Indian-origin Shrey Parikh wins US Spelling Bee in dramatic tiebreaker; clinches Rs 50 lakh prize money

Indian-origin teenager Shrey Parikh won the 2026 Scripps US National Spelling Bee on Thursday after defeating Ishaan Gupta in a tense lightning-round tiebreaker. The 14-year-old Shrey from Rancho Cucamonga, California, got 32 words right to be crowned the best young speller in the English language, while Ishaan spelled 25 words correctly in the tiebreaker.

The winning word was "bromocriptine," which is "a polypeptide alkaloid that is a derivative of ergot and mimics the activity of dopamine."

Shrey will be taking home $52,500 for winning the 2026 Spelling Bee title, which is around Rs 50 lakh Indian rupees.

Shrey Parikh: The new US Spelling Bee champion

Shrey had finished third in 2024 but lost his school bee last year when he was battling a fever. He has dominated the bee circuit since, winning several highly competitive online competitions against many of the same kids he outlasted this week in the nation’s capital.

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Ishaan, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Jersey City, New Jersey, was a semifinalist this year, outperformed some veteran spellers in the finals and has another year of eligibility left.

Sarv Dharavane, a 12-year-old sixth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, finished third for the second consecutive year and has two more years to improve that placement.

For the first time in the bee’s history, second- and third-place finishers from the same year have gone on to win. Faizan Zaki won last year, and two years ago he was the runner-up, just ahead of Shrey.

Sporting a business-casual look with a dark, long-sleeve collared shirt, khakis and sneakers, the lanky Shrey strode to the microphone with a dour, apprehensive expression that instantly vanished when he heard his word from pronouncer Jacques Bailly and nodded vigorously — his tell that, yes, he knew it.

Upon hearing the announcement confirming his victory in the spell-off, Shrey turned and shook his competitor’s hand.

Shrey’s coaching team

He can credit his victory to intense preparation. Shrey’s coaching team included Sam Evans, who has tutored each of the past three champions, and Sohum Sukhatankar, a co-champion himself in 2019. He competed nonstop against other top spellers, pored through advanced study guides and tried to eliminate the variables that had led to the few unexpected exits of his long spelling career.

Former spellers, coaches and other observers described this group of finalists as unusually strong, and they showed off their skills early by going 18 for 18 to start, breezing through the first spelling and vocabulary rounds. Aiden Meng of Orinda, California, ended that streak when he was tripped up by “catometope” to start the second spelling round.

Then the crowd gasped when the bell rung on two thought to be capable of winning it all: Oliver Halkett for “Faesulae” and Zwe Spacetime for “vaesite,” words with tricky combinations of origins and vowel sounds.

With agency inputs