The Scripps National Spelling Bee, formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and often referred to as the National Spelling Bee or simply “the Spelling Bee” in the United States, is an annual spelling bee (word spelling contest) held in the United States. The Bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by the E. W. Scripps Company and is held in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area during the week following Memorial Day weekend. Since 2026, it has been held at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. From 2011 through 2025, except for 2021, it was hosted at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. It was previously held at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 2010 and at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Bay Lake, Florida in 2021.
Although most of its participants are from the U.S., students from countries such as The Bahamas, Canada, the People's Republic of China, India, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Kuwait, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Syria, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories have also competed in recent years. Historically, the competition has been open to, and remains open to, the winners of sponsored regional spelling bees in the U.S. (including territories such as Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Navajo Nation, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with overseas military bases in Germany and South Korea). Participants from countries other than the U.S. must be regional spelling bee winners as well.
In 2019, the Spelling Bee ran out of words that might challenge the contestants, and ended up having eight winners.
The 2020 National Spelling Bee competition, originally scheduled for May 24, was suspended and later canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first time it had been canceled since 1945.
As of the 2023 competition, contest participants cannot have reached their fifteenth birthday or have passed beyond eighth grade as of August 31 of the year before the competition. Previous winners are also ineligible to compete.
History
The National Spelling Bee was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees, organized by The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. Frank Neuhauser won the first National Spelling Bee held that year, by successfully spelling "gladiolus." The Bee has been held every year except for 1943–1945 due to World War II and 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The E.W. Scripps Company acquired the rights to the program in 1941. The Bee is held in late May and/or early June of each year. Its goal is educational: not only to encourage children to perfect the art of spelling, but also to help enlarge their vocabularies and widen their knowledge of the English language.
The Bee is the nation's largest and longest-running educational program, administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company and hundreds of sponsors in the United States, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Ghana, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
The competition
Qualifying regional competitions
To qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a speller must win a regional competition. Regional spelling bees usually cover many counties, with some covering an entire state, U.S. territory, or foreign country. Regional competitions' rules are not required to correspond exactly to those of the national competition; most notably, the national competition has since 2004 featured time controls that are designed to ensure its conformity to the programming schedule of its nationwide television broadcaster (see Regulations of oral rounds below) and that are not intended to be implemented at lower levels of competition.
Most school and regional bees (known to Scripps as local spelling bees) use the official study booklet. Through competition year 1994, the study booklet was known as Words of the Champions; during competition years 1995 through 2006, the study booklet was the category-based Paideia; in 2007 the format and title were changed to the 701-word Spell It!, and since 2020 a new edition of Words of the Champions has been used. The booklet is published by Merriam-Webster in association with the National Spelling Bee. It contains 4,000 words, divided primarily by language of origin, along with exercises and activities in each section. Most bees whose winners advance to regional-level competition use the School Pronouncer's Guide, which contains a collection of Words of the Champions words as well as "off-list words" not listed in Words of the Champions but featured in Scripps' official dictionary, the unabridged Webster's Third New International Dictionary (published by Merriam-Webster).
Scripps provides a Sponsor Bee Guide to administrators of regional bees. The Sponsor Bee Guide consists of two volumes, each of which contains both words from Words of the Champions and "surprise words". Bees need not use the words from Words of the Champions to be considered official.
Sponsors To participate in the national competition, a speller must be sponsored by a Regional Partner. The Scripps National Spelling Bee currently works with more than 175 newspapers, media outlets, sports teams, universities and other organizations across the U.S., Canada, The Bahamas, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Each Regional Partner organizes a spelling bee program in its community with the cooperation of area school officials: public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools.
Schools enroll with the national office to ensure their students are eligible to participate and to receive the materials needed to conduct classroom and school bees. During enrollment, school bee coordinators receive their local sponsor's program-specific information—local dates, deadlines, and participation guidelines.
National-competition format Preliminaries In the past, the Preliminaries had consisted of a test (Preliminaries Test) delivered by computer on Tuesday and two rounds of oral spelling onstage on Wednesday. Spellers may earn up to 36 points during the Preliminaries: up to 30 points on the Preliminaries Test, three points for correctly spelling in Round Two and three points for correctly spelling in Round Three. In 2021, the Preliminaries Test got omitted, and the Preliminaries now consists of three oral rounds.
