Ha Dang Wins the UK Excel Championship, Heads to Las Vegas World Final

Ha Dang's victory in the inaugural UK Excel Championship turned a quiet London livestream into a high-pressure showcase of spreadsheet speed, logic and fluency — and it means the Leeds-based accountant will represent the United Kingdom at the Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas this December.

Background​

What happened in London​

After three online qualifying rounds and a live, in-person final staged in London, Ha Dang emerged as the UK champion in a contest described by organisers as a test of “Excel, mathematics, and logic.” The Register reported a razor-close finish, with Dang taking first place and fellow finalist Lorenzo Foti nipping at his heels; the published final tally was Ha Dang 2,474 points to Lorenzo Foti 2,463. That margin — 11 points out of a stated maximum of 3,750 — was described by Dang as “by the skin of my teeth.”
The win carries more than a British brag: the UK chapter’s champion secures a flight to Las Vegas to join the global field at the Microsoft Excel World Championship later in the year. Local coverage in Yorkshire and other outlets echoed the story, profiling Dang’s background (self-taught Excel obsessive, accountant at a Leeds-based firm) and the emotional impact of qualifying to represent the UK.

Why the UK chapter matters​

The UK chapter is the local arm of a growing Excel esports ecosystem connected to the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) and the Microsoft Excel World Championship. The FMWC UK site details a season structure of online rounds followed by an in-person London final; its rules and calendar make clear this was the inaugural UK season intended to feed winners into the Las Vegas finals. Organisers advertised 32 finalist slots for the in-person showdown and streamed selected rounds for viewers.

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The event in context: Excel as esports and tradecraft​

The emergence of “Excel esports”​

The Microsoft Excel World Championship and related chapter competitions transform a workplace skill into a competitive format: timed cases, carefully designed test problems, and a scoring system that rewards accuracy, speed and creativity. The broader event ecosystem — chapters, national qualifiers, and a global final — is now mature enough to attract media profiles, sponsors, and multiple national chapters. The FMWC and its chapter network explicitly position winners as advancing to Las Vegas, with the main World Championship running a multi-day program in December.
This movement sits within a wider trend that has recast non-gaming contests into spectator events: speed programming contests, finance modeling cups, and productivity-tool championships are all part of the same arc that treats mental dexterity as competitive spectacle. Microsoft itself has leaned into visibility for spreadsheet competitions in recent years, including broadcasting and official blog coverage that showcases the championship on mainstream channels.

The skills on show​

Competitors are not simply memorising formulas. The cases test:

• Rapid data modelling and transformation (Power Query, array formulas)
• Formula craft (nested lookups, dynamic arrays, conditional aggregation)
• Logical problem-solving under time pressure
• Presentation and deliverable formatting for clarity

Practically, that means mastery of functions and features such as INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, dynamic arrays, and sometimes VBA or Python for advanced cases — although competition rules typically stipulate what is and is not allowed. The best competitors combine formula fluency with the ability to quickly decompose a problem into a reproducible spreadsheet model.

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Verifying the facts: what can be independently confirmed​

• Ha Dang won the UK chapter and will go to Las Vegas as the UK representative. This has been widely reported in trade and regional press, and the UK chapter’s calendar and participant structure corroborate the pathway to Las Vegas.
• The UK chapter ran three online rounds followed by an in-person London final, and the FMWC UK rules document confirms the September London final format and qualification process.
• The Microsoft Excel World Championship schedule for the global event has been publicised by the championship organisers and in chapter communications as provisionally running in Las Vegas from December 1–3, 2025; organisers across chapters reference those dates for the global training camp and finals. That provisional schedule appears in multiple championship-channel posts.
• Microsoft Excel’s original public release date for Macintosh is well documented as September 30, 1985; the observation that Excel is entering its 40th year is therefore factually grounded.
• The statement in coverage that XLOOKUP is Microsoft’s preferred lookup function but requires a relatively recent Excel build is consistent with Microsoft community guidance and contemporary reporting: XLOOKUP was introduced as a modern alternative to VLOOKUP and was initially available to Microsoft 365 Insider and subscription users, not in older perpetual-release versions like pre-Office 365 builds.

