Education is everything. We hear that phrase a lot, but there's something even more important to us here at Duolingo, and that is education access is everything. Welcome to Duocon 2025. My name is Luis von Ahn , and I am the CEO and Co-founder of Duolingo. Now, I am from Guatemala. This is a public service announcement that is where Guatemala is. It is right below Mexico. A lot of people talk about education as something that brings equality to different social classes, but I always saw it as the opposite, as something that brings inequality. Because what happens in practice is that people who have a lot of money can buy themselves really good educations, whereas people who don't have very much money, especially in poor countries, barely learn how to read and write and therefore never make a lot of money.
Now, what we wanted to do at Duolingo when we started it was to give access to education to everyone, regardless of whether they had money. And I'm very proud to say that since we launched 13 years ago, we have made a meaningful difference in access to language education. In most countries in the world, there are more people learning languages on Duolingo in that country than there are people learning languages across all high schools of that country combined. We have over 130 million people actively learning on Duolingo, and 90% of them are learning for free. We also have some very committed learners. For example, we have more than 10 million people that have a streak longer than 365, meaning they have been using Duolingo for the last year straight or longer. Now, Duolingo is used in every single country in the world.
This is a map of the most commonly learned language in each country. As you can tell, the most commonly learned language in most countries is English. And that is because English can truly transform lives. In most countries in the world, knowledge of English can significantly increase your income potential. And it's direct. See, if you were, for example, a waiter and you learn English, you can be a waiter at a hotel and make more money. In the United States, of course, the most commonly learned language is Spanish, and that is because of the proximity to Latin America and also the large Hispanic population in the United States. Now, this is the most commonly learned language in every country. It's also interesting to see the second most commonly learned language in every country.
What do you guys think is the second most commonly learned language in the United States?
French.
Portuguese.
English.
It's not French.
Japanese.
It's not Japanese. It's English. The second most commonly learned language in the United States is English. And actually, that's pretty common. The second most commonly learned language in Sweden is Swedish. The second most commonly learned language in Germany is German. In Italy, it's Italian. In Spain, it's Spanish. In Norway, it's Norwegian. And so on. Today, I want to talk about how we teach at Duolingo and how we teach better and better at Duolingo. And the first thing that I want to talk about is something that we started rolling out this year. Most of you have probably seen it, and that is the Duolingo Score. If you see on your home screen, right next to the flag that signifies your language, there should be a number between 0 and 160 that is your Duolingo Score.
For example, my Duolingo Score in French is a 40 out of 160, and that tells you exactly how well I know the language. You use this score instead of saying something like, "I took four years of French in high school," or, "I am an intermediate French speaker," or, "My Duolingo streak is 600." None of these things actually tell you how well you know the language. Now you can say, "I have a Duolingo Score in French of 40." Now, let me tell you what the different ranges of the score mean so that you get a good idea. For example, from 0 to 29, if your score is from 0 to 29, that is a beginner level. If you're familiar with the Common European Framework of Reference, or CEFR, the range 0 to 29 is equivalent to the level A1 in the CEFR.
Here, you learn things like the present tense or simple greetings or very common words. The type of sentence that you would see in this level or in this range of scores is something like, "The dog runs fast." By the time you get to score range 30, so when you finish this range, when you get to score 30, you can get to a point where you can communicate to somebody as long as the thing you're trying to communicate is not very complicated and as long as they're very patient with you. The 30-59 range of Duolingo Score is like a pre-intermediate level. This is equivalent to the level A2 of the CEFR.
The type of sentence that you see here is something like, "The dog has always run fast." In the range 60-99, this is equivalent to the level B1 in the CEFR. The type of sentence that you see here is something like, "I wish the dog hadn't run so fast." Here, you learn how to express your thoughts. Now, the range 100-129 is really important and really interesting to us. This is equivalent to the level B2 in the CEFR. The type of sentence that you will be able to master in this range is something like this. This is a sophistication. Who would have thought that the dog runs so fast? This is a level that we call independent.
