Garðaskóli won the 2026 Financial Games
Garðaskóli came away victorious in the annual Financial Games 2026 competition, held for the ninth year in a row on the occasion of International Financial Literacy Week.
The competition is sponsored by Fjármálavit, an educational platform on financial literacy that offers a variety of learning materials for students.
About 200 students from Garðaskóli participated in the competition, but in total there were about 2,000 students from 50 elementary schools across the country who participated this year. In the Financial Games, students answer a variety of questions that relate to, among other things, interest rates, savings, insurance, rights and obligations in the labor market, pension savings and other aspects of financial literacy.
Garðaskóli students received a trophy and a check for 250,000 ISK for their victory. In addition, the school will compete on behalf of Iceland in the European Youth Financial Literacy Competition, which will take place on May 18–19 in Brussels, Belgium.
The Fjármálavits website quotes Andri Rafn Ottesen, a teacher at Garðaskóli: "We teachers at Garðaskóli are very proud of our students, as there were about 200 kids in the 10th grade who participated in the competition on behalf of the school. We decided right away in the fall to take this seriously. We found that there was a lot of cooperation among the students and that is exactly what is good, they learn to talk about finances together," says Andri Rafn.
"We have always had a big and extensive financial literacy class in 10th grade, but we are now starting to move the education down to 8th and 9th grade. We see that it makes a big difference that the kids have a foundation when they arrive in 10th grade, and then the book First Steps in Finance that we get from Fjármálaviti is well-received. We have found that students' interest is quickly aroused when they get the opportunity to learn about finances and to make them personal, such as having them save for something they want and what it means to be in a job and get a salary, to name a few," says Andri Rafn Ottesen.
You can read more about Fjármálavit and the Fjármáleikana here.
Congratulations to Garðaskóli !