Europe’s top memory athletes compete in face and number challenges in Denmark

Europe’s best memory athletes gathered this weekend in Høje Taastrup, near Copenhagen, to compete in the European Memory Championship, testing their skills in face recognition, number sequences, and other memory disciplines, Danish broadcaster DR reports.

Fifteen-year-old Anna Amalie Woznica from Denmark secured a ninth-place finish overall and won gold in the junior category. “I’ve worked hard for this, so it’s great to see it pay off,” she said.

The championship featured 27 competitors from 14 countries across 10 disciplines, including memorising names and faces in 15 minutes—where the world record stands at 224—and recalling the longest sequence of numbers in five minutes, with the current record at 630 digits. Woznica’s personal best in number memorisation is 200 digits.

She first realised her exceptional memory when she easily recalled 100 digits of pi for Pi Day. “I just tried to memorise 100 digits of pi because it was Pi Day. Then I realised maybe that wasn’t normal,” she said.

Her success comes from years of training, she explained. “The amazing thing is that you use the same techniques, but you can see how much you improve in a short time. The more you train, the better you get. I think that’s really cool.”

Lars Christiansen, a memory athlete and organiser of the event, said effective memorisation techniques are accessible to everyone. While most people won’t reach elite levels—such as memorising over 50 digits—basic methods rely on visual associations. “Numbers, for example, are abstract unless you turn them into images. That’s what we do with everything we need to remember,” he said.

One key technique is the “mind palace,” where information is mentally placed along a familiar route, such as a walk home, to aid recall.

Enrico Marraffa from Italy, now ranked as the world’s top memory athlete after this weekend’s competition, emphasised the role of concentration. “This is a sport where focus is everything. You have to train that too. I used to meditate a lot,” he said. During competitions, he blocks out distractions with visual barriers and noise-cancelling headphones. “You can’t afford to lose focus. If you do, you might lose visualisations and drop points. Staying concentrated the whole time is crucial.”

His advice for aspiring memory athletes: “Believe in yourself, keep training, and don’t lose hope.”