Why it's so important for us is because by the time you finish this level, by score 130, that is the point where you can get a knowledge job in that language. You may not be able to understand wordplay really easily, or you may not be a poet, or you may still have an accent, but you can get a knowledge job in that language. For example, if your English level is 130, you could get a job in the United States as a software engineer, or you could be a university student. For us at Duolingo, this is the goal. We're trying to get everybody to a score 130 in the language that they're learning so that they could be in a position where they could get a job in that language. This is why our courses don't teach past Duolingo Score 130.
So even though the score goes all the way to 160, we don't teach past score 130. And it's because at that range, we're just talking about very sophisticated language. So, for example, the canine's legs had exerted enough kinetic energy so as to allow him to run with high velocity. We expect people to learn this type of language by themselves, and we just want to get people to a score where they could get a knowledge job in that language. Now, our courses to teach English, Spanish, and French can get you to Duolingo Score 130. Meaning, if you finish the entire course, you could actually be in a position where you could get a job in that language. We're very proud of that.
Our courses to learn German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Portuguese currently get you to score 60, but in the next few months, we're going to be able to get you to score 130. We're very proud of that. We all know that learning a language takes a long time. This is a table of how long it takes on average to get to different scores on Duolingo. For example, to get to a score 30, it takes 93 hours. If somebody tells you that they have a streak of 1,000, that shows that they're very committed. If they only do one lesson of Duolingo per day, each lesson takes about three minutes; after 1,000 days, you've only done about 50 hours of work.
If somebody tells you they have a streak of 1,000, you should congratulate them because that means they are very committed. However, it may not mean they know a lot of the language because they have not even passed the beginner level. This is why it's much better when you're talking to somebody to tell them what your Duolingo Score is rather than what your Duolingo streak is. To get to a score 60, you need 192 hours. To get to a score 100, it takes about 397 hours. To get to a score 130, remember, this is the place where you could be good enough in that language to get a job in that language, takes about 550 hours. Now, we're very proud of the fact that after 554 hours, you can get to a pretty advanced level of the language.
Now, for some of you, 550 hours may seem daunting because it seems like a lot of time. But this is the magic of Duolingo. This is why we work so hard to keep you motivated. This is why we have features like the Leaderboards that get you to do more lessons every day. Or this is why we have features like the Friend Streak that get your friends to encourage you to continue doing lessons on Duolingo. Now, being able to teach all the way to the point where you could get a job in that language really requires a lot of sophistication in the way we teach, and as you progress in your score, the course actually changes to be more and more sophisticated.
So, for example, at the beginning of the course, when your score is a low number, you may get a sentence like this, [Foreign language] meaning, "Yes, I speak Spanish." But as your score gets higher and higher, you may start seeing exercises like this one, which gets you to read a whole paragraph. We also have different types of lessons that teach the different aspects of the language. One of my favorite types of lessons is Adventures. What Adventures do is it's like a little game, and they help you figure out how to navigate the world. Let me show you what they look like.
Hola, Lucy.
Hola, Sari. Quiero café, por favor.
¿Quieres café con leche?
Sí, quiero café con leche. Y quiero un sándwich.
So these are super fun, but the type of thing that they teach you is just pretty elementary, like the difference between left and right. This is why Adventures are only in score ranges 0 to 29. Another really awesome lesson type that we have is this thing called DuoRadio. Here, you learn how to listen in the language. Let me play you a part of an episode of DuoRadio.
Today's caller sent in a picture of a pen. Could this be a pen used for signing historic documents? Caller, tell me about the pen.
Hola, me llamo Luis. Este es mi bolígrafo. Yo uso el bolígrafo en la escuela.
So for the early score ranges, these episodes are bilingual. So if you're a native English speaker learning Spanish, you'll see a lot of English and a little bit of Spanish because that's all you can handle. But as you get to higher and higher score levels, the episodes are going to be only in the language that you're learning, and they're going to have more complicated subjects. Another lesson type that I really like is stories. Here, you practice reading. And again, stories evolve as you increase your score. So in early score ranges, the stories are pretty simple. They're probably just a story of two people bumping into each other. But as you get to higher and higher score levels, these stories get more and more sophisticated.
