• ●Event: 19th International Earth Science Olympiad (IESO) 2026, Turin, Italy, 20-27 August 2026, with 39 countries participating.
• ●India's haul: 9 medals - 4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze - its highest ever; won across Written and Practical examinations, International Team Field Investigation (ITFI) and Earth Science Project (ESP) categories.
• ●Soumik Mandal (DAV Model School, Durgapur, West Bengal) took 2 gold and 1 silver and ranked third overall globally.
• ●IESO is held under the aegis of the International Geoscience Education Organisation (IGEO) and was first held in 2007 at Daegu, South Korea.
• ●India's participation is supported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences under its Outreach and Awareness programme; the national test is facilitated by the Geological Society of India.
• ●Selection scale: about 17,800 students appeared across 500 centres; the top 25 attended a three-week training camp in June 2026 at M.S. University, Vadodara.
• ●MoES flagship missions named alongside the Olympiad: Deep Ocean Mission, Mission Mausam and PRITHvi VIgyan (PRITHVI), the ministry's overarching scheme approved in January 2024 at Rs 4,797 crore.
• ●The Ministry of Earth Sciences runs India's earth-science institutions, among them the National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), Thiruvananthapuram, established 1978, and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, established 1998.

The 19th International Earth Science Olympiad, at which India won its best-ever nine medals, was held in which city?