A creative technology company Reaktor and a game developing studio Supercell (famous for Clash of Clans, Hay Day) are organizing the first ever worldwide programming championships in the next summer in Helsinki, Finland.

The event is called Hello World Open 2014 and culminates in the finals held in Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki on the 5th of June.

The participants need to gather a team that consists of 1-3 members for the competition, everyone from the same country, and everyone with a valid passport (duh!) The best of the best to pass the qualifications will, of course, go to the finals in Helsinki.

The task is to create an artificial intelligence for a racecar. 

The sign up for the competition starts on the 31st of March and ends on the 7th of April.

Qualifying rounds are held in 6th - 8th May. The regions are

1. North & South America

2. Europe + Africa

3. Asia + Middle East + Oceania

The clash of six of the worlds toughest teams that meet in the finals which will be broadcast online.

Sources: http://helloworldopen.com/ , http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/Helsinki+is%C3%A4nn%C3%B6i+ensi+kes%C3%A4n%C3%A4+koodauksen+MM-kisoja/a1395197318046

A friendly competition is all in good fun, but I wonder if the Supercell sponsorship is any kind of hint that they're looking for talented new programmers? The company is obviously huge, and hugely growing as well (with GungHo and softbank buying a 51% stake in the company for $1.53 billion). No idea how a racing game from them would look (probably with lots of microtransactions, but cute :3 )

DISCUSS!

First ever? Right. There have been tons of championships for e.g. the best autonomic car, best robot football team, ... and they are all "global". Even the Global Game Jam is somewhat of a championship.
Sounds like huge PR.

Ironically, this is the first I hear of a programming championship, even if it makes sense that they have been held in places before. Perhaps it's the first that is actually positioned as a global championship?

Well, whatever, I am more interested in knowing what's supercell's interest in it - is it a real way of recruiting programmers?

Winner: the clowd

Need a regular season

nice! should be awesome, but do they provide a racecar and/or environment? or is that part of the challenge as well

Of course there is PR involved, why else companies would sponsor events?

There is a huge demand of gaming programmers and other coders in Finland, so as Helsingin Sanomat states, the event's purpose is to promote Finnish as well as international programming know-how. 

I would believe there is also a posibility to get recruited by Supercell, if you are good enough!

They did not mentioned that anywhere. I bet in the finals everything is arranged for the competitors. If you are interested, I suggest you to contact the organizers. 

Suomi Finland perkele.

Terve.