Preliminary announcement. Details that are still to
be announced are listed on the Rules page; see also the timeline.
About
The computational development of optimization tools is a key component within the MIP community and has proven to be a challenging task. It requires great knowledge of the well-established methods, technical implementation abilities, as well as creativity to push the boundaries with novel solutions.
In 2022, the annual Mixed Integer Programming Workshop established a computational competition in order to encourage and provide recognition to the development of novel practical techniques within MIP technology. In 2025, it was renamed, with their permission, to honor Ailsa H. Land and Alison G. Harcourt (née Doig), who proposed the first LP-based branch-and-bound algorithm, a fundamental component of every modern MIP solver.
The competition is also supported by the Mixed Integer Programming Society (MIPS), a section of the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS), via the MIP workshop.
The topic of the 2027 MIP competition is "Explainability and Small Infeasible Subsystems". The goal is to advance the state of the art on computing small infeasible subsystems.
The jury will select one winner and up to two honorable mentions to present their work at the MIP workshop 2027.
Furthermore, we will provide the following:
- One representative of the winning team will receive travel support to the MIP workshop and free registration.
- High-quality submissions will receive an expedited review process in Mathematical Programming Computation.
Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| September 2026 | Competition topic announcement |
| October 2026 | Publication of rules, instance set and open registration |
| Mid-January 2027 | Registration closes |
| Mid-March 2027 | Final submission of code and report, evaluation on public and hidden set of instances |
| End of May 2027 | MIP Workshop: Winners announced |
Organizing Committee
- Pierre Bonami — Gurobi (chair)
- Gerald Gamrath — Cardinal Operations
- Shuvomoy Das Gupta — Rice University
- Reem Khir — Purdue University
- Gioni Mexi — Zuse Institute Berlin
- Thiago Serra — University of Iowa
For questions, feedback, or inquiries, please visit the competition GitHub repository: https://github.com/mixedinteger/MIPcc27, which hosts the solution checker and helper scripts, solution format, program interface, and sample instances. Participants can open an Issue or start a Discussion.