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Students will also learn how to integrate databases and APIs into their projects to build robust, feature-rich applications like those we use today.
Kids will feel more than prepared and confident going into a competition with the right tools and skills. Learn more about our top-rated coding classes and enroll to get started.
