Nexon celebrates 10th anniversary of NYPC coding festival

Participants of Nexon Youth Programming Challenge 2025 solve problems during an event at Nexon Korea headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Oct. 25, 2025. Courtesy of Nexon

Nexon’s corporate social responsibility program, Nexon Youth Programming Challenge (NYPC), marked its 10th anniversary, successfully establishing itself as a platform that helps young people see the world differently through coding.

Under the slogan “Coding that changes the world,” NYPC began in 2016 as a contest that introduced creative questions and simulator-based interactive challenges, allowing students with no prior coding experience to join easily.

Since 2017, the contest has attracted more than 4,000 participants each year, drawing over 40,000 participants since starting, with 673 finalists and 193 award winners, to establish itself as Korea’s largest coding festival for young people.

During the program’s run, winners have also made various social contributions to help reduce digital polarization and promote coding culture. In August last year, NYPC winners visited middle and high schools in Jeju — which has the nation’s widest gap in coding education — and offered coding-mentoring sessions, level-based classes and problem-solving workshops.

A sample question from the Nexon Youth Programming Challenge 2025 / Courtesy of Nexon

NYPC has drawn particular interest because its challenges are based on the intellectual properties of popular Nexon titles such as MapleStory, Mabinogi Mobile and Dave the Diver. Each year, the contest features a mix of algorithm problems, interactive challenges that students can attempt through simulators even without coding knowledge and other creative questions proposed by Nexon employees.

The program has also allowed participants to review past questions on coding education platform BIKO, helping them track their progress each year and set new goals suited to their skill level.

Marking its 10th anniversary, Nexon for the first time introduced CODE BATTLE for the 2025 NYPC in October. CODE BATTLE is a team-based programming contest for university students, in which participants develop optimal strategies within a given game environment, compete against opposing teams and test their problem-solving and collaboration skills.

In a survey, 52 percent of teenagers who joined the program were first-time entrants, while more than 90 percent said they would be willing to compete again next year. Notably, 80 percent expressed their intention to compete in CODE BATTLE, showing how NYPC is evolving into a community that offers a continuous pathway for growth from teenagers to university students.

“NYPC has gone beyond a simple coding contest and has become a platform that gives young people the experience of communicating with the world and solving problems through technology,” Nexon Foundation Chairman Kim Jung-wook said. “We will continue to create opportunities for participants.”