Registration for the 2025 Sanlam WOW Spelling Festival is now open, and participation is completely free. It’s the biggest spelling festival in South Africa, and schools and learners from all over the country are invited to participate in the following language categories:
- Afrikaans: Grade 1 to 10
- English: Grade 4 to 9
- isiXhosa: Grade 6 to 8
Registration forms, spelling lists, and online spelling tests, as well as other language resources, can be found at wow.woordfees.co.za/en/. Confirmed spelling festival dates and venues will be communicated soon. Registration closes on 31 May. National finals will take place on 11 October 2025 at Stellenbosch University (SU).
Words have impact
“We celebrate all our project actions with a special annual WOW Festival at our sister project, the Stellenbosch Woordfees, who’s theme this year is ‘share’. With the Sanlam WOW Spelling Festival, we invite schools to be part of a movement of hope and action for our children’s future. Our motto for the spelling festival is ‘spell playfully’, and together we can change their young lives with words,” says Fiona van Kerwel, WOW manager and experienced former educator.
The Sanlam WOW Spelling Festival is the flagship project of Words Open Worlds (WOW), an empowerment initiative through language and cultural projects currently celebrating 21 years as the SU Division for Social Impact & Transformation.
Van Kerwel explains that through this multilingual platform, learners can engage with words in a fun and educational way to develop a better understanding of language and ultimately communicate more effectively.
“We help learners to communicate in a clear, creative, and critical manner. When they have to stand up to spell words aloud or sound them out, and ask for a definition or sentence, it builds their confidence and self-assurance. The online spelling tests and language resources are also a great help to educators for preparation, and we work with words from the curriculum of the particular grades.”
In 2024, 186 250 learners from 745 schools were registered to spell in Afrikaans, 159 750 learners from 639 schools for English, and 31 000 learners from 124 schools for isiXhosa. This culminated in 219 spelling festivals with 27 225 scholars participating throughout the year. More than 500 participants gathered for the national finals in Stellenbosch.
Read about the work WOW does to empower school communities here.
