CodeVita is a knockout: everyone starts in the Pre-Qualifier, the top slice moves to the Qualifier, and a few dozen fly to India for the Grand Finale. Every round is an open-book, six-hour contest on your own laptop — you can consult references, but you must declare any external code you adapt before submitting.
Stage-by-stage
| Stage | Mode | Problems | Duration | What it decides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MockVita | Online, unproctored | 6 per mock | 6 hours | Practice only — not scored |
| Round 1 — Pre-Qualifier | Online (Zone 1 / Zone 2 slots) | 6 | 6 hours | Qualification to Round 2; Ninja-track interview calls |
| Round 2 — Qualifier | Online | ~8 (harder) | 6 hours | Finale seats; Digital / Prime-track interview calls |
| Grand Finale | In-person, TCS campus in India | ~10 | Single sitting | Top 3 share USD 20,000; internships & offers |
Round 1 — Pre-Qualifier
Held in two zones (Season 13: Zone 1 on 24–25 November 2025, Zone 2 on 8–9 December 2025) so that time zones and college calendars can be accommodated. You pick one slot. Six problems, six hours, graded on hidden test cases: a problem counts only when every test case passes. Difficulty runs from a warm-up implementation problem to two or three that need graph theory, dynamic programming or number theory.
Round 2 — Qualifier
Only a thin top slice of Round 1 is invited — TCS does not publish the cut-off, but it is a few thousand students out of lakhs. The set is larger (around eight problems) and noticeably harder — most qualifiers solve two to four. Rank here decides finale seats and the Digital / Prime interview list.
Grand Finale
Season 13 flew 30 finalists (22 from India, 8 international) to a TCS campus for a live contest of about ten problems, followed by a prize ceremony. Season 13 also added an AI-assisted mini-round in which finalists could use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — AI use is restricted to that finale round only; the online rounds are you and your compiler.
Contest rules worth memorising
- Attempt the problems in any order; multiple submissions per problem are allowed.
- Use "Compile & Run" with your own inputs before submitting — hidden tests punish edge cases.
- A session expires after 15 minutes of inactivity; save your code locally as you go.
- Declare adapted external code before submission. Undeclared plagiarism is a disqualification.
- Languages typically offered: C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby and JavaScript — the exact list is on the contest "Languages" tab.
Ranking is by problems solved, then by time — so solving the easy problems early and cleanly beats a half-finished attempt at the hardest one. See how to prepare for a round-day plan.