Looking ahead to Causeway Challenge 2026
What awaits us at the beginning of this summer is nothing less than one of the biggest and most exciting sporting events on the planet Earth. It only comes along once every few years - but when it does, international supremacy is on the line, and everyone all over the world gets to cheer on their countrymen and countrywomen as they go for all the glory.
No, not the World Cup.
I am, of course, referring to the Causeway Challenge, the most prestigious Scrabble tournament in the world, which gets underway in just a few days' time.
This coming weekend, a cohort of over 400 Scrabble players from all over the world will converge upon the Miracle Grand Convention Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand to compete in an epic tournament. The competition will include a whopping 36 games over 4 days - 10, 10, 10, and 6. Michael Tang of Singapore, one of the best to ever do it, will be organizing the event, and he's brought together an incredible field. In all, 30 countries will be represented, and the roster of players will be as formidable as it is deep. You can expect national and world champions everywhere you look.
I think I can safely speak for a whole bunch of people back here in the U.S. and Canada when I say, we're excited to root for our friends overseas. For the American contingent, all of the positive vibes in the world should be directed toward Jesse Day, Josh Castellano, Dave Wiegand, Ben Schoenbrun, Sammy Okosagah, Austin Shin, Jason Keller, Rob Robinsky, Rasheed Balogun, Mike Baron, Benjamin Tacheny, Puneet Sharma, Niel Gan, Robert Linn, Amit Chakrabarti, Tim Weiss, Roland Filio, Yukiko Loritz, Zachary Dang, Terry Kang, Ayodele Odekunle, Noel Livermore, Elise Bickford, Ather Sharif, Lila Crotty, Pamina Deutsch, and Cheryl Melvin; on the Canadian side, let's direct our cheers to Dean Saldanha, Yvonne Lobo, Tobey Roland, Hani Garib, Sharmaine Farini, and Maureen Morris. That's 33 players in all! Obviously they can't all win, but I hope they all represent us well and make us proud.
Causeway, to put it simply, is what every Scrabble tournament should aspire to be. It's the event that has everything - a massive and super-strong field, a juicy prize pool, a world-class venue in a world-class city. It's got great people running the show, and extensive live coverage so that people all over the world can follow along. And it's a truly global Scrabble event. We have a rich and diverse Scrabble community that extends to every corner of the world. It's tournaments like this that can bring just about everyone together.
From a CoCo perspective, we're excited to have our people in the mix, schmoozing with the rest of the worldwide Scrabble community. We'll have quite a few of our board members, volunteers, directors, and frequent players present at the tournament, and a handful of them will be there representing the CoCo in some way - handing out swag, promoting events like Word Cup and the NACC, and just generally connecting with people and building international Scrabble relationships. This has always been an important goal for us, ever since our founding. We've always believed in being citizens of the world, and there's nary a better event out there for a global Scrabble citizen than this one.
Ultimately, though, it's just going to be exciting to watch and to follow along with a major tournament like this one. Michael and team are pulling out all the stops for Causeway - there will be live stats and standings, tons of streamed games, and even more annotated games to view throughout the tournament.
To those who are playing this week at Causeway: Best of luck. To everyone else: Let's all enjoy the show.