In December 1997, during the 9th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI1997, Cape Town, South Africa), five Ibero-American countries agreed to create a contest to prepare and select students from these countries for the IOI. And thus was created the Competencia Iberoamericana de Informática por Correspondencia (CIIC).
During the IOI2017, in Tehran, Iran, the parcitipating countries decided to update the name of the competition but to keep the CIIC acronym. The name of the competition was changed to Competencia Iberoamericana de Informática y Computación.
After the IOI2022, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the parcitipating countries decided to change the name of the competition to Ibero-American Olympiad in Informatics (OII).