So it may be a story about a love triangle, for example. Now, we're very proud that when you put all of this together, it really works. Our research team has run dozens of studies that prove that people actually learn on Duolingo. Let me tell you about one study that we did that we repeated across different years. This study we ran in 2020, 2023, and 2024. And here's what we did. We took people who didn't know any of the language that they were learning. They learned on Duolingo and only used Duolingo. And when they got to a certain point in the course, this is the point where you have Duolingo score 60. At that point, we tested them to see how well they listened and they read. And then these are the results. As you can see, over time, Duolingo is actually getting better.
The people that we tested in 2023 did better than the people that we tested in 2020, and the people that we tested in 2024 did better than the people that we tested in 2023, so Duolingo is getting better over time at teaching. Also, starting in 2023, the people who reach score level 60 actually have a CEFR level of A2, meaning they really are learning what we expect them to learn, and we're very proud of this. Now, the Duolingo Score is a great way to show people how well you know the language, but it is not certified, so you can't use this score to apply to a university, for example, but there are cases where you may need to have your score certified, especially if you're learning English, so for that, we have this thing called the Duolingo English Test.
The Duolingo English Test is a test that you can take from anywhere. You can take it from home on your computer, and you pay $70, and you get a certified version of your score. So you get a certificate that tells you your Duolingo Score. And this certificate, you can actually use for all kinds of things. For example, if you're applying to a university here in the United States as a foreign student, 99 of the top 100 universities, according to U.S. News & World Report, accept the results of the Duolingo English Test as proof of English proficiency. In fact, over 6,000 academic programs across the world accept the results of the Duolingo English Test. So we're very proud of that. And what we want is the combination of the Duolingo Score, which has a very wide appeal, and the Duolingo English Test, which has a certificate.
We want these two things to make it so that the score becomes the proficiency standard for languages. So from now on, when people ask you how well you know a language, you should tell them your Duolingo Score. This is all I wanted to talk about today, but we have a great show. You're going to get to hear about Video Call, which allows you to practice conversation. You're going to get to hear a really exciting partnership about sharing your score. And you're going to get to hear about our chess course. And also, you're going to get to hear about how we do product development on Duolingo. Thank you, and enjoy the show.
Thanks for getting us started, Luis. You guys want to hear a fun fact? Did you know Luis calls his mom every day? That's impressive.
I'm pretty happy about the fact that I call my mom two or three times a week. But every day, that's next level. With so many things going on in our lives, it's pretty hard to call our parents and make sure they get the really important life updates, like what we ate for lunch or if we did our laundry. These are the things our parents need to know. So if it's so hard to call our parents every day, you know it's even harder to call Lily and get your language practice in. Last year, we announced Video Call with Lily, a feature to help you get this essential conversational practice. I'm Yash Patel, the engineering lead for this feature, and I'm here to tell you how we're making Video Call with Lily even easier than calling your mom.
First off, we had to make Video Call more available. Now, it's available to all Max subscribers in our top nine courses. In each unit, there are five Video Call sessions, and there's even a dedicated tab for this feature. The short story is you should always have a way to call Lily. I mean, you might as well make her your new emergency contact. Every day, Lily does the work of over 500 language tutors working 24 hours a day to give you conversational practice on demand, making her one of the largest conversational agents on the planet. So now you're getting your speaking practice in, but we want you to work smarter, not harder. So let's think about this in two parts.
First, I want you to think about the very first time you rode a bike, you learned to swim, or the first time you drove a car. Think about the very first time you learned anything big for you. People in the chat, was it the first time you learned to throw a curveball? Was it the first time you learned to sew? Take a moment and get that memory in your head right now. Okay, now put your hands up. I want to ask you a question. With your fingers, show me how many support pillars were in place when you learned this memory. For me, learning how to swim, my dad was there in the deep end. My siblings were going through the same experience with me. And my dad also had a pool noodle in case I got scared. What about for you?
