All-Gold Haul! India Secures Rank 1 At International Chemistry Olympiad, Bags 4 Golds

Tashkent: India recorded its best-ever performance at the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) 2026 held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Indian students secured the country's first-ever all-gold haul and shared the first position with China, Vietnam and Individual Participants Group B (from Russia).

As many as 363 students from 93 countries participated in the Olympiad, making it the biggest IChO till date.

Indian Star Performers

All four students from India bagged gold medals at the International Chemistry Olympiad:

1. Debadatta Priyadarshi from Bhubaneshwar, Odisha
2. Harshit Singla from Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab
3. Kabeer Chillar from Delhi
4. Sandeep Kuchi from Hyderabad, Telangana

The team was accompanied by Head Mentor Professor Subhajit Bandyopadhyay (IISER Kolkata), Mentor Dr. Indrani Das Sen (HBCSE), and Scientific Observers Dr. Anubendu Adhikary (IIT Kharagpur) and Dr. Jayasree Gopalakrishnan (NES Ratnam College, Mumbai).

The 12 Problems

The Olympiad had 12 problems- 9 theoretical and 3 experimental:

1.  identifying composition of a blue solution made from plant extracts and a yellow stone from a coal deposit (apparently also found in Avicenna's lab)
2.  kinetics of oscillatory BZ reaction
3. making porous framework materials (called COFs) using different functionalized organic compounds
4. estimating the mass of Uranium used in historic 1966 detonation to put off the natural gas fire in Urtabulak (after a blaze of 3 years)
5. decoding structure of a chiral cardiolipin (a kind of phosphoester, part of intracellular membranes) having four identical fatty acid residues; using novel carbon allotropes —cyclocarbons— to form nanosized molecular belt by stabilizing it with a macrocyclic metal complex
6. nitrogen fixation in ammonia production plants using transition metal catalysts
7. catalytic reduction of atmospheric CO2 along with use of photosensitizers for enhanced efficiency
8. reactions of synthetic analogues of cyclodextrins, testing students on stereochemical and regio-specific transformations.
9. synthesis of a metal complex using given (unknown reagents) and analysis of its composition by qualitative analysis and complexometric titration
10. identifying 20 given mixtures of biochemicals (such as glucose, urea, uric acid, cholestrol's ester and a oil) by using given 5 enzyme mixtures through microscale tests
11. identifying compositions of 3 acid mixtures through pH-metric titrations
12.  analysis of two indicator solutions (one natural indicator from red cabbage and another mixture of two indicators) through pH-metry.

This was the 27th appearance of India at the IChO. In all these years, 32% of our students have got gold medals, 51% silver, and 17% bronze. In the last ten appearances, the percentages of gold and silver medals have been 43% and 53%, respectively.

India Wins 1 Gold, 3 Silvers At Biology Olympiad

India also performed well at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) 2026 held in Vilnius, Lithuania, with all 4 students winning medals. Here is the list of medallists:

1. Bhavyaa Gunwal (GOLD) from Mahendragarh, Haryana
2. Soumil Maity (SILVER) from Howrah, West Bengal
3. Nishit Kalani (SILVER) from Pali, Rajasthan
4. Anmol Kumar (SILVER) from Mansa, Punjab

There were 307 students from 78 countries in this year's IBO. In total, 31 gold, 61 silver and 91 bronze medals were awarded.

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