A few minutes ago ICPC World Finals 2023 contestants (and presumably coaches and also 2022 people) received an email with the following content
19 January 2024
2023 ICPC World Finals Participant,
ICPC and AASTMT are thrilled to announce the new dates for the ICPC 2023 World Finals in Egypt: April 14-19, 2024.
Your updated invitation letter will be posted to your dashboard by end of day Tuesday, January 23, 2024. You will receive additional information on applying for your Egyptian visa at that time.
We are moving the location to a famous city on the Nile River. We are requesting additional flights which should be available when we publicly announce the official location no later than January 31, 2024. Please wait to book your flight until then.
The 2023 ICPC World Finals Organizers
So it looks like WF will be on-site and in Egypt :^)
UPDATE: No email was sent yet, but the ICPC website was updated with information about the location. ICPC WF 2022/2023 will be in Luxor!
UPDATE: An email was sent but it hilariously has the placeholder 'XXXX' instead of the actual city.
2023 ICPC World Finals Participants,
Your invitation to ICPC World Finals Egypt should appear on your dashboard over the next 48 hours! You will receive confirming email.
See you in XXXX, Egypt!
The ICPC World Finals Team
Confirming that 2022 contestants also received this message.
Some speculation: my understanding from prior discussions (others can correct me if I'm wrong) is that "a famous city on the Nile River" suggests either Cairo or Luxor as the location. The Cairo airport is much larger and is served by many more airlines, so the fact that ICPC is working to request additional flights but has not committed to either location suggests that they're aiming for Luxor but will fall back to Cairo if they feel that flight availability will pose an issue.
ACPC is only held either in Luxor or Sharm El-Sheikh. So, I guess it will be in Luxor.
I am fairly certain that Luxor is their first choice, but they realized that there are not enough flights to accommodate the event.
Also It can be Alexandria. But I really hope, that it will be Cairo.
By the way Luxor is much better and interesting than Sharm El-Sheikh
Interestingly, the website already mentions Luxor as the location: https://worldfinals.icpc.global/ I wonder if this is intended.
It’s well known that ICPC is not very good at communicating with us. But it seems that they have this issue even inside their organization. The logo in the website still says “Sharm el-Sheikh”.
Can anyone enlighten me, what kind of issues are solved by moving the site from Sharm to Luxor?
Sharm is located at the Sinai Peninsula, right next to Israel and the Gaza Strip. Luxor is inland, 500km from the border so I guess there should be fewer security concerns.
Not sure about traveling plans though, most people will have to transit twice which is not ideal :/
Also unrelated but lots of good stuff to see around Luxor if you are into archaeology, like the Valley of the Kings (where many Pharaohs are buried, notably Ramesses) or the Luxor Temple
The day they announced the rescheduling of World Finals, an explosion struck Taba and Nuweiba, other Egyptian cities on the Sinai coast. Presumably it was intended for somewhere in Israel, but it originated from Yemen, to the South, so I don't see any reason why it couldn't have hit any other city on the Sinai coast (Dahab, where excursions were being planned, isn't that far from Nuweiba). Given the timing of events and what's been officially announced, I wouldn't be that surprised if this event was "the last straw" that convinced the organizers to move the event, but who knows.
Canadian schools (at least UofT and UWaterloo) have their final exams during this time period. Unlucky.
I wonder how many Canadian participants are still doing courses? This WF is so delayed that it feels almost everyone has graduated. (Personally, I graduated almost two years ago now.)
It will probably impact the '23 WF more than the '22 WF. But also Canadian schools form a small portion of ICPC NA teams so I doubt it will be noticeable...
At least at the UofT team, there is a second year undergrad: bonopo
Anywhere in the site of ICPC, was it announced which keyboard they would give us?
https://docs.icpc.global/worldfinals-programming-environment/
Thanks!