Did you watch a YouTube video? Did you have instructions? Was there a friend there to help you? Okay, go. I want to see your fingers. What do we got? Okay, I see like a one over there. So someone just got tossed into the deep end. But on average, one hand up, so like three or four for most people. That makes sense. Okay, cool. Hands down. Learning anything can be daunting. It's new. It takes time. It's a change to our regular patterns. And as you just shared, it requires support. So with our language practice, making that jump to becoming conversational with Lily, it can be just as daunting. So that's why our team is working on adding support pillars to help you make that jump. Here are a few of the things that we've been working on.
Number one, we want learners to start calls feeling prepared. So we'll ramp you up with comfortable topics like where you're from or your favorite foods. We'll show you captions of what Lily is saying and gradually help you take those training wheels off. Number two, during the call, Lily will help you recover from breakdowns in speech and help you correct your mistakes in the moment. Lastly, after a call, we've added a way for you to review conversations and receive feedback. There's a lot more in store because we're always looking at that jump and looking at the ways that we can help you have the right support pillars to feel comfortable tackling real-life conversations. So earlier, I said we want you to work smarter and not harder. But that's not true. We don't want you to feel like you're working at all.
To do this, we're doing what Duolingo does best, personalizing and gamifying. First off, with personalization, if the conversations are too hard, Lily will make them easier. If they're flowing, Lily will keep them going. In between sessions, she'll remember things about you and follow up on the topics that you care the most about. Then there's a lot more that we could do to make Video Call feel like a game. There are unique topics, matching backgrounds. And on each turn, Lily will visibly react to what you have to say. Whether she's encouraging you to keep going or just utterly bored with what you have to say, Lily should feel alive. The team is having so much fun working on Video Call to make speaking practice more available, more effective, and more fun for everyone.
Before I walk off the stage, I have to remind you, don't forget to call Lily or your parents. They all miss you.
That was Yash talking about Video Call. Yes, the one where you practice speaking with me. I know. I'm great. You're welcome. Next up is George, VP of Business Development. He's here to talk about a new partnership. It comes with bragging rights. Believe me, you'll love it.
I'd like to run a small experiment. Let's see how multilingual this crowd is. Raise your hand if you've ever tried to learn another language. Okay, that makes sense. It is a Duolingo Conference, after all. Keep your hands up, actually, if you've struggled to explain to people how good you are at this language. Okay, I still see most of the hands up. This is hard. Folks on chat, when someone asks you, how good are you at this language you're learning, react with an emoji to let us know how you feel answering this question. See, this is a common struggle, but it doesn't need to be. Hi, my name is George, and I'm a Spanish 58. Sometimes saying, I know some Spanish, just doesn't cut it because it's so broad.
But what if you could say a number and that number meant something, like a credit score, but for a language? This is where the Duolingo Score comes in. You've heard a lot about the Duolingo Score today, and that's by design. If there's one message we'd like you to take away from Duocon this year, it's this. We want the Duolingo Score to become the standard for describing your progress on Duolingo and eventually the global standard for language proficiency. Just like learners obsess about their streak, we want them to care about their score. And even better, we want them to be proud to share it. We are building towards a world where people say, I'm a Spanish 58 instead of the vague, you know, I kind of speak some Spanish. It's clearer. It's more credible. And frankly, it's cooler.
So what does it mean to be a Spanish 58? As a Spanish 58, I can make small talk on my first date in Mexico City. I can ask my date, [Foreign language]. But for the score to matter, it needs to live beyond the app. It needs to show up in the real world, in the wild, on platforms where language skills give you an edge. Dating apps, freelancing platforms, social networks, anywhere that your language level means something. And today, we're taking our very first step towards that world. I am thrilled to announce the first Duolingo Score integration is live now on LinkedIn, starting today. As of right now, you can connect your Duolingo and LinkedIn accounts and proudly showcase your score on the world's largest professional network.
