3 min readNew DelhiAug 10, 2026 06:28 PM IST
India’s contingent at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 in Romania has won one gold medal, three bronze medals and an honourable mention, continuing the country’s record of winning medals at the international competition for pre-university students, IIIT Hyderabad said in a statement.
Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra secured bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar received an honourable mention. The competition brings together school students from more than 40 countries and tests their ability to identify patterns in unfamiliar languages using logic and analytical reasoning.
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India has participated in the International Linguistics Olympiad since 2009 and has consistently secured recognition at the competition. According to the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO), at the IIIT Hyderabad, the Indian contingent has so far won 37 medals: six Gold, nine Silver and 22 Bronze, along with nine ‘best solution’ awards, 19 honourable mentions and other team-level honours.
The 2026 Indian contingent was selected through the Panini Linguistics Olympiad, the national-level competition that serves as a screening test for identifying and preparing students for the International Linguistics Olympiad. The process began with registrations in November last year, followed by the a national level qualifying contest in February 2026.
A total of 525 entries were received for the first round, of which 338 students appeared for the qualifying contest. The top performers subsequently advanced to the second round and an invitational camp.
The final stage included a 10-day residential camp at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) from May 31 to June 10. As part of the camp, students participated in lectures, mentoring sessions, problem-solving exercises, mock Olympiads and evaluations. The final team selection was based on scores in the second-round test.
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The two winning teams selected through the process then underwent an intensive boot camp before travelling to Romania for IOL 2026. The Indian delegation was led by Prof Parameswari Krishnamurthy of IIIT Hyderabad, who is involved in coordinating the Panini Linguistics Olympiad.
IIIT Hyderabad took over the mentoring of the Panini Linguistics Olympiad in 2015. The institute’s Language Technologies Research Centre works with the PLO community on training and mentoring students for the international competition. The programme also has regional centres and academic collaborators across the country, including IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Patna, IIT Indore, IISc Bengaluru and other institutions.
Unlike subject olympiads that require specialised prior knowledge, linguistics olympiad problems are designed around unfamiliar languages and require participants to identify grammatical, phonological or structural patterns. The problems therefore test logical reasoning, pattern recognition and computational thinking rather than prior knowledge of linguistics, or any .
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The competition has also become a pathway for students interested in areas such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing and language technology. IIIT Hyderabad has noted that several former PLO participants have gone on to pursue higher studies and careers in AI and NLP.