Iran Caps Stellar Olympiad Year With Six Astronomy Golds
TEHRAN – Iran’s national astronomy team won six gold medals at the fifth Open World Astronomy Olympiad (OWAO 2026) in Sirius, Russia, capping a year in which Iranian students collected top medals across nearly every major international science competition, from physics and mathematics to biology, chemistry and informatics.
The six gold medalists at OWAO, held from Nov. 6 to 14 at the Sirius federal territory, were Sarina Alampour, Parsia Hassanzadeh, Elshan Rouhani, Muhammadreza Muhammadi, Bardia Gheilavizadeh and Mehdi Aryafar.
The competition brought together students from multiple countries and concluded on Saturday, the final day of the event.
The result follows Iran’s third consecutive world championship at the 19th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics
(IOAA) in Hanoi, Vietnam, in October, where Sarina Alampour, Muhammad Hussein Husseini, Hirbod Foudazi, Hussein Masoumi and Arshia Mirshamsi Kakhki each won gold among more than 320 students from 66 countries.
The IOAA result was reported at the time as a third straight world title for Iran, extending a run of dominance in the discipline that has made the country one of the most consistent performers in the competition’s history.
Iran’s run of success extended across the full slate of international science olympiads in 2026:
Physics (IPhO 2026, Bucaramanga, Colombia, July 4–12): Three gold medals for Hirbod Foudazi, Kian Zarabian and Muhammad Mirmuhammadi, and two silver medals for Nima Koushki and Amirsam Goharpay. The physics result was notable for Foudazi’s gold, which came months before his astronomy gold in Hanoi and made him one of the year’s most decorated Iranian students.
Mathematics (IMO 2026, Shanghai, China, July 15–16): Two gold medals for Alireza Joonbakhsh-Najafabadi and Alireza Sharifi, one silver for Amirhussein Tayyeb, and three bronze medals for Arsha Azizeddin, Radin Nik-Eqbali and Arian Zandi.
Biology (IBO 2026, Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12–19): Three gold medals and one silver medal; the silver went to Amirhussein Hemmati.
Chemistry (IChO 2026, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, July 10–19): Three silver medals for Ali Shamsi Mofakhar, Mahyar Najjar and Amirreza Husseini, and one bronze for Ario Seyrafi.
Informatics (IOI 2026, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Aug. 9–16): Two silver medals, one bronze medal and one honorable mention.
The medal haul represents one of Iran’s strongest years in international science olympiads, with gold medals secured in five of the six major disciplines. The results were reported by the Ministry of Education, which oversees the national olympiad teams and funds the training centers that prepare students for the competitions.
Separately, Iran’s team at the BRICS 2026 Future Skills and Tech Challenge in Yekaterinburg, Russia, won nine medals—two gold, three silver and four bronze—topping the international standings in a competition focused on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics and smart manufacturing.
The team, affiliated with Pars Petrochemical Company, competed against more than 1,000 participants from over 30 countries.
The concentration of success in both traditional academic olympiads and applied technology competitions highlights scientific achievement and as evidence of the country’s resilience under sanctions.
The olympiad results, in particular, validate the Iranian education system’s ability to produce top-tier talent despite restrictions on access to some international academic resources.
Iran’s performance at OWAO and IOAA was particularly notable for the overlap in medalists: Sarina Alampour and Hirbod Foudazi each won gold in multiple competitions, with Alampour securing gold at both the IOAA in Vietnam and the OWAO in Russia, and Foudazi winning gold in both astronomy and physics.
The cross-disciplinary success reflects the strength of Iran’s olympiad training system, which identifies and prepares students through specialized centers across the country, and which has produced a steady pipeline of medalists in astronomy and physics in particular over the past decade.
That system’s most celebrated product remains the late Maryam Mirzakhani, who won gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1994 and 1995 before studying at Sharif University of Technology and later earning a doctorate at Harvard.
In 2014, she became the first woman and the first Iranian to receive the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor, for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.
She was a professor at Stanford University and died of breast cancer in July 2017 at the age of 40. Her legacy has become a reference point in Iranian scientific discourse, cited as proof that the country’s talent pipeline can produce world-class mathematicians and scientists even under adverse conditions.