LuminaMath National Mathematics Competition

Organization and Conducting Regulations 2026-2027

LuminaMath is a national mathematics competition for students in grades II-VIII, offering them the opportunity to test their knowledge at the national level.

This year we are organizing the 30^th edition of the LuminaMath competition. The competition will be held in two stages: Online Stage and Written Stage.

Our competition aims to attract children to the exact sciences, increase their performance in mathematics, familiarize students with the exam atmosphere and grid-type tests, as well as prepare them for international tests.

1. Calendar:

Registrations for the LuminaMath competition on the www.luminamath.org platform during the period September 8 - October 31 (registrations cannot be made after October 31)
*Important! *Important! If you participated in the previous edition of the LuminaMath competition, you do not need to create a new account. It is enough to log in to your existing account and confirm your participation in this year's edition of the competition. Register this student for the 2026 competition (Grade 5) by selecting copy to next year.

1.1. Online Stage:

Online stage primary level November 03 (time interval 10:00-21:00) *(*last login at 19:00)**
• Online stage middle school level November 05 (time interval  10:00-21:00) *(*last login at 19:00)**
• Display of results Online Stage - partial November 6
• Display of results Online Stage - final November 11
• Exam centers will be displayed in your personal account after November 20 if you have obtained the qualifying score.

*Important! No appeals are accepted for the Online Stage.

1.2. Written Stage:

• Contest Written Stage December 5, between 10.00-12.00
  ATTENTION! Grade II not to participate in the written stage!
• Display of partial results Written Stage December 18
• Contests Written Stage December 18-19 until 14:00
• Display of final results January 15, 2027

2. Participation fee

There is no participation fee.

3. Diploma and Awards

For participation in the online stage, all participants receive a participation diploma. You can download the diploma from your account.
Award diplomas are awarded according to the following score:
At the written stage, special prizes are awarded for primary school students.

Grades III-IV: Diplomas are awarded according to the following score for the written stage.
• 85-100 points – Diploma of Excellence
• 70-84.9 points – Diploma of Merit
• 60-69.9 points – Diploma of Appreciation
• 50-59.9 points – Diploma of Recognition

Grades V-VIII: Grades V-VIII: Diplomas are awarded according to the following score for thewritten stage.
• 85-100 points – First Prize
• 70-84.9 points – Second Prize
• 60-69.9 points – Third Prize
• 50-59.9 points – Mention

4. Winner of the LuminaMath National Mathematics Competition

Students who take first place at county level, for each class, provided they obtain a score of at least 90 points, benefit from a free online training course, of their choice, organized by the Lumina Education Center www.cedlum.ro, depending on the formation of the groups. If a group is complete or cannot be formed, we will contact you to find an available alternative together. The organizer reserves the right to cancel a course if the group cannot be formed.
For Bucharest, it is carried out separately for each sector, with one student ranked first in each sector being designated, under the same scoring conditions.

5. Registration

5.1. Online Stage:

Registration will be done between September 8^th and October 31^st online, on the platform www.luminamath.org, filling in all the data required in the registration form; after registration, the system will automatically send a confirmation e-mail containing the data entered for the respective user. The username will be the e-mail address with which the registration form was filled out, and the password is chosen by the user (parent/legal representative/teacher).

You will be able to log in to the site with the e-mail address and password you have chosen and you will be able to modify certain details of your account (school, county, etc.) except for the password and e-mail address.

IMPORTANT! We inform you that, on a single e-mail address, several students can be registered. section "Login - My Children" of your account.

To support the online stage, it is necessary to log in to the Login section, and next to each registered student a link will appear that redirects you to the exam platform.

*Important! If you participated in the previous edition of the LuminaMath competition, it is not necessary to create a new account. It is enough to log in to your existing account and confirm your participation in this year's edition of the competition. In your account, select the year 2025 and below you have the message: Register this student for the 2026 competition by selecting copy to the next year.

Please check by October 31^st

5.2. The Written Stage::

In this stage, only the students selected after the online stage will participate, according to the established criteria. These will be present in the centres set by the organizers and published on the official website www.luminamath.org. The centres will be published on the website so that the students can schedule their travel to the center where the written stage will take place.

