The 2026/27 theme is Life on Land. It gives the six events their setting: the contexts for the papers, the brief for the STEM Innovation Pitch, and the key ideas for one short section of the Linguistics Challenge. The events themselves test reasoning, so the curriculum below plays a supporting role; in regional rounds especially, no event depends on breadth of subject knowledge. Each division studies the same subject areas under the theme, with depth and independence scaled by age and stage.
Explorers introduces the annual theme through clear, accessible, and high-challenge study. Students build strong foundations, secure understanding, and early reasoning habits across the full curriculum.
The Explorers curriculum introduces the shared annual theme through accessible but meaningful high-challenge learning. It is designed to build strong understanding, secure vocabulary, and early reasoning confidence across multiple subjects.
This division should feel ambitious but manageable. Students are expected to think carefully, make connections, and begin applying ideas — but with clearer structure and stronger guidance than in the upper divisions.
This division gives the six events their setting. The theme supplies key ideas and contexts; each event tests reasoning.
Students explore how artists show nature, habitat, and care for the environment through image, colour, shape, and simple symbolism.
Students begin reading images carefully, spotting message and meaning rather than only describing what they can see.
A supporting subject: visual contexts for the Abstract Reasoning and Sustainable Design papers; its key ideas can appear in Section A of the Linguistics Challenge.
Students begin with needs, wants, scarcity, simple choice, and how land can be used in different ways for different purposes.
Students start making simple trade-off decisions and explaining why one choice may help one group while limiting another.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, the trade-off thinking behind the STEM Innovation Pitch, and theme-linked station tasks in the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students develop reading comprehension, vocabulary in context, summarising, and short informative and persuasive writing linked to the theme.
Students begin turning knowledge into clear explanation and structured opinion rather than simply copying facts.
Builds the close reading and precision the Linguistics Challenge rewards, and the clear explanation a STEM Innovation Pitch needs.
Students explore how stories and poems use setting, nature, and symbolism to communicate message and theme.
Students move beyond plot retelling and begin identifying how writers shape mood, message, and responsibility.
Supports the careful reading of language that the Linguistics Challenge rewards; its key ideas can appear in Section A.
Students explore how music can reflect place, weather, habitat, movement, and environmental atmosphere.
Students begin listening with purpose, describing musical choices and linking sound to mood, place, or message.
A supporting subject: theme contexts for Team Orienteering Challenge stations and for the creative side of the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students build secure foundations in habitats, classification, life processes, food chains, and how human choices affect ecosystems.
Students begin connecting cause and effect rather than learning isolated facts, especially in environmental contexts.
The main source of key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, and of contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge, the STEM Innovation Pitch and the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students learn about place, map skills, local and global land use, community needs, and care for shared environments.
Students start comparing how different people use and value land, and why conflict or responsibility may arise.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge; map and land-use contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge and the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students use maths in real contexts through data, measure, area, perimeter, percentages, and practical reasoning linked to the theme.
Students apply number and measurement in purposeful problems, not only in isolated exercises.
Supports the Maths Reasoning Challenge, whose problems are set in theme contexts but need no theme knowledge, and the data work in the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Junior develops deeper knowledge, stronger interpretation, and greater independence. Students revisit the same subject areas, but with more demanding analysis, clearer evidence use, and broader application.
The Junior curriculum revisits the same shared annual theme but with noticeably greater depth, independence, and interpretive demand. Students are expected to move beyond simple recognition into stronger explanation, comparison, and academic application.
This division should feel more analytical. Students must use evidence more carefully, think across subjects more confidently, and respond with greater precision across both written and performance-based tasks.
This division deepens the setting without changing the rule: the theme supports the events, and reasoning decides them.
Students compare how artists use composition, perspective, symbol, and message to represent land, environment, and responsibility.
Students move into stronger visual interpretation, comparing effect, purpose, and intended message with more precision.
A supporting subject: visual contexts for the Abstract Reasoning and Sustainable Design papers; its key ideas can appear in Section A of the Linguistics Challenge.
Students examine incentives, consequences, resource use, market choices, and how policy can shape behaviour and land use.
Students weigh trade-offs more carefully, recognising that solutions can create gains, costs, and unintended effects.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, the trade-off thinking behind the STEM Innovation Pitch, and theme-linked station tasks in the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students strengthen inference, source comparison, explanation, and persuasive writing linked to evidence and clear structure.
Students begin handling multiple viewpoints, stronger justification, and more deliberate audience awareness.
