At 17, British student Alex Chui scores a perfect 42/42 at the Maths Olympiad, winning his fifth gold medal in seven appearances

A perfect score is unusual at the International Mathematical Olympiad, where contestants face six demanding problems over two four-and-a-half-hour papers. According to UK Olympiads, in 2026, just seven of the 666 competitors managed to collect all 42 points. One of them was Britain’s Alex Chui, a 17-year-old from Tonbridge School.His result in Shanghai was also the latest entry in an unusual international record. Chui had already won gold medals at four previous editions of the competition. The 2026 gold made it five, while his appearances across seven editions produced seven medals in total. Britain finished ninth among 117 participating teams, with six medals shared between its six competitors.Alex Chui turns a perfect 42 into seven medals from seven IMO appearancesChui’s 42 points came from six full-mark problems. He received 7 points on each question, leaving no partial score or missed mark on his final paper.The result placed him joint first individually. Only seven students reached the maximum score across the entire competition, which brought together 666 contestants representing 117 teams.Reportedly, for Chui, however, the perfect paper was part of a much longer record. He had already collected IMO gold medals in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. His fifth gold in Shanghai completed a run in which every one of his seven appearances produced a medal. That gives him seven medals from seven participations, including five golds.Britain returns from Shanghai with six medalsThe British team finished with two golds, one silver and three bronze medals. Kevin Wai of Magdalen College School joined Chui in the gold-medal group after scoring 29 points. Yuvan Raja of RGS Guildford took silver with 26 points. Adavya Goyal of St Paul's School, along with Anango Prabhat and Michael Sydorenko of King's Maths School, each scored 22 and received bronze.The six students therefore all returned with medals. Their combined score was 163 points. That total placed Britain ninth in the team standings. North Korea also scored 163 points, but the two teams were separated by their medal distribution. North Korea had two golds and two silvers alongside two bronzes, while Britain had two golds, one silver and three bronzes.Six problems, 42 points and a 29-point gold medal cut-off in ShanghaiThe International Mathematical Olympiad is built around six problems, divided between two examination days. Contestants have 4.5 hours on each day to tackle three questions. Each problem carries a maximum of seven points, giving a possible total of 42. The questions are designed around areas such as geometry, number theory, algebra and combinatorics, rather than the routine calculations associated with school mathematics.At the 2026 event in Shanghai, the results stretched from perfect scores at the top to a large number of contestants receiving no medal. There were 55 gold medals, 105 silvers and 189 bronzes, while 141 competitors received honourable mentions, as reported by The UK Olympiads and IMO2026.The gold threshold was 29 points. Wai's score landed exactly on that boundary.Seven medals across seven appearancesChui's longer record is perhaps the most distinctive part of the 2026 result. His five IMO gold medals came in 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The two remaining appearances also ended with medals, giving him seven medals from seven editions.The perfect 42 in Shanghai added another distinction to that record. Of the seven contestants who achieved a maximum score in 2026, Chui was the British representative, alongside three competitors from China, two from the United States and one from South Korea.At 17, his competition career at the IMO has now produced an unusually complete sequence: seven appearances, seven medals and five golds, capped by a 42-point performance in his latest contest.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.