Hi everyone,
Two things: submission selection for the Phase 1 private re-evaluation is now open, and Phase 2 starts on 18 August 2026, 00:00 UTC.
In the Phase 1 update we said each team may select up to two submissions for the private re-evaluation, and that we’d write with instructions. You can now do it yourself, on the challenge page.
TL;DR
- Select up to 2 submissions per team on the Submissions page
- Selection closes 11 August 2026, 23:59 UTC — a day after Phase 1 itself closes
- Select nothing and we enter your two highest-ranked submissions on the Phase 1 public leaderboard
- You may now also nominate a submission that failed grading, if you believe it was wrongly rejected
- Phase 2 opens 18 August 2026, 00:00 UTC
How to select
Open the Submissions tab and switch the scope to Your team — the page opens on everyone’s submissions by default, and your team’s are behind that toggle.
A panel above the table shows what’s being asked: how many slots you’ve used, when selection closes, which submissions are currently in, and what happens if you leave a slot empty. Use Select on any row to put it in a slot, Remove to take it back out. You can change your mind as often as you like until the deadline.
Selections belong to the team, not to the person who made them: any member can select or remove on behalf of the team, and everyone sees the same two slots.
Dates
Phase 1 submissions close 10 August 2026, 23:59 UTC
Submission selection closes 11 August 2026, 23:59 UTC
Phase 1 write-up deadline 17 August 2026, 23:59 UTC
Phase 2 opens 18 August 2026, 00:00 UTC
Selection stays open for a day after Phase 1 closes, so you can decide once you’ve seen your final results, if by chance, the last minute eval queue swells beyond the Phase 1 submission deadline.
Phase 2 opens 18 August
Phase 2 opens on 18 August 2026, 00:00 UTC — the day after the Phase 1 write-up deadline, and once the Phase 1 private re-evaluations have been completed. That leaves the week of 11–17 August between the two phases.
We’ll post the Phase 2 details separately, closer to the date.
Nominating a failed submission
We’re allowing you to nominate a submission that failed grading, if you wish. This is aimed particularly at submissions our automated filters marked as failed where the underlying work was legitimate — for instance, an estimator making honest use of the residual wall-time for genuine estimation, as opposed to using it to conceal compute from flopscope’s metering and buy a sampling advantage beyond what the challenge design permits.
Nominating one is your assertion that it sits on the legitimate side of that line. We review each case individually.
Two practical notes: the automatic fallback never picks a failed submission for you, so if you want one considered you have to select it explicitly; and a failed submission carries no score, so it can’t be ranked until we’ve looked at it.
Reminder
Prize rankings come exclusively from the post-Phase 1 private re-evaluation, on a freshly generated test set with private seeds. Your position on the public leaderboard doesn’t carry over — so select the submissions you believe will generalise, not the ones that scored best on the 50 public MLPs.
If anything looks wrong, reply here or open a topic on the challenge forum.
All the best!
Mohanty