OAN Staff Lillian Mann
5:57 PM – Friday, May 29, 2026
A 14-year-old from California has won the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee after correctly spelling 32 words out of 35 in 90 seconds during an intense, lightning-fast tiebreaker round in Washington, D.C.
Shrey Parikh, an eighth-grader from Rancho Cucamonga, outlasted the competition through 18 grueling regular rounds at DAR Constitution Hall before entering a high-stakes spell-off. Facing off against 12-year-old Ishaan Gupta of New Jersey, Parikh put on a masterclass in speed and precision, shattering the historical spell-off record by correctly locking in 32 out of 35 words in just 90 seconds. Gupta finished the rapid-fire round with 25 correct words.
After describing the intense nerves he experienced leading up to the competition, Parikh shared how all his stress disappears once he steps up to the buzzer.
“Once I get the word I’m not really nervous anymore, because then it’s all in my control,” he said after the tiebreaker.
The official winning word was, “bromocriptine” the Scripps National Spelling Bee wrote on a Facebook post. The word is a name for a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics the activity of dopamine.
The other words in the winning round Parikh spelled included fais-dodo, cywyddau, pohutukawa, émeute, natchitoches and taurokathapsia, according to the Facebook post.
“I was counting and I’m like, okay, this is more than 30,” said Parikh’s mother Khyati Mehta. “And at that point, I’m like, ‘I think this is it.’”
The spelling bee champion ran out of time before he could lock in his final word of “cashaw,” a type of plant. Nonetheless, Parikh set a new spell-off record.
“I was not excited at all, because to be honest, regular spelling I feel like is a much better show of what spelling is meant to be,” Parikh told reporters immediately after his win. “But I accepted the fact that there was going to be a spell-off, I calmed my mind, I got some water … and I just tried to take it all in stride and do the best I could.”
Parikh also said that the spell off “just came naturally,” to him and “spelling fast is what I do every day.”
The speller won a $52,500 cash prize and a trip to Universal Orlando Resort, along with hundreds of dollars’ worth of reference works, flight credits and an astronaut meet-and-greet at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
Sarv Dharavane, a three-time returning competitor, reportedly placed third after misspelling “disa,” a tropical African terrestrial orchid.
The victory comes after Parikh placed third in 2024, narrowly missing qualification for the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, according to an email from the organization.
“That made me more determined than ever to get back to the Bee and return to the finals,” Parikh said in a statement. “I put in more time on a consistent basis in my preparation. I used more tools to help me study. Everything paid off. I could feel the difference all week and was confident throughout the Bee.”
“There was only one word throughout the competition that gave me pause,” he noted. “That was ‘Bhubanes(h)war.’ There are optional spellings to that, so it’s tricky. But otherwise, I knew every word I had to spell. Looking back, that makes me see how much more prepared I was than in 2024.”
Over the past year, the eighth-grader has also won the SpellPundit National Spelling Bee, the Words of Wisdom Spelling Bee and the South Asian Spelling Bee, according to NBC Washington.
The speller shared he is looking forward to gaining a significant amount of free time, as Parikh estimates he has spent roughly five hours a day preparing for spelling over the past year. The 14-year-old now looks forward to focusing more on his other interests, particularly tennis and math competitions.
“Trying is the best thing you can do, and it’s the most important thing you can do,” Parikh shared after the win.
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