Caution: the exact scoring numbers published in some reporting (for example, The Register’s 2,474 vs 2,463 scoreline) appear in that outlet’s match report but are not yet duplicated in every local write-up or in official public score archives on the chapter site at the time of writing. For absolute verification of specific point totals and the official scoreboard, the FMWC UK organisers’ posted results and the official livestream recordings are the primary sources to check; the numbers reported in some outlets should be treated as likely accurate but provisionally verified until the official scoreboard post is consulted.

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Why this matters to Windows and Excel communities​

Skills that scale beyond competition​

The tactics competitors use in 30-minute case windows — thinking in arrays, building resilient formulas, controlling edge cases, and using named ranges and structured tables — are directly transferable to real-world reporting, automation and finance workflows. For corporate teams that rely on Excel for daily decision support, the talent pipeline and community knowledge-sharing stimulated by competitions can raise baseline skills and reduce error-prone workflows.

Branding and visibility for productivity tools​

The spectacle of a championship — livestreamed finals, social media highlights, and cross-border chapters — does something unusual for productivity software: it gives Excel a personality. That has two effects: it attracts new learners (many competitors credit YouTube, community cases and online tutorials for their development), and it draws attention to modern Excel features such as dynamic arrays and XLOOKUP that organisations should consider in their training and compatibility planning.

Platform and compatibility considerations​

Competitions implicitly favour contestants who run recent builds of Excel because new functions (for example, XLOOKUP, dynamic arrays and the latest LET/LAMBDA features) make some tasks simpler and more robust. That advantage creates a practical compatibility question for workplaces: if your team shares workbooks with external partners or long-lived corporate templates, reliance on newer functions can break backward compatibility with older Excel installations. Organisational policy decisions therefore matter:

• Maintain a consistent Excel build across teams if modern functions are adopted.
• Document fallback approaches if a workbook might be opened in older Excel versions.
• Consider Microsoft 365 subscription plans for business users who need access to the latest features.

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Critical analysis — strengths, opportunities and risks​

Strengths and positive spillovers​

• Talent development. Competitions create aspirational pathways for junior analysts and students, and they often lead to better hiring and training outcomes when champions share techniques publicly.
• Community learning. Many chapters and the FMWC publish practice cases and solutions. That accessibility widens the training pool and accelerates methods dissemination across industries.
• Product engagement. Public-facing events and televised slots (the championship has been featured on curated programming) raise awareness of Excel features that most office users don’t exploit. Microsoft’s own promotional channels have amplified this visibility.

Risks and downside scenarios​

• False equivalence: competition vs. real-world correctness. Speed-focused contests risk normalising quick, clever hacks that are hard to audit. In production, a solution that is fast to build but opaque or brittle can introduce risk into business-critical models. Excel errors have historically caused real-world losses and policy headaches; the best practice for production sheets emphasises clarity, versioning, and auditability, not raw speed.
• Version lock-in and accessibility. As chapters lean on newer Excel features, those who cannot upgrade (due to budget, platform, or procurement cycles) can be excluded. That raises equity questions: is “Excel excellence” measured in skill or in access to the latest subscription builds?
• Commodification and sponsorship pressures. As Excel esports attract sponsors and prize pools, organisers may push sensational formats to increase viewership. That can skew case design toward spectacle and away from representative, transferable problem types.
• Overemphasis on tool over process. Excel is a tool; the real value for organisations is in good processes, data governance, and reproducibility. High-performance individual skills must be embedded in robust team practices to reduce single-point failures.

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What champions actually do — a practical look under the hood​

Typical competition tactics​

Competitors converge on a set of practical moves that are useful both in contest and in the workplace:

• Use structured tables and named ranges to make formulas readable and resilient.
• Build modular formulas with LET and LAMBDA (when permitted) to avoid repeated expressions.
• Prefer XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays for flexible lookups and spill behavior — but include compatibility notes if a workbook will be shared with older Excel versions.
• Validate with small test cases rapidly, then scale up.
• Use keyboard shortcuts and quick navigation to shave seconds in the 30-minute window.

