Indian-American teenager Shrey Parikh won the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Friday after correctly spelling 32 out of 35 words in a high-pressure 90-second spell-off, setting a new competition record and continuing the long dominance of Indian-origin students in the prestigious contest.
The 14-year-old eighth grader from Day Creek Intermediate School in California clinched the title after correctly spelling “Bromocriptine” in the final round, defeating 12-year-old Ishaan Gupta of Frank R Conwell Middle School in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Twelve-year-old Sarv Dharavane from Peachtree Charter Middle School in Tucker, Georgia finished third.
Ishaan received USD 25,000 in prize money, while Sarv took home USD 15,000.
Parikh also surpassed the previous spell-off record set in 2024 by Bruhat Soma, who had correctly spelled 29 out of 30 words.
“Spelling fast is what I do every day,” Shrey said in comments after winning the competition.
Parikh, who had also reached the finals in the 2024 edition, won several prizes including USD 50,000, a commemorative medal, the Scripps Cup, USD 2,500 from Merriam-Webster, USD 1,000 in flight credits from Delta and USD 400 worth of reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The three-day competition began Monday at D.A.R. Constitution Hall in Washington with 247 contestants representing all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Defence Department schools in Europe, and five other countries — the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.
Nine contestants advanced to the finals held on Thursday evening.
Shrey and Ishaan each had 90 seconds to correctly spell as many words as they could, served from the same list.
Shrey had previously competed in 2022, when he tied for 89th place, and again in 2024, when he tied for third place.
According to the biography shared by the Spelling Bee, Shrey enjoys tennis, reading, math and chess. He also plays percussion in his school band and has performed on instruments including the snare drum, bass drum, timpani, toms, break drum, triangle, glockenspiel and marimba.
He spends much of his free time solving math problems or spending time with his siblings. Shrey has travelled to several countries and particularly enjoys visiting India to meet his grandparents.
Apart from spelling, one of his proudest achievements was qualifying for the California state Mathcounts competition this year.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee was first held in 1925 to test spelling, vocabulary and language skills through multiple rounds of increasingly difficult words. Participants are generally required to be under 15 years of age and must not have progressed beyond the eighth grade.
Indian-origin students have dominated the competition for decades since Balu Natarajan became the first Indian-origin winner in 1985.
This year, five of the nine finalists were of Indian origin.