This means your language skills are now verified, up to date, and understood by employers and recruiters all over the world. Are you a French 50 and an English 25? Maybe your Japanese 10, that's increasing every week? Well, you no longer have to wonder if you are at the elementary proficiency or the limited working proficiency level. It's all right there, automatically updated as you progress on Duolingo. We are so excited to partner with LinkedIn to make language learning more visible, more credible, and valuable on member profiles all over the world. Let's see what this looks like in action. Should we do this? All right. I'm going to open my Duolingo app, and I can see here I've increased my Spanish score. I am prompted to add my Spanish score to my LinkedIn profile. I am definitely going to do this. Add to LinkedIn. Signing in.
I'm giving LinkedIn permission to access my score from Duolingo. And here is my score now on my LinkedIn profile. Right here, under languages, you can see my Duolingo Score 58 of Spanish showing up for the whole world to see. How cool is this? So what's your score? Before Duocon ends today, open your Duolingo and share your Duolingo Score on LinkedIn. You'll be among the first people to do that in the world. And for people here in the audience, let's do this together. When I say go, turn to someone next to you, introduce yourself with your name, a language you're learning on Duolingo, and your Duolingo Score. Are you ready? Go. All right, everyone. I'm George. I'm a Spanish 58. Thank you very much.
I don't care if you're the popular kid or you're not. Everybody has an education horror story. I want to undo that.
When I enrolled in my PhD program, I was Duolingoing just an unreal amount. I loved it because it gave me a confidence that I didn't have before. Then it kind of like leaked into my tutoring practice. I have the widget on my iPad background, and my students will like point at it and be like, oh my gosh, you have a 780-day streak? Like, that's insane, dude. I can be like, yo, add me. I can send them high fives or praise them in some way, shape, or form. Then they start doing it regularly. I have a friend who I speak French with. When I tell people, yeah, I'm not fluent, but I'm pretty close to fluent at this point. They're like, what? How did you do that? Duolingo. I think it pairs well with a classroom setting.
But I think at the end of the day, if you want the student to move outside of the space with you, Duolingo is the way to do it. Classroom testing is fine, but it also gives the student a little bit of anxiety and negative feedback. Duolingo does not. If you miss a question, you need to do it again. When you do a speaking exercise, you have to record yourself saying the sentence back. It is once again reinforcing that idea of your voice is valid. And that is the most powerful thing that anyone can ever have.
Next, we have Natalia, Director of Product. She'll explain how we test new features. Spoiler, we test them on you. If you didn't know that, surprise, and thanks for your service.
How many times have you been at a fork in the road and you weren't quite sure about what you do? Decision A or decision B? Or maybe you already made a decision, but there's this cloud of uncertainty weighing on you. Am I on the right path? Am I still on track? Should I have chosen differently? Wouldn't it be nice to have a little crystal ball to help you clear through that mystery? Something that says, psss, it's that way. Here at Duolingo, we don't leave decisions to uncertainty. My name is Natalia Castillejo, and let me reveal to you our crystal ball. Every day, millions of learners open slightly different versions of the Duolingo app. The Duolingo app that you can see on your phone right now is slightly different from the ones that your friends or family may be using. And these variations are no accident.
They're controlled experiments, or A/B tests, that keep the app getting better and better over time. But what exactly is A/B testing, and why is it so important for our work here at Duolingo? If this was a real classroom, the teacher could simply look around and get a sense of how things were going, noticing who's engaged, who's maybe falling asleep a little bit, who's a little bit confused, or even who may be reading Pride and Prejudice behind her grammar textbook like I was doing one time. Because teachers in real life get immediate feedback about how their lesson is landing. Whether students are lit up with curiosity or quietly slipping away, it shows. But on Duolingo, we don't get that same level of immediate feedback. And so we need to do things a little bit differently. And so we rely on data-driven experimentation instead.
With A/B testing, we split learners into two large random groups, and each group gets a slightly different version of the Duolingo app. Then we observe how each group reacts to each change before deciding whether we should launch it to all learners. Take our Radio lessons, for example. These are bite-sized listening lessons sprinkled on your path. In our A/B test, we split learners into two large groups, and one group got access to these lessons on their path, and the other group got just the regular Duolingo path, but without the Radio lessons. We ran this experiment for a few weeks, and then we looked at some metrics.
