At the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 in Romania, India claimed one gold medal and three bronze medals. Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra won the bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar got an honourable mention. This success clearly shows the increasing capability of India’s students in logical language solving. Contrary to traditional contests where most memorization is involved, the International Linguistics Olympiad requires contestants to solve problems by decoding new languages, discovering hidden patterns and reasoning.
Who Got Medals for India at IOL 2026?
The following are the students who won medals in Romania,
- Shrilakshmi Venkatraman – Gold Medal
- Aarav Anil Rao – Bronze Medal
- Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan – Bronze Medal
- Advay Misra – Bronze Medal
Soham Amit Pednekar got an Honourable Mention.
What Is the International Linguistics Olympiad?
The International Linguistics Olympiad is an international competition among pre-university students.
In this competition, students get language-related puzzles where the language concerned may not be one that they know. It is not about how good their memory is or their understanding of grammatical rules; rather, it is about how they find out the linguistic rules from the available information.
The questions can pertain to areas like,
- Grammar
- Sentence construction
- Phonology
- Derivation of words
- Language patterns
Intensive Training at IIIT Hyderabad
Short-listed students attended a 10-day residential camp at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H) from May 31st to June 10th, 2026.
The camp puts strong focus on the development of analytical and problem-solving abilities through,
- Lectures
- Mentorship sessions
- Practice problems
- Mock competitions
- Evaluation tests
The second round of the test was used for selection of the final Indian team. The selected teams received further intensive training before heading for Romania.
Professor Parameswari Krishnamurthy of IIIT Hyderabad headed the Indian delegation.
Strong Showing by India in Linguistics Olympiad
India is participating in the International Linguistics Olympiad from 2009 onwards and has established a strong record during this period.
According to Panini Linguistics Olympiad, Indian students have won 37 medals till 2026, which included,
- 6 Gold medals
- 9 Silver medals
- 22 Bronze medals
Indian participants had also won 9 Best Solution Awards and 19 Honourable Mentions apart from several other distinctions at team level.
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