National Academic Bee

The first stage of the National Academic Bowl are the Regional Tournaments. National Academic Bee and Bowl Regional Tournaments are held in-person and online from October-May. A list of tournaments is available here. Tournaments consist of 3 preliminary rounds and one final playoff round for a total of 4 rounds.

Students can qualify for Nationals in the National Academic Bee by: 1. finishing in the top 50% of students who have not already qualified for Nationals, inclusive of odd numbers and ties for the final Nationals spot. Students who have already qualified for the National Championships at a prior Regionals are not counted in determining the top 50% of students for Nationals qualification. There are separate age divisions for students in 8th grade, 7th grade, 6th grade, 5th grade, 4th grade, and 3rd grade and younger. At some tournaments with small numbers of students in an age division, two or more divisions may be consolidated. However, the qualification for the National Championships will be determined solely based on a student’s official age division: students are never at a disadvantage in terms of national championships qualifying if age divisions must be consolidated.

Regionals: Game-Play Rules

All questions at the Regionals are played using a buzzer system and take the form of a short paragraph. Please see here for sample questions to practice with. The questions are read out loud to students, and the clues in each question are arranged in descending order of difficulty. Students buzz in as soon as they think they know the answer. If they are correct, they score a point; if they are incorrect, they cannot ring in again on that question. Three incorrect answers kills the question. If a student is the third player to answer incorrectly before the end of the question, they lose a point (because they have killed the question for the remaining students who now are unable to hear the rest of the question). If they are the first or second student incorrect, or if they are the 3rd student to answer incorrectly but the question has already been read to completion, they do not lose a point.

Once students reach 5 points in a round, they are done for the rest of the round. This helps ensure that a strong student doesn’t end up answering most of the questions, giving everyone a fair chance to accumulate points.. However, students can earn up to 10 bonus points in each round depending on how quickly they go out (i.e. a student who answers the first 5 questions correctly scores 15 for the round).

For all questions on the National Academic Bee, please email help@iacompetitions.com.

The sole stage of the National Academic Bee for the Middle & Elementary School Divisions is the National Championships, which for the 2026-27 academic year will take place in-person at the Hyatt Regency Orlando in Orlando, FL on Saturday, May 29 and Monday, May 31, 2027. No prior qualification is required, and the competition is open to any students in Grade 8 or younger during the 2026-2027 academic year who wish to compete. A full schedule of all events at the National Championships is available here. All students will play four preliminary round matches using standard International Academic Competitions buzzer-based online rules with 30 questions each. There will then be either one or two playoff rounds. One playoff round will be played if there are 30 students or fewer in an age division; two playoff rounds will be played if there are 31 or more students in an age division. The exact number of students who make the playoffs will be a function of the total number of registrants.

Different age divisions will be held at the National Championships for students in 8th Grade, 7th Grade, 6th Grade, 5th Grade, 4th Grade, and 3rd Grade & Younger.

The cost to compete at the 2027 National Academic Bee National Championships is $137. Registration for the National Championships of the National Academic Bee will open in November and run through early May on this page.

For all questions on the 2027 Middle & Elementary School National Championships, please email help@iacompetitions.com.