The North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO) is a fun and educational contest for high school students in which you solve linguistics problems from a variety of languages (natural and artificial).
No prior knowledge of linguistics or any particular language is required. All you need to bring is your curiosity and enthusiasm!
Top-scoring students in the first round are invited to participate in the second round. This leads to the selection of a Canadian national team, which competes with teams from other countries from all over the world in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), hosted by a different country each year.
A large number of practice problems (and their solutions) are posted on the NACLO website.
Announcement about NACLO 2026
UBC is pleased to be hosting the 2026 competition in person! The open round will be held on Thursday, January 29, 2026 from 9:00am-12:00pm. Students should plan to arrive at 8:30am. The contest will be held on campus at UBC Vancouver, in SPPH B108 (that’s room B108 in the School of Population and Public Health building; click the link for address and map). The School of Population and Public Health is a 10-minute walk from the UBC bus loop or a 3-minute walk from the UBC Health Sciences Parkade.
Please note that there will be no on-site registration; you must register in advance. You can find information about the contest, as well as a registration form, at https://naclo.org/
We are unfortunately not hosting any practice sessions this year, although these may be held in future years.
The invitational round (based on scores from the open round) of the competition will be on Thursday, March 19, 2026, from 9:00am-1:00pm, also on campus at UBC Vancouver (Room 5, Stores Road Annex).
UBC NACLO can be contacted at naclo.ubc@ubc.ca.