About ITMO Mega School

The school features lectures and workshops by ITMO’s lecturers and corporate partners. All activities are held online, allowing participants to learn from anywhere in the world. As part of the school, students will get to meet the university’s experts in IT, AI, physics, chemistry, and other fields, as well as receive firsthand information about studies at ITMO.

In total, applicants can choose out of 24 tracks; eight of them are new in this season. These include: 

• Applied Genomics;
• ML System Design;
• Accessibility for Developers;
• Chemical Materials Science in Energetics;
• Digital Humanities;
• SRE Practices;
• Foodtech;
• Biopharmaceutics.

The Applied Genomics track, for instance, will run as a boot camp in which participants will attend lectures by ITMO and industry experts, work in teams, and solve real-world business cases. For their final task, students will be asked to build their own pipelines for analyzing data and solving biological problems. Participants of the Foodtech track will, too, present their own mini-projects – for them, expert-led lectures will be followed by cases from the food industry. 

Find out more about the school’s tracks on its official website.

How to apply

The school is open to Bachelor’s, Specialist’s, and Master’s students of any Russian university, as well as those with a higher education degree of any level. To participate in the contest, applicants need to register on the website, fill out a questionnaire, and select the track of their interest. Applicants are free to apply for several tracks at once, but lectures and classes within all tracks are held at the same time. 

The application deadline is January 27, 2026, 11:59 pm (GMT +3).

Mega School in 2026

Dates: January 28-30, 2026.

Format: online.

Most of the school’s tracks are held over the course of three days. Students will first attend themed lectures for all tracks; then, they will have classes in the track of their choice and a knowledge test by the end of the course. 

Lectures. Lectures on the first day will be delivered by ITMO professors and invited experts. Recorded materials will be available on the school’s website. Participants will also be able to ask their questions in a designated chatroom.

Tracks. On the second and third days, students will enjoy classes within their tracks: they will attend lectures, practical classes, and workshops, as well as discuss topical problems. There will be no recordings – students are required to attend these classes in person. 

Final task and results. At the end of the course, participants will need to complete a final task, the format of which depends on the chosen track. For example, students of the AI track will need to pass a knowledge test and build their own AI solutions, while those of the Biopharmaceutics track will be tasked to present their mini-projects and solutions for tasks proposed by experts.

Winners will be announced on the school’s website by February 8, 2026; they will be able to enroll in ITMO Master's programs within their track without entrance exams. Over the course of four years, the school has welcomed a total of 4,000 university students and graduates from more than 30 Russian cities; 490 of them enrolled at ITMO via this opportunity.