6. Holding the competition

The competition is a multiple choice-type test. At online stage 15 questions for 2^nd – 4^th graders and 20 multiple choice problems for 5^nd-8^nd graders, at the written stage 30 questions for 2^nd – 4^th graders and 40 multiple choice problems for 5^nd-8^nd graders, each question having 5 multiple-choice answers.

The format of the competition is the same for the online stage and the written stage.
Students will choose only one correct answer.

7. Scoring

All exercises in the test are scored the same way regardless the difficulty level.

The formula for calculating the online score is:

The formula for calculating the final score is:

8. Duration of the competition

The duration of the competition is 70 minutes for online stage with the mention that in the online stage, the students can log in between 15:00 – 20:00.

For example: If a student logs in at 19:30 and starts the competition, then the system will allow them to answer the questions until 20:40 (when the 70 minutes will have run out).

For written stage duration of the competition is 2 hours (120 minutes) between 10:00-12:00

Considering that the average time for answering each question is 3-4 minutes, participants are advised to use their time efficiently.

 

9. Scoring

9.1. The online stage:

Scoring is automatic, thus ensuring the impartial computation of the scores and the ranking.

The computer will display each question one by one on the screen. During the competition, starting the moment the students press "start" online, they cannot pause. If they want to postpone solving a problem, the students can press next, and the computer will display the next question. At the end of the test, only if they have more time, the students can choose to solve the unsolved problems, but this option will be available only once. The results of the online stage will be published on the November 18^th 2024. The students who qualify for the written stage will be the first 50 to obtain the highest scores from each grade in each county and to obtain at least 50 points, and for Bucharest, the first 50 students to obtain the highest scores on a sector level and to obtain at least 50 points.

Beware! If for a grade (2nd grade, 3rd grade, etc), from a county, there are less than 50 students registered in the online stage, all of them will qualify for the written stage which will take place at a center chosen by the inspectorate, but there will not be a winner of the national camp. The national camp is awarded to the student with the highest score in the county if less than 50 students qualified at the written stage in that grade.

 

9.2. The written stage:

Only students qualified after the online stage will take part in this stage.

Travelling expenses of the students will not be incurred by the organizers.

Filling up correctly the answer sheets is part of the game. The answer sheets must be filled up with th a pen/pencil, and the encirclement must be done sharply, so that the computer can read the answers from the sheets. The computer may not recognize other symbols (crosses, lines, dots, etc). The answer sheets must not have stains or erasures.

The computer points out the situations where the test has not been solved individually, thus the student will be eliminated from the competition.

Scoring is automatic, thus ensuring the impartial computation of the scores and the ranking.

The scores and rankings will be published on the official website www.luminamath.org.

Between December the 23^rd, 2024, the partial scores of the students will be published online (in each participant's account), and between December 23^rd-January 03^rd 2025, they may file appeals. On January 14^th, 2025, the final rankings will be published.

 

10. Tiebreaker

The following rules apply for the 50 students who obtained the highest scores in each grade, in each county:

10.1. If there is a score tie, the student who received a higher coefficient will qualify for the next stage. The coefficient is made up of: the total number of correct answers, the total number of correct answers with a higher difficulty level (A), the total number of correct answers with a medium difficulty level (M), and the total number of correct answers with an easy difficulty level(E).

The difficulty level of the questions will be set after the competition, according to the percentage of correct answers for each question. This algorithm will be used to set the difficulty levels for all the questions. The first 14 questions with a lot of correct answers will be considered E, the next 8 questions will be M, the next 4 questions will be A and the last 4 questions will be F.D. For 5^th-8^th grades, we will have the following distribution according to the number of students that answered correctly: the first 14 questions with the most correct answers will be considered E, the next 12 questions will be M, the next 8 questions will be A and the last 6 will be considered F.D.

10.2. If more than one student have the same score and the same coefficient, all of them will qualify.

10.3. If there are more than one student with the same score and the same coefficient on the 50^th place, all of them will qualify for the written stage.

This statute applies to the International Mathematics Competition Luminamath 2024-2025. Any changes of the present statute will be sent to the schools taking part in the competition. You can check the entire statute here...