** Update: results **
Registration is open for the Junior Mental Calculation World Championship 2022!
The event will be held on the 30th September–2nd October 2022 in Bielefeld (Germany). The main competition and the prize ceremony will be on October 2nd, so most people will leave on the morning of the 3rd.
Since 2008 this international championship in mental calculation has taken place. Caroline Merkel and the team welcome all young people around the globe aged up to 19 to participate and challenge their skills.
I attended the 2018 and 2019 events as an official trainer and each was a friendly and enjoyable weekend with over 80 participants from many countries from as far as Peru, South Africa and India, speaking many languages. There was additionally an online event in 2020.
Applications to Join
Please visit its official website for full details about the 2022 event. For anyone who hasn’t yet applied, applications are accepted until 30th June 2022—you can read here the instructions for how to apply. Places are limited!
Note: please do not contact me about applications—please follow the instructions above 🙂
Event Details & Preparation
The aim of the event is to share knowledge and methods with the participants. To facilitate this, the event includes free training the day before to prepare the students for the competition. The training will be coordinated by a small team of established international experts in mental calculation such as Daniel Timms (myself), Willem Bouman, George Lane, and others.
Entrants will compete in their age category:
- under 12 years
- under 15 years
- under 20 years
The competition will be a 2-hour written exam, where participants must not write down anything except the answers! The types of question you can learn to solve, and contest in the event, are explained on this page. General training resources are available here including the Pegasus Excel software that is used for creating the competition questions.
If you’re interested in mental calculation and born after 2002-Oct-03, or you’re a parent/trainer of someone who is, I hope to see you there in Germany this October!
Other Competitions
This year, there are 3 international-standard competitions scheduled:
- Mental Calculation World Cup (Germany in July—registrations are closed)
- Junior Mental Calculation World Championship (this event—registrations are open until June 30th)
- Mind Sports Olympiad (London in late August—details will be announced later)
Photo credit: Andreas Mohn Foundation, who have kindly sponsored this event in recent years