India secured one gold medal, three bronze medals and an honourable mention at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 held in Romania, continuing the country’s strong record at the global competition for pre-university students.
Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra won bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar received an honourable mention.
The International Linguistics Olympiad brings together school students from more than 40 countries and challenges them to analyse unfamiliar languages and identify grammatical, phonological and structural patterns. Unlike conventional subject Olympiads, participants do not require prior knowledge of linguistics. Instead, the problems emphasise logical reasoning, pattern recognition and computational thinking.
India has participated in the IOL since 2009. According to the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO) at IIIT Hyderabad, Indian participants have so far won 37 medals at the international competition, including six gold, nine silver and 22 bronze medals, along with several best-solution awards and honourable mentions.
The Indian team for IOL 2026 was selected through the Panini Linguistics Olympiad, the national-level competition that identifies and trains students for the international event. The selection process began with registrations in November 2025, followed by a qualifying contest in February 2026. Of the 525 entries received for the first round, 338 students appeared for the qualifying examination.
Shortlisted students then attended a 10-day residential camp at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) from May 31 to June 10. The camp included lectures, mentoring sessions, problem-solving exercises, mock Olympiads and evaluations. The final team was selected based on performance in the second-round test, followed by an intensive boot camp before the delegation travelled to Romania.
The Indian delegation was led by Prof. Parameswari Krishnamurthy of IIIT Hyderabad, who is involved in coordinating the Panini Linguistics Olympiad.
IIIT Hyderabad has mentored the Panini Linguistics Olympiad since 2015 through its Language Technologies Research Centre. The programme works with academic institutions across India, including IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Patna, IIT Indore and IISc Bengaluru, to train and mentor students.
Beyond the competition, the Olympiad is increasingly serving as a pathway into fields such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing and language technology. IIIT Hyderabad has noted that several former PLO participants have pursued higher studies and careers in AI and NLP.
India’s latest performance in Romania highlights how linguistics Olympiads are helping students develop analytical and computational skills while opening doors to emerging fields at the intersection of language and technology.
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