UKMT Senior Maths Challenge

The UKMT Senior Maths Challenge is a 90-minute multiple-choice maths competition, usually taken by students aged 16-18 in the UK and around the world. Entries are also open to enthusiastic younger students. The official website of the Senior Maths Challenge can be found here.

To understand how the Senior Maths Challenge fits into the system of UK maths challenges, take a look at the video here. It also explains how the follow-on Kangaroo and Olympiad rounds work.

The UKMT Senior Mathematical Challenge is usually taken by students in Years 12 and 13 in England and Wales, which corresponds to Years 13 and 14 in Northern Ireland or S5 and S6 in Scotland, but younger students can also take the challenge. Students in equivalent year groups around the world also take the Intermediate Maths Challenge. These year groups usually correspond to students aged between 16 and 18, but there is no lower limit on the age students can participate.

The UKMT Senior Maths Challenge is usually considered an ‘enrichment’ activity and schools often offer the competition to their more enthusiastic or high-performing students. A range of students can benefit from taking the challenge, and the earlier questions are always made to be more accessible so that it is not just the top students who will enjoy the Senior Maths Challenge!

If you’re preparing for the Senior Maths Challenge, start by watching this video to learn everything you need to know about the SMC. It includes the sorts of questions that come up, how well you need to do to reach each certificate boundary (and to qualify for the Kangaroo and Olympiad rounds) and tells you exactly what to do to prepare!

Then, when you’re ready to start preparing, take one of our Senior Maths Challenge Preparation courses (live and self-paced options available).

You can also practise lots of real past paper questions with video hints and solutions for free with Get Ready for the Senior Maths Challenge, or browse past papers and certificate boundaries here.

Students who do well in the Senior Maths Challenge may qualify automatically for the Andrew Jobbings Senior Kangaroo or for the British Mathematical Olympiad Round 1 (BMO1). Students who do not qualify automatically but want to take these papers can still make discretionary entries.

Yes! The page here explains how to qualify, and also about ‘discretionary entries’ for students who haven’t qualified automatically.

he UKMT Senior Maths Challenge is marked automatically. Paper entries are passed through a machine that scans the papers and checks students’ multiple-choice answers, so it is very important that students follow the instructions on the answer paper carefully and only enter one answer for each question. Students often keep a note of their answers on rough paper and enter their answers on the answer sheet at the end as it can be hard to erase answers fully if they want to change their answers. Students taking the challenge online do not have this problem of course, where the marking is fully automated and answers are chosen on the screen.

You can only take the IMC at a registered UKMT centre – see the video here for more advice about what you can do in this situation.

Yes! Mathsaurus offers a range of options to prepare for the SMC, including some live-taught options. You can see all of our Senior Maths Challenge Preparation courses here.

The free Mathsaurus course ‘Get Ready for the Senior Maths Challenge’ contains many years of past Senior Maths Challenge questions, each with video hints and solutions to help you practise and prepare. Further past papers can be found at the page here.

The exact numbers vary from year to year, but in 2025, a record 103,814 students took the Senior Maths Challenge!