Functions and features worth mastering​

• XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS
• Dynamic arrays: FILTER, UNIQUE, SORT, SEQUENCE
• LET, LAMBDA (advanced formula abstraction)
• Power Query for data ingestion and transformation
• Basic VBA/Office Scripts or embedded Python where rules permit

How to prepare (a concise practice plan)​

• Learn core functions and practise on canonical cases.
• Time yourself on 30-minute problems and review each solution for readability and edge cases.
• Study published championship cases and official sample packs from chapter sites.
• Join community channels and watch livestreams to pick up workflow shortcuts and case design patterns.

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The Las Vegas finals: what to expect​

Organisers have signalled a multi-day championship in Las Vegas (provisionally Dec 1–3) that will gather chapter winners, seeded players and wildcard entrants into a global field. The event typically mixes streamed head-to-head battles, a training camp, and exhibition coverage designed for broader audiences; prize pools and ceremonial elements (belts, cash prizes) increase the stakes and public visibility. Chapter communications and cross-national pages confirm the Las Vegas dates and the practice of awarding on-stage spots to chapter winners.
Expect:

• Regional qualifiers feeding into a 256-player online phase
• An in-person bracket for the final slots
• Cases that combine data analysis, logic puzzles and real-world modelling constraints
• Broadcast-friendly presentation layers (commentary, time-lapse recaps, problem walkthroughs)

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Governance, auditability and safety — guidance for organisations​

• Treat competitive solutions as inspiration, not production templates. Rework competition-derived models to add tests, comments and provenance before operational use.
• Enforce version controls and snapshots for critical spreadsheets.
• Standardise on a minimum supported Excel build in shared workflows; provide migration plans for XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays if you want to adopt them widely. Microsoft community guidance shows XLOOKUP rolled out via Microsoft 365 channels initially and may not be available in older perpetual-release builds.
• Use automated auditing tools or simple cross-checks (duplicate calculations in a validation tab) to guard against single-cell errors.

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What this championship reveals about the modern Excel ecosystem​

Competitive Excel has matured from curiosity to an organised, global scene. Chapters like FMWC UK are professionalising the path from local rounds to a Las Vegas final, complete with rules, sample cases and livestreamed finals. That maturation illustrates two forces in the modern productivity landscape:

• The talent force: individuals who invest time in deep tool fluency can convert that skill into recognition, career opportunities and cross-border competition.
• The product force: spreadsheet tools are still evolving, and vendor-driven features (dynamic arrays, XLOOKUP, integrated Python) change the calculus of what “Excel mastery” looks like.

These forces create a virtuous loop for tool adoption and learning — but they also raise governance and access questions that organisations must manage.

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Takeaways for WindowsForum readers​

• Celebrate the craft: the UK final demonstrates how deep, tool-specific expertise can be both fun and professionally valuable.
• Learn with intention: use published chapter cases, the FMWC rules and past final recordings to develop testable, auditable workflows.
• Plan for compatibility: if your team starts using XLOOKUP and dynamic arrays, formalise a migration strategy for users on older Excel versions. Microsoft community guidance and contemporary reporting confirm XLOOKUP’s role as a modern replacement for VLOOKUP and its initial availability through subscription channels.
• Watch the finals: the Las Vegas championship is scheduled as a high-visibility event; follow chapter livestreams and official channels to see elite workflows in action and to assess which techniques are transferable to your team’s needs.

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Conclusion​

The UK Excel Championship did more than crown a national champion: it showcased how a decades-old productivity tool can form the basis of an organised, global competition that rewards speed, logic and creative application. Ha Dang’s narrow victory underlines the fine margins at the top end of the field and the depth of talent emerging from grassroots learning and community practice. As Excel approaches its 40th anniversary and the World Championship heads to Las Vegas this December, the event landscape is a reminder that software skills remain both a practical workplace asset and — increasingly — a spectator-friendly competitive pursuit. The excitement is real, but so too are the governance and compatibility questions that organisations must address as modern Excel features become part of the competitive toolbox.

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Source: theregister.com UK Excel champ crowned