Whenever we run an A/B test, there's a few metrics that we look at, such as how many minutes are people spending on Duolingo learning, or how many answers are they getting correct, and how likely are they to return to the app the next day to extend their streak. Even a tiny small increase in some of these metrics can translate to millions of minutes spent learning on the app each day. And in the case of Radio, we saw that people who had access to it were way more likely to extend their streak and also improve their listening skills. And so we were confident in our decision to launch Radio to all of our learners. But we don't always get it right. Remember that early version of chatbots from 2017?
We were so passionate about this feature that would allow learners for the first time to practice realistic conversations on Duolingo. Have you ever gotten really excited about something? Maybe it's an idea that you just had, or someone you just met, or like for me, a book that you just can't seem to put down? Well, at Duolingo, we're human too. And sometimes we get a little bit carried away with our excitement. That chatbot feature, we were so confident it was going to be so good for learning and make the experience so much more fun for you. But we were wrong. Thankfully, we honored our A/B testing methodology, and it was you who said, you know what? This actually does not work for me. You didn't need to tell us directly. Your lack of usage told the story.
And it was you who cleared away the uncertainty and showed us the right path, which makes you our crystal ball. Here are two other examples of A/B testing. First, the new energy system. Hearts evolved to today's energy system after dozens of experiments where we stopped punishing learners for their mistakes. And we saw that this new energy system drove engagement and time spent learning up. And now you're going to help me with this next example. Take a look at the screen. You're going to see two different versions of a practice reminder. Number one has a sense of urgency. You need to do your lesson now, or you're going to break your streak. And number two, you're going to see Lily being her usual sarcastic self, reminding you to do your lesson. Either way, she probably does not care. Okay, now show me your hands.
Show me a one or a two. Which version of the notification do you think you would respond better to? Number one or number two? All right, thank you. Now, people online in the chat, type one or two. The team is waiting to tally up your vote. Behind every notification, every lesson, and every sparkly streak is an A/B test asking a simple question. How do humans learn best? A/B testing lets us answer this question with data instead of intuition. So thank you for being the voice of certainty. Thank you.
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Plus, enjoy exciting games and puzzles that keep your brain sharp. It's surprisingly fun and honestly kind of addicting, but in a good way. Start learning math on Duolingo. It's free, unlike prescription meds. Side effects may include twitchy eyelids, unexplained forehead tension, feeling like your clothes are too loud, unexpected hair loss, an aversion to shellfish, the constant need to romanticize your life, rapid blinking during emotional moments, and heavy sweating in places you didn't know could sweat. Also, diarrhea. You'll be fine, probably.
I was in the process of giving up. I felt like I was in a cage. In South Africa, the only thing that is given to a refugee is the basic education. So when the Duolingo opportunity came to me, I felt like someone gave me a weapon to go and change the world. I was born in a small village in Congo.
This is me. This is my dad. And the one behind over there, that's my brother. Due to the conflicts and the insecurity that took place in Congo, I was forced to leave and go and seek refuge in South Africa. I had very big dreams. I wanted to become a medical doctor. I wanted to become a scientist. My advisor, she asked all the scholars to take the DET test. The score that I got from there was actually submitted as part of my application to Vanderbilt University, which was a very good indication that I can speak English with no problems. A little bit higher. There you go. I do have siblings who have graduated from high school, but I'm the first one to be in college. Being at Vanderbilt University, like it's a very big achievement for me.
The first day that I arrived at the Common, and I saw different flags hanging out there. And then I saw my Congolese flag as well hanging out there. I was like, I was so proud of myself. I was the reason why that flag was actually hanging out there. I felt like there were new wings that developed for me. I felt like I belonged. I can do whatever I want to do. I can apply for any opportunity I want to do. I can try something new on campus. Right now, only the sky is the limit.
Let's talk about something new. Apparently, we teach chess now. I know. Even I'm impressed. Anyway, I'll let Oscar explain.
Thank you, Lily. Yes, we've added chess to Duolingo. Finally, a game worthy of my time. We'll teach you how to play, how to think strategically, how not to embarrass yourself.
Best of all, I'm in it. To explain how we're teaching it, meet Elisa, one of our wonderful learning designers.
