Parents of a child who is gifted at maths hear about Animath without always knowing what it is. A competition? A club? A prep course? It is an association, based at the Institut Henri-Poincaré in Paris, that runs much of what exists in France for young people passionate about maths: the Coupe Animath, olympiad training, the TFJM² tournament, the Alkindi competition, clubs and talks.
What really matters for families is the French olympiad training programme, the POFM. It is where the students who represent France at the international olympiads are trained, and it is one of the best things that can happen to a secondary student who loves to work on problems.
Olympiad training, plainly
The POFM trains and selects the French teams for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and several competitions on the same model: the European olympiad, the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO), the Junior Balkan olympiad and the Francophone olympiad. Each year it follows around a hundred students, from Quatrième (Year 9) to Terminale (Year 13).
The year rests on problem sets, worked on at home and sent back as written solutions that the trainers correct, and on tests taken at school. On top of that come residential camps lasting from a week to around ten days.
A common confusion: the POFM does not prepare for the Olympiades de première, which are run by the French Ministry of Education. They are two separate things, and a student can do both.
How to get in
Through a single door: the autumn Coupe Animath, at the start of the school year, open to all students from Quatrième. A first round online, done at home over a weekend, then a timed second round at school: three hours for collège students, four for lycée students, seven or eight problems of increasing difficulty.
Two details matter. Admission thresholds are set year group by year group: a Quatrième student is not compared with a Terminale student. And the official advice is that it is better to solve a small number of problems completely than to touch on all of them. That is the opposite of a good student's instinct, which is to attempt everything.
The calendar is strict: a student who missed the autumn Coupe cannot join the POFM during the year. What remains is the spring Coupe Animath, open to all except Terminale students, which selects for the ten-day summer camp at the end of August. For the youngest, from Quatrième to Seconde, a one-week camp takes place during the autumn half-term, selected on application: any maths activity outside class counts, and so does having registered for the autumn Coupe. Camp fees depend on family income.
What a student gains
I explained in is maths olympiad preparation worth it what competitions teach: how to search, how to persist, how to write a proof. Animath adds three things a student rarely finds elsewhere.
Proofs corrected by specialists. A lycée teacher, however good, rarely has time to read an olympiad proof line by line. POFM problem sets come back corrected, and it is by reading what was criticised that a student learns to write.
Permission to be stuck. The POFM advises its students not to look at solutions too soon, because learning to be "stuck" on a problem is part of the work. In class, a bright student is rarely stuck. Here they are stuck for days, and discover that this is normal.
Other students like them. This may be the most valuable part. A child who loves maths is often the only one of their kind in the class. At camp they spend a week with students who love the same problems. These students then meet again in the same prépas, the same schools, later the same labs and companies: a first network, built at fourteen.
From a French school abroad
POFM activities are open to everyone, including students who live outside France, and the camps welcome some every year. To be part of a French team, a student must hold French nationality, live in France or study at a French lycée. A student at the French lycée in Singapore or New York can therefore aim for the national team.
The resources are online and work anywhere: past Coupe papers, earlier problem sets, camp handouts and the POFM video channel. The POFM also recommends Mathraining, the Belgian olympiad training site where its own students practise.
The first encounter can be rough
Coupe Animath problems look nothing like a class test. A student averaging 18 out of 20 may solve only one in the second round. That is not a verdict on their level; it is a type of exercise they have never practised. Past papers from both rounds help them get used to it before the day; I ranked the other competitions by age in maths competitions in France by age.
I prepare students for the Coupe Animath in private lessons, using past papers from both rounds, and I read their written solutions line by line. For practice between lessons, Fields, our free tool, gathers past olympiad and Coupe Animath problems sorted by difficulty.
The 2026-2027 year. The autumn 2026 Coupe Animath took place in September, with the second round on 30 September: entry to the POFM is closed for this year. The next door is the spring 2027 Coupe Animath, with registration around late April and the test in May or June, which selects for the summer camp. The TFJM² 2027 problems are published from 4 November 2026. At IMO 2026 in Shanghai, the French team won five silver medals and one bronze and finished 15th, its best ever ranking. Sources: Animath and the POFM website.