Purple Comet! Math Meet

What It Is

The Purple Comet! Math Meet is a free, annual, international, online, team mathematics competition designed for middle and high school students. Our contest is run from the contest website at https://purplecomet.org. It has been held every year since 2003. In 2025 over 4100 teams registered from 80 countries.

How It Works

Every team needs an adult supervisor at least 21 years old. Before any teams can be registered, the Adult Supervisor must register at the contest website by submitting name and contact information. We recommend that this be done well before any of the supervisor’s teams are ready to compete. Although registration is usually open at any time, much of the functionality of the website is currently shut down while the site is being completely rebuilt in preparation for our 2026 contest. We anticipate that supervisor registration will resume in January 2026.

Once supervisors are registered, they may sign up as many teams as they want. Team registration usually begins in February and continues through the last day of the contest.

Who Is Eligible

The contest has two levels: Middle School and High School. Any student who has not completed grade 8 and is younger than 16 years old may participate on a middle school level team. This includes elementary school students. Any student who has not graduated from high school and is younger than 20 years old may participate on a high school level team. This includes middle school or even elementary school students. Grade levels are based on those common in the United States, and teams registering from other countries should use locally equivalent grades to determine eligibility.

Team Categories

Each team that registers chooses a name, is from a designated country, lists the names and grades of from one to six team members, and participates in one of four categories: Large School teams (for teams where all its students attend the same large school), Small School teams (for teams where all its students attend the same small school), Mixed teams (for teams where its students attend more than one school or are homeschooled), and non-competitive teams (for teams that do not want their scores posted or compared to other teams’ scores). For middle school level teams, a small school is one with no more than 400 students. For high school level teams, a small school is one with no more than 1200 students. Because scores for non-competitive teams are not compared to those of other teams, no eligibility rules apply to non-competitive teams. Adults and others who would be ineligible to compete on a Large School, Small School, or Mixed team are welcome to participate on a non-competitive team.

Each team can have from one to six team members. Although teams with only one student are allowed, we recommend that teams have more than one member so that they do not miss out on the collaborative nature of our contest design.

Taking The Exam

Each year, the Purple Comet! Math Meet runs for a ten-day period usually in April. Each team selects a time during that ten days in which to compete. Middle school level teams receive 60 minutes to work on 20 problems. High school level teams receive 90 minutes to work on 30 problems. When it is time for a team to compete, its team supervisor logs into their supervisor account and starts the team’s clock. The team may then log into their team account and view the contest problems on the screen. Team supervisors have access to PDF versions of the contest problems and can prepare printed copies of these problems for the students to use if they like. The PDF versions are made available in about two dozen languages. Next to each problem displayed on the screen is a text box where answers to the problems may be entered. All problems have answers which are nonnegative integers. Students are encouraged to click a SUBMIT button frequently during their exam period as a way to ensure that their answers are being recorded properly by the contest website.

Results

After the end of the ten-day contest period, supervisors are given the scores of each of their participating teams. A few days later, a full contest results report is published and supervisors are provided with either certificates of participation or certificates of merit for each student participating in the contest. There are no other awards.

Other Information

Generally, the Purple Comet! Math Meet website has

• Complete contest rules and instructions
• Contest flyers and posters
• Problem sets and results from all the previous contests
• Ways for supervisors to run practice contests for their registered teams
• Information about making donations to the Purple Comet! Math Meet

Unfortunately, much of this information is currently unavailable as the Purple Comet! Math Meet website is being rebuilt. We anticipate that full functionality will return in January 2026.