FOBISIA Code Breaking Maths Challenge from BISP (2026)

You will find the 202 FOBISIA competition in the menu above.  This will run from Monday 21st September 2026 until Friday 25th September 2026.  

Code Levels 1A and 1B are intended to be accessible to both KS2 and KS3 students

Code Levels 2A and 2B are intended more for KS3 and KS4 students

Code Levels 3is intended for KS4 and KS5 students.

Code Level 4 is intended for KS5 students and teachers.

Bonus Code Level is an added challenge in which students learn how to use Python programming to crack codes.

Last year we had over 120 schools and close to 45,000 leaderboard entries – hopefully this year will be just as successful!

Sponsorship

This year we are grateful to be sponsored by Jane Street – who have provided sponsorship to cover medals and trophies for top students and schools. They describe themselves as follows:

Jane Street works differently. We are a quantitative trading firm active on more than 200 trading venues across 45 countries. As a liquidity provider and market maker, we help form the backbone of global markets. Our approach is rooted in technology and rigorous quantitative analysis, but our success is driven by our people

You can find out more about Jane Street and potential work opportunities here.

IB Resources

If you are a teacher then please also check out my intermathematics resources for supporting IB Mathematics. At the last count, several thousand pages of worksheets, puzzles, quizzes, tests and more.

Maths and code breaking have a long and shared history. The skills that make good mathematicians, problem solving, logical thought and perseverance are the same skills that make great code breakers.

Governments and companies that deal in digital data are always on the look out for talented mathematicians – so who knows, maybe one day you could be a professional code maker or code breaker.

Many thanks – and good luck!

Andrew Chambers