My pieces were trapped. The stakes were high, and the loser paid for dinner. I could win my favorite meal and the pleasure of removing the smugness from his face, or I could lose it all and be stuck listening to him gloat about his chess prowess. Raise your hand if you play chess regularly. Anyone? Anyone at home, do you play chess? Share with me in the chat what's your favorite opening. I see a couple of hands. Thank you, thank you. There's at least three chess players in my family. I'm proud to say that my great aunt was the first Mexican female chess player to lead national teams to international competitions. She dedicated her life to teaching others, especially women, to play and compete.
She believed that chess is not just a simple game. Players have to use critical thinking skills, solve problems creatively, and make plans with multiple options. But it has a human element too. You learn to think from someone else's perspective. What do they see? What are their plans? And how can you thwart them? And you learn how to lose and win humbly. Hi, I'm Elisa Camps Troncoso, and I'm proud to be following in my great aunt's footsteps as a learning designer on the chess team. So back to that fateful day. It was hot. The sidewalk was getting crowded, and there were actually people standing around us watching us play. I felt nervous. These were strangers watching us. Were they judging my moves? Were they trying to figure out my strategy? Were they rooting for me or for him? Were they confused?
Or were they just intrigued by the game? When I asked you a moment ago if you play chess, only a few of us raised our hands. And I imagine the same for folks online. But chess has been around for over 1,000 years, and yet it still has a reputation for being too tough to learn or too complicated. And that can feel intimidating. Many beginners always say the same exact thing to me. I don't know what piece to move next. So we wanted to change that and make it available and accessible for everyone. We launched chess on iOS in English at the beginning of May. And in just 25 days, over one million learners joined the course, which told us not only that chess is for everyone, but that chess is for you. So get your mustache ready and meet Oscar.
You're a slightly pretentious but very passionate tutor. If Oscar was with me that day, he would have given me instructions, explained my moves, explained my opponent's moves, and probably added some of the color commentary that folks on the sidewalk would have chuckled at. Now, I know you're eager to know. Did I win or not? But that's the fun of chess, building up your strategy, adapting as you go, working up to the checkmate. And this match, it was not a quick one. We were head-to-head in a chess battle. When he attacked, I captured back. And if I lost a piece, I recovered. And this is exactly how we teach you to play chess, through bite-sized battles. First, you start with the fundamentals, the rules, the pieces, how to move. Then we teach you basic tactics, like how to trap pieces or attack two at once.
After that, we teach you more complex attacks and skills, like planning your next moves or visualizing threats. But it's not just play, play, and play again. That's what I'm most proud of. There are three components that make our teaching method unique. Number one, lessons. Based on puzzles, our lessons help learners sharpen their strategic thinking through bite-sized challenges. And just like in the language courses, we break concepts down into small pieces so that learning feels simple, approachable, and fun. Number two, mini matches. To get your adrenaline going, you'll encounter mini matches, where you have to capture as many pieces as you can in 90 seconds. This is where we take some of the anxiety out of the process. This is your playground. You don't have to worry about checkmate. You just need to capture and have fun.
Mini matches will allow you to focus on your muscle memory and gain confidence seeing yourself in action. Number three, our capstone experience is, of course, a match against Oscar. Just like in language, it is not enough to learn words and phrases. You need to put them into practice, so after going through a chess unit, you should put your newly acquired tactics to the ultimate test and play a match against Oscar. He will not just play in silence. He will comment on your moves, gloat if he captures, and pretend it was all part of the plan when he loses a piece, just like my opponent did, and Oscar will evolve with you, win or lose, and get progressively harder the further you advance, so the match was coming to its end. Everyone is still staring. He was getting ready to checkmate, but I got there first.
I won, just like you can. Chess is available now in English and Spanish on iOS, and we will launch it soon in French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, and Chinese. We've been working around the clock to bring it to Android so you can learn and play chess anywhere in the world. So let's try this again. Raise your hand if you want to play chess. I'm so excited to see you all become grandmasters. Remember, chess is for you. I'd bet dinner on it. Thank you.