Representatives of the Kazickas Family Foundation attended the event to support the participants, while the Foundation’s Executive Director in Lithuania, Domantė Howes, welcomed the students and presented awards to the competition winners and their teachers. Each year, the initiative is supported by the business community. This year, prizes for the winners were funded by Festo, Hostinger, Helmes, Coherent Solutions, KAYAK Lithuania, Accenture Lithuania, and Singletonas. For the first time, monetary prizes for the first-place winners of the regional rounds were also established by the philanthropic Devbridge Foundation.

Since 1997, the Faculty of Informatics at Kaunas University of Technology has organized the Dr. Joseph Peter Kazickas Student Programming Competition for students in grades 6 – 12. Each year, the event takes place in two stages: the first is organized remotely in regional school computer classrooms, while the second stage – a programming forum and in-person gathering – is held at KTU, where students solve tasks in the university’s computer labs.

Over the past three decades, this initiative has grown into a national event contributing to the development of young people’s technological skills across Lithuania, especially in more remote regions and smaller towns. Initially held only in Kaunas, the competition is now also organized in Vilnius and the regions of Aukštaitija, Dzūkija, Suvalkija, and Žemaitija. The initiative continues the vision of J. P. Kazickas to create equal opportunities for talented students from every corner of Lithuania.