AbstractThe UK Linguistics Olympiad, like similar olympiads that have been offered in other countries since they first took place in Moscow in 1965, is an annual competition in which school students test their ability to sort out the underlying patterns and rules in linguistic data. The UK olympiad has only existed since 2010 but by 2012 it already had 2,000 competitors aged between 11 and 18. Its success shows how enthusiastic young people can be about studying language structure. Linguistics olympiads help schools to promote languages and to interest all pupils in language structure; in the UK, this is particularly important in state‐funded schools.