Registration is open for the Junior Mental Calculation World Championship 2025!
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 2018–2024 events as an official trainer, and I’ll be there again this year! Each event was a friendly and enjoyable weekend with 50–100 participants from many countries, including Mexico, Czechia and Kyrgyzstan. There was additionally an online event in 2020.
The event will be held on the 04–06 October 2025 in Bielefeld (Germany). Here is a summary of the official schedule:
- Fri 03 October: most people arrive
- Sat 04 October: training workshops and social events
- Sun 05 October: training workshops and hectoc challenge
- Mon 06 October: JMCWC competition and award ceremony
- Tue 07 October: remaining people leave
Applications to Join
Please visit its official website for full details and future updates about the competition. Applications are accepted until 30 April 2025—you can read here the instructions for how to apply. Places are limited!
Note: please do not contact me (Daniel Timms) about applications—please follow the instructions above and speak with Caroline Merkel 🙂 Any information from the official website supersedes any information on this page.
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 days 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), George Lane, Elke Kuge 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! Here are some resources to help students prepare:
- Specific resources for JMCWC 2024, including a simulator of the 2024 paper (although without the Surprise tasks). If there are minor updates for JMCWC 2025, we’ll tell registered participants about it.
- Official JMCWC website page that lists the types of question that appear in the event.
- Pegasus Excel software that is used for creating the competition questions (note: also includes many categories not in the JMCWC).
- Resources page for mental calculation training in general.
If you’re interested in mental calculation and born after 2005-Oct-06, or you’re a parent/trainer of someone who is, I hope to see you there in Germany this October!
Photo credit: Andreas Mohn Foundation, who have kindly sponsored this event for many years.