Three members from ALGO ARTIS—Matsuo (Principal Algorithm Engineer / 2025 World Championship Runner-up), Kajiwara, and Kitahara—have been selected as finalists for the Heuristic division of the "AtCoder World Tour Finals 2026" (AWTF, Organizer: AtCoder Inc.), the world's premier competitive programming competition, scheduled to be held on July 7-8, 2026. They are among only 12 finalists chosen globally. About AtCoder World Tour Finals 2026 Heuristic The "AtCoder World Tour Finals" is an invitation-only global tournament held annually by the competitive programming platform "AtCoder." It features two divisions: Algorithm and Heuristic. Both divisions are known as the world's top competitive programming events, allowing only the top 12 performers of the year to participate. The Heuristic division, where the three ALGO ARTIS members will compete, challenges participants to design and implement algorithms that find better solutions within limited time for problems that are difficult to solve optimally. Human vs. AI Exhibition Match Following last year's event, an "Human vs. AI Exhibition Match" against an AI agent sponsored by OpenAI will be held. A special award, the "Humanity Prevails Award," will be presented to the player who defeats the AI and wins the tournament. Three from ALGO ARTIS, including last year's World No. 2 Matsuo, to Compete In the "AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic" held in 2025, our own Matsuo achieved a second-place finish globally. For the 2026 competition, Matsuo will be joined by Kajiwara and Kitahara, making a total of three participants. Matsuo Mitsuru (terry_u16 / rank: 9) Principal Algorithm Engineer, ALGO ARTIS I am deeply honored to be able to participate in the AWTF, the pinnacle event for competitive programmers, for the second consecutive year. While AI has grown significantly over the past year, humans have also evolved. I believe we can showcase a different kind of battle compared to a year ago. Last year I was the runner-up, b