India won one gold medal, three bronze medals and an honourable mention at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 in Romania, adding to the country's strong record in the international competition. The event brought together school students from more than 40 countries and tested their ability to solve language-based problems using logic and reasoning.
Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal for India, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra secured bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar received an honourable mention. Unlike traditional Olympiads, the competition does not require participants to have studied linguistics beforehand, as students are given problems involving unfamiliar languages and asked to identify patterns and structures.
India has participated in the International Linguistics Olympiad since 2009. The country's team is selected through the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO), which serves as the national selection competition. For the 2026 selection process, 525 students registered for the first round, while 338 appeared for the qualifying test held in February.
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Students who cleared the next stage attended a 10-day residential camp at IIIT Hyderabad from May 31 to June 10. The camp included lectures, mentoring sessions, problem-solving exercises, mock Olympiads and tests. The final team was selected based on performance in the second-round test, following which the selected students underwent further training before travelling to Romania.
The Olympiad focuses on logical thinking, pattern recognition and analytical skills. Participants may have to determine the grammar or structure of a language they have never encountered by studying examples and identifying recurring patterns. The skills developed through the competition can also be useful in fields such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing and language technology.
India's latest performance takes its overall medal tally at the International Linguistics Olympiad to 37, including six gold, nine silver and 22 bronze medals, according to the Panini Linguistics Olympiad. IIIT Hyderabad has been mentoring the national competition since 2015, helping train students for the international event and strengthen India's participation in linguistics and related fields.
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