Russia’s Far North Is Turning Its Teens Into Tomorrow’s Tech Talent
At a new youth tech forum, officials in the Yamal region are betting that early exposure to coding, AI, and digital literacy will help build Russia’s next generation of IT professionals.
In November, the remote Yamal-Nenets region of northern Russia will host a youth tech forum aimed at helping high school and college students explore careers in IT. The event, called “Yamal’s Near-IT Specialist,” is part of a broader national effort to attract young people to the country’s fast-growing technology sector.
Building a Talent Pipeline Early
Over the past year, Yamal has organized more than 100 educational events — including coding classes, lectures, hackathons, and field trips — introducing over 5,000 students to programming, app development, and neural networks. According to Oboltin, more than 1,000 college students in the region are already training in system administration, information systems, and software development, while computer science has become the most popular exam subject among ninth graders, chosen by over 3,500 students.
At the upcoming forum in the city of Gubkinsky, participants will join phygital tournaments (combining physical and digital challenges), attend lectures from industry experts, take part in cybersecurity competitions, and explore career opportunities at a regional tech job fair.
A National Strategy for Tech Education
Oboltin emphasized that Yamal’s initiatives mirror a nationwide shift toward early IT education — from school-level coding contests to large-scale hackathons and accelerator programs.
For Russia’s Arctic frontier, where traditional industries like energy and logistics have long dominated, that future now increasingly runs on code.
