Bebras Malta highlights student excellence and academic collaboration

The Bebras Malta National Challenge 2025/2026 concluded with an awards ceremony held at the Faculty of ICT, University of Malta on 23 March 2026, recognising outstanding student achievement in computational thinking.

Bebras Malta is driven by a collaborative effort between four academics across two Faculties at the University of Malta: Prof. Christian Colombo and Prof. Vanessa Camilleri from the Faculty of ICT, and Prof. Leonard Busuttil and Dr Diane Vassallo from the Faculty of Education. This cross-faculty initiative reflects a shared commitment to bridging computing and pedagogy and to embedding computational thinking meaningfully within education.

Bebras is an international initiative running in over 75 countries and engaging more than 4 million students annually. It introduces computational thinking through short, engaging problem-solving tasks that require no prior coding experience, focusing instead on logic, reasoning, and structured thinking.
At its core, Bebras is about stimulating curiosity. Through carefully designed, playful challenges, students engage with puzzles that invite exploration, experimentation, and discovery. These activities demonstrate that complex ideas can be approached in accessible and enjoyable ways, encouraging learners to persist, reflect, and think differently.

Equally important is the role of educators. Teachers play a critical part in guiding and contextualising these experiences, helping students move beyond simply finding answers towards understanding underlying concepts, strategies, and ways of thinking. In this sense, Bebras is not only a student initiative, but also a pedagogical one.

This year, approximately 3,500 students from across Malta participated in the challenge, spanning all educational levels from Year 2 to Sixth Form. Participation grew by 23% compared to the previous year, reflecting increasing awareness of the importance of computational thinking as a foundational skill.
The awards ceremony recognised top-performing students across six age categories, celebrating not only excellence but also curiosity, perseverance, and the ability to approach problems in thoughtful and structured ways.

Initiatives such as Bebras Malta demonstrate how collaboration between disciplines can create meaningful educational impact, equipping students not simply to use technology but to understand it, question it, and ultimately shape it.

For more information, visit Bebras Malta.