Indian Students Win Five Medals, Including Two Golds, at Junior Astronomy Olympiad in Thailand
The team returned from IOAA-Jr 2026 with two gold, two silver and one bronze, as India marks National Education Day.
A team of Indian school students won five medals at the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics for Juniors (IOAA-Jr) 2026, held from 1 to 8 November in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand.
The event brought together 104 students from 25 countries.
The medal winners
- Gold: Siddharth Laxmisha (Puducherry) and Swara Srujal Patel (Gujarat)
- Silver: Aarna Chaplot and Krish Bhaskar (Rajasthan)
- Bronze: Akshara Gulab Ambone (Maharashtra)
Students at the olympiad face theory papers, data analysis tasks and observation rounds that test their understanding of the night sky.
A fitting week
The results come as India observes National Education Day on 11 November, the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India's first Education Minister from 1947 to 1958. The day has been marked since 2008.
Azad's tenure laid the base for institutions such as the University Grants Commission and the first IIT at Kharagpur. Seven decades later, a medal haul drawn from five different states shows how far that foundation has spread.