Builds the close reading and precision the Linguistics Challenge rewards, and the clear explanation a STEM Innovation Pitch needs.
Students analyse how writers represent nature, place, conflict, and care, with stronger use of quotation and thematic comparison.
Students move from identifying ideas to explaining how and why writers shape those ideas through language and viewpoint.
Supports the careful reading of language that the Linguistics Challenge rewards; its key ideas can appear in Section A.
Students compare musical representations of place, environment, and human impact, with stronger attention to structure and effect.
Students develop more analytical listening, moving beyond reaction into reasoned comparison and explanation.
A supporting subject: theme contexts for Team Orienteering Challenge stations and for the creative side of the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students deepen their understanding of ecosystems, adaptation, biodiversity, threats, and conservation responses.
Students are expected to connect scientific ideas more logically and apply them to case-based or unfamiliar examples.
The main source of key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, and of contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge, the STEM Innovation Pitch and the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students examine land-use decisions, physical and human geography, governance, communities, and stewardship responsibilities.
Students compare perspectives and begin evaluating why different groups may disagree over land and environmental choices.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge; map and land-use contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge and the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students apply ratio, proportion, geometry, and data reasoning to more realistic and multi-step environmental contexts.
Students move beyond simple method recall into stronger interpretation, modelling, and decision-based reasoning.
Supports the Maths Reasoning Challenge, whose problems are set in theme contexts but need no theme knowledge, and the data work in the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Senior extends the shared theme into more advanced challenge. Students are expected to handle greater abstraction, stronger evaluation, more complex evidence, and higher levels of independent judgement across all subject areas.
The Senior curriculum takes the same shared annual theme and pushes it into more advanced, more abstract, and more evaluative territory. Students are expected to interpret complexity, weigh evidence carefully, and respond with much greater independence.
This division should feel intellectually mature. Students must move beyond clear-cut answers and work with trade-offs, competing perspectives, stronger evidence, and more nuanced judgement across the curriculum.
This division sets the most demanding stage, while the events still test reasoning rather than recall.
Students critically examine how art constructs narratives about land, environment, progress, and stewardship through style and context.
Students are expected to interpret intent, audience, and deeper symbolism with more precise critical judgement.
A supporting subject: visual contexts for the Abstract Reasoning and Sustainable Design papers; its key ideas can appear in Section A of the Linguistics Challenge.
Students explore advanced ideas such as environmental cost, common resources, natural capital, incentives, and policy evaluation.
Students are expected to weigh competing interests, evaluate policy tools, and make stronger evidence-based economic judgements.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, the trade-off thinking behind the STEM Innovation Pitch, and theme-linked station tasks in the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students read critically, synthesise multiple sources, and produce stronger analytical and persuasive writing with disciplined structure.
Students must handle complexity, nuance, and rebuttal rather than relying on simple one-sided explanation.
Builds the close reading and precision the Linguistics Challenge rewards, and the clear explanation a STEM Innovation Pitch needs.
Students explore more complex literary interpretations of place, extraction, belonging, displacement, and the human relationship with nature.
Students are expected to compare texts, contexts, and viewpoints with greater sophistication and precision.
Supports the careful reading of language that the Linguistics Challenge rewards; its key ideas can appear in Section A.
Students analyse how music communicates identity, place, protest, activism, and environmental meaning across different contexts.
Students move into more critical listening and contextual evaluation rather than simple descriptive response.
A supporting subject: theme contexts for Team Orienteering Challenge stations and for the creative side of the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students study ecology as a system, including biodiversity, conservation biology, restoration, and evidence-led land management.
Students must work with greater scientific precision, stronger causal explanation, and more complex case-based reasoning.
The main source of key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge, and of contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge, the STEM Innovation Pitch and the Team Orienteering Challenge.
Students examine land-use systems, governance, stakeholder tension, environmental justice, and evidence-led comparison across regions.
Students are expected to balance ethics, policy, place, and practicality when evaluating competing human needs.
Key ideas for Section A of the Linguistics Challenge; map and land-use contexts for the Sustainable Design Challenge and the STEM Innovation Pitch.
Students use more advanced statistics, modelling, trend interpretation, and mathematical judgement in environmental and land-use contexts.
Students are expected to interpret data critically, handle uncertainty, and justify conclusions with stronger quantitative control.
Supports the Maths Reasoning Challenge, whose problems are set in theme contexts but need no theme knowledge, and the data work in the STEM Innovation Pitch.