Real-world university course timetabling at the International Timetabling Competition 2019

The paper discusses the organization of the International Timetabling Competition (ITC 2019), which intends to motivate further research on complex university course timetabling problems coming from practice. Thanks to the UniTime timetabling system, we have collected a strong set of benchmark instances with diverse characteristics for the competition. The key novelty lies in the combination of student sectioning with standard time and room assignment of particular course events. The paper analyzes the real-world course timetabling problems present in the competition. The characteristics of thirty competition instances are described together with their representative features, which are discussed institution by institution. The existing solvers are described and compared based on their competition, current, and time-limited results whenever available. As of October 2023, the competition website has about 490 registered users from 66 countries worldwide and is kept up to date with new results.