Israeli teen’s IOI gold medal revoked after displaying Israeli flag at awards ceremony
Team leader Ryvchin Ryvchin said the competition “was really great,” despite the incident, with three Israeli students winning gold and one bronze.
In Uzbekistan, a 17-year-old Israeli student, Yotam Budnik, had his gold medal stripped at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) after raising the Israeli flag during the awards ceremony. The IOI hosts had prohibited Israeli contestants from using national symbols since the October 7 attacks. Despite this, Yotam believed the rule was unjust, as his team was competing as independent contestants rather than representing Israel.
He felt that Israeli students were being erased from their national identity and decided to protest by displaying the flag. The international committee subsequently disqualified Yotam, despite his refusal to hand over the medal until his teammates received theirs. The organizers later removed him from the IOI website and changed his score to zero, officially disqualifying him as an IOI gold medalist.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
