South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Education said on Tuesday they will hold '2026 Click On AI Season 2' for six weeks from Oct. 15 to Nov. 25.

Click On AI is an event expanded and reorganised from the 'Online Coding Party' launched in 2015 into an AI-focused programme. It was introduced for the first time this year to strengthen the next generation's AI-based problem-solving capabilities and to help anyone easily and enjoyably experience AI.

About 1.7 million people took part in Season 1. Of four categories - AI experience, AI service use, AI coding and AI data use - the AI coding category accounted for about 48 percent of total participation. By programme, 'Coding Makes Even Animals Dance', 'Ajiteens career experience with AI' and 'Run! Pengsoo' drew the most participants, in that order.

Season 2 will involve 15 institutions, including EBS and the Naver Connect Foundation. It plans to run 44 programmes in total, adding 10 new programmes from Season 1. The new programmes diversified difficulty levels by reflecting feedback from Season 1 participants. It particularly reinforced the AI experience and AI data use categories among the existing four.

It will also expand events to encourage participation. In addition to the existing 'certificate verification event' and 'survey event', it prepared a new 'certificate ranking event' in which participants compete based on the total number of certificates issued after completing programmes.

Nam Cheol-gi (남철기), director general for software policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "In Click On AI Season 2, I hope it will be an opportunity to experience data use and strengthen problem-solving capabilities using AI."

Participation methods and detailed programmes can be found on the National AI Competition website.