Photos of students competing for the Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy

Shrey Parikh has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee, beating Ishaan Gupta in a lightning-round tiebreaker. Shrey is a 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California. He finished third in 2024 but lost his school bee last year when he was battling a fever. He has dominated the bee circuit since. That included winning several highly competitive online competitions against many of the same kids he outlasted this week in the nation’s capital. On Thursday night he turned a tense, high-quality final into a blowout. He raced through the 90-second “spell-off” and got 32 words right to be crowned the best young speller in the English language. Ishaan spelled 25 words correctly in the tiebreaker.