A team from Bangladesh, Team POLARIS, has been selected as one of the winners of the 13th edition of the CERN Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition 2026, marking a significant achievement in the country’s growing presence in global physics research competitions.

The competition is organised by CERN and invites secondary school students from around the world to propose physics experiments that are later carried out at real particle accelerator beamlines.

Team POLARIS, consisting of students from Choumuhani Government Saleh Ahmed College, Birshreshtha Noor Mohammad Public College, and Collectorate School and College, Rangpur, will travel to the ELSA Accelerator in Germany to conduct their proposed experiment on a real beamline.

The team is among five global winners of the 2026 edition. Other winning teams include attoPION (India) and PionIST 3 (Türkiye), who will travel to CERN in Switzerland, as well as Mobile MIPs (United Kingdom) and Centauri Stars (United States), who will conduct experiments at DESY in Germany.

This year’s competition saw record participation, with 712 teams from 89 countries submitting proposals and more than 4,500 students involved globally. According to organisers, 38% of participants were schoolgirls, reflecting growing diversity in science engagement worldwide.