California: Shrey Parikh, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student from Rancho Cucamonga, California, won the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee after a dramatic spell-off finale in which he correctly spelled 32 words within 90 seconds to secure the championship title and a $50,000 cash prize.
Parikh defeated Ishaan Gupta, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Jersey City, New Jersey, who correctly spelled 25 words from the same list during his turn in the rapid-fire tiebreak round.
The two finalists advanced to the decisive spell-off after surviving 18 intense rounds on the final day of competition without making a spelling mistake.
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The spell-off format was introduced in 2021 following the unprecedented 2019 competition that ended with eight co-champions after contestants continued spelling words correctly through multiple rounds.
Organisers said that Shrey’s winning word was ‘bromocriptine,’ described by the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as “a polypeptide alkaloid that is a derivative of ergot and mimics the activity of dopamine.”
Shrey secured his place in the spell-off after correctly spelling ‘Philepitta,’ a genus of birds native to Madagascar, while Ishaan matched him in the 18th round with ‘Ertebolle,’ a term referring to an Early Neolithic or Late Mesolithic culture in the Baltic region.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is among the most recognised academic competitions in the United States and traces its roots back to 1925, when the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper launched a national spelling contest for students.
Over the decades, the competition has grown into a highly competitive academic event attracting participants from across the United States and around the world.
Contestants qualify through local and regional spelling bees, where they are challenged to spell increasingly complex and obscure words by using clues such as pronunciation, language of origin and definitions.
This year, 247 finalists aged 15 and younger competed in the nationally televised event held over three days at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington.
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