Most esports begin with a controller, keyboard or fight stick. MEWC South Africa starts with a grid of cells and a ticking clock.
On 13 August, Adam Jacobson made that spreadsheet look like a scoreboard.
Jacobson scored 877 points to top the first qualification round of the Microsoft Excel World Championship South Africa 2026. He finished 130 points ahead of second-placed Alwyn Birkholtz, with Jan Hoffman completing the top three.
MEWC South Africa described the result as the first time in four years that a South African competitor had taken the top global position in one of its qualification rounds.
The Round 1 leaderboard
Three women placed inside the top 10. Kelly Jones finished sixth overall with 516 points and was named Round 1’s top female player by MEWC South Africa.
What happens next
The second qualification round took place on 20 August. The official schedule places the announcement of finalists, brackets and format details between 24 and 28 August.
The top 16 competitors across the qualification stage advance to the national finals on 12 September.
All finalists will compete across the final-round cases, with the player recording the highest aggregate score crowned the 2026 MEWC South Africa champion.
Prize information on the official competition page is currently inconsistent. Its FAQ lists R30,000 for first place, while the formal rules list R20,000 plus a ticket to Las Vegas. Both list R10,000 for second place and R5,000 for each of the next two finishers. The first-place figure should be treated as provisional until MEWC South Africa confirms the final breakdown.
Local chapter events form one of the routes into the global Microsoft Excel World Championship ecosystem. The 2026 international finals are scheduled for 30 November to 2 December at the HyperX Arena inside the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.
What do players actually do?
Excel esports is not a race to build the neatest office budget.
Players receive game instructions and a series of questions that become progressively more difficult. They then use Excel formulas, data tools and automation to solve the problems against the clock.
Each MEWC South Africa game lasts 30 minutes. Competitors can use tools including IFS, XLOOKUP, SUM, VBA and Power Query. The strategy is left to the player.
The cases are designed around logic and problem-solving rather than specialist knowledge of finance, engineering or data analytics. A challenge might simulate a game, puzzle or unfamiliar system inside a spreadsheet. Correct answers move players up the leaderboard.
Speed matters, but so do accuracy, preparation and the ability to break an unfamiliar problem into smaller parts.
In other words, it has the same competitive ingredients as more familiar esports. The interface just happens to be Microsoft Excel.
South Africa already has international Excel pedigree
Fourth-placed Pieter Pienaar is evidence that the local scene is more than a novelty.
The University of Pretoria master’s student won the individual student division of the 2025 Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge in Las Vegas. He became the first South African to win the title after previously placing 12th in 2022, eighth in 2023 and second in 2024.
Pienaar describes Excel esports as a problem-solving competition in which players use formulas and data models to clear increasingly difficult levels. His fourth-place result in the opening South African qualifier puts another established international competitor inside this year’s national race.
Jacobson also entered the tournament with form. Earlier in 2026, MEWC South Africa reported that he was the leading South African and placed 14th globally in an International Women’s Day Excel esports event.
The Cinga take
Excel esports sounds unusual until the timer begins.
Then it becomes familiar: players study the mechanics, practise cases, make decisions under pressure and fight for places on a live leaderboard.
South Africa now has a qualification-round leader in Jacobson and an existing international collegiate champion in Pienaar. With the second qualifier complete and the national finals approaching, the important story is no longer that people compete in Excel.
It is that South Africans are becoming very good at it.