About Modern Cipher Challenge 2026

Modern Cipher Challenge 2026 is a student made and led cryptography competition inspired by the National Cipher Challenge. It will run in parallel with the NCC, providing students an opportunity to learn about modern cryptography through NCC style challenges.

Across ten challenges, participants will progress through a series of increasingly difficult cipher-related problems, with each challenge introducing new techniques and concepts relevant to modern day cryptography.

Who is MCC 2026 for?

This challenge is designed to challenge all participants. It primarily targets students from secondary school to university who enjoy National Cipher Challenge and want to take part in a fun side competition.

Most participants are expected and encouraged to use the hint system for each challenge, which, over several days of hints, will build up the knowledge to be able to solve each challenge themselves. More experienced students might also require several hints in the harder final challenges.

How to take part?

You do not even need to register to take part in the challenge, simply visit the Challenges page and click on a challenge to get started.

If you want to join the public leaderboard and receive feedback on your submissions (other than just correct or incorrect), you will need to create an account and sign in. You can do this by clicking the "Login" button in the top right corner of the page.

Scoring the challenge

Scores are calculated based on the time taken to correctly solve each challenge from first release, boundary deadlines will be visible within each mission's page.
The score is only saved if you are signed in.
Missions 1-3 are warmup missions and will not count towards your final score.

Since this challenge does not have prizes, the leaderboard is more of a friendly competition between participants.

Good luck and have fun!