The preliminaries consists of three rounds, with round one being a spelling section, round two being a vocabulary section, and round three concluding the preliminaries with a written test.
History of Round One Round One is an oral spelling round, with words deriving from the Bee's official list, Words of the Champions.
Round One was a written spelling test, and had changed in format several times. In the few years prior to 2008, Round One had consisted of a 25-word, multiple-choice written test. However, in 2010, changes were made in the formatting of this test. It consisted of 25 words, sometimes called "the written round". All spellers gathered at the Maryland Ballroom by 8:00 a.m. Jacques Bailly, the Bee's official pronouncer (also the champion) pronounced each word, its language of origin, definition, and usage in a sentence. Spellers are given a 30-second pause in which to write down their word with the two pens given to them, and then Bailly repeated the word and all information. There was another 30-second pause, and then they moved on to the next word. Each correctly spelled word on the Round One written test was worth one point. In 2011, they stayed with that format. In 2012, they changed to the original computerized test, 50 spelling words, half scored and half not scored.
Beginning in 2013, the Preliminaries now includes vocabulary questions, such as being asked to choose the correct definition for a word. While met with criticism by past contestants for deviating from the concept of a spelling bee, organizers indicated that the change was made to help avert perceptions that the competition was based solely on memorization skills (as had been showcased by television broadcasts), and to help further the Bee's goal of expanding the vocabulary and language skills of children.
Round Two Round Two is an oral round, in which each contestant must answer a vocabulary question from the "Words of the Champions" list as specified by the judges.
Historically, Round Two was a spelling round where a correct spelling awarded three points, while a miss eliminated the contestant. In the latter case, the judges gave the correct spelling. All contestants eliminated in this round tie for the same place in the final rankings.
Round Three During Round Three, all remaining spellers take a 40-question written test, consisting of 28 spelling words and 12 vocabulary questions. Five questions are not included in the final test score unless a tiebreaker is necessary, meaning the test is scored out of 35. To advance to the quarterfinals, spellers must meet or exceed a cutoff score selected to advance as close to 100 spellers as possible.
Prior to the 2025 edition of the Bee, spellers had access to a 500-word study list in which all of the words from Round Three were picked out of named the Preliminaries Study Guide. In the past, before the advent of the Preliminaries Study Guide, Round Three followed the same format as Round Two's spelling round, but each contestant's word was chosen from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. After this round, the remaining contestants' total scores were used to determine the semifinalists.
Quarterfinals and semifinals Round Four changed in 2016. Scripps dropped the semi-finals test and had added a Tiebreaker Test (however, it was only used in 2017 and 2018), in which the spellers took a test similar to the Preliminaries Test, but containing harder and more confusing words. As a result, there was controversy, and Scripps dropped the Tiebreaker Test in 2019, in which eight co-champions won.
Round Four is now an oral spelling round and the start of the Quarterfinals. There are neither a study list nor set rounds for the quarterfinalists. The contestants who last throughout quarterfinalists will be deemed semifinalists.
Some rounds are vocabulary rounds in which spellers are given a word and three possible definitions. To advance, the speller must give the correct definition within 30 seconds.
Finals At the end of the semifinals, the remaining spellers thin out into 10–16, and all the remaining spellers are invited to spell in the finals. This can go on until the word list is exhausted and the judges move on to the 25 championship rounds until a champion, or a group of joint champions (until 2019) is crowned, or after that, the shootout round.
When one speller remains after a round, special rules apply. The remaining player must spell one more word correctly to win the bee. The speller cannot be eliminated with a misspell, which would result in all spellers from the previous round being reinstated.
Shootout Following the 2019 final, where the championship round ran to its conclusion without a winner being determined, and to meet time constraints, for 2020, officials planned a new tiebreaking round.
At the end of the championship round, either by exhausting the championship word list without a determinate winner, or if the broadcast (currently produced by Sony Pictures Television) reaches a set point in the broadcast (according to the rules, the round that concludes after 1 hour, 55 minutes into the broadcast), the winner will be determined by a shootout round, known as the spell-off.