Check out the winners of round 1 & round 2!
Power BI Dataviz World Champs - Round 3 of 3 is now closed!
The prelims are officially entering their final week! You’ve tackled global trends, explored climate signals, and shown off some incredible creativity so far. Now we’re closing out the preliminary rounds with a challenge rooted in 125+ years of legendary achievements, global competition, and the spirit of the Olympic Games.
This is your last chance to qualify directly for the finals - before our judges step in next week to select the Wildcard Finalist.
And a quick update: to give our judges a little more time to review the amazing Week 1 entries, the announcement dates have shifted slightly. Week 1 winners will now be announced on January 28. Thank you for your patience - they’re worth the wait!
Theme: A Century of Olympic History - Athletes, Nations, and Moments That Shaped the Games
This week, you’ll be diving into a rich, multi‑table dataset covering the Summer and Winter Olympics from 1896–2022. Explore medal outcomes, athlete stories, shifts in national performance, gender representation, long‑term trends, era‑to‑era changes, and anything else that inspires you.
We picked this dataset because the 2026 Winter Olympics kick off on February 6, and there is something magical about exploring more than a century of Olympic history right as the world gears up for the next chapter.
📊 Starter Semantic Model (Week 3)
This round features a structured model built around three main tables - perfect for historical analysis, comparison, storytelling, and deep‑dive exploration.
1. hosts
Metadata for each Games: host city, country, season, start/end dates.
Use this to tie athletes and results to specific Olympics.
2. athletes
One row per athlete, with biographical details, appearance history, total medals, and more.
Ideal for athlete‑focused stories or tracking long careers.
3. results
The central fact table. Each row is a single athlete’s result in a specific event, including medal type, country codes, and links back to both athlete and Games.
4. result_athletes
A small but necessary bridge table to support the many‑to‑many relationship between athletes and results.
Download the starter semantic model.
📚 Data Source
Kaggle — Olympic Games Medals, 1896–2022
License: Creative Commons CC BY‑NC‑SA 4.0
Note: This dataset has been modified by Microsoft MVP Stephanie Bruno. To consume the data as it appears in the semantic model, please visit Stephanie's GitHub.
This dataset is open, remixable, and perfect for storytelling—as long as all additional data you add is openly licensed and cited.
🎯 Your Task
Tell a story from Olympic history using Power BI. You can explore:
- National performance over time
- Gender representation and progress
- Era‑to‑era shifts in athletic achievement
- Which countries dominated which sports
- The rise of new events or nations
- Surprising correlations or long‑term patterns
- Anything else the data inspires!
Your goal is not just to visualize—it’s to reveal something meaningful.
🛠️ Report Requirements
Structure
- Maximum of 5 report pages
(Custom canvases permitted—just keep the content roughly equivalent.)
Visual Requirements
Include at least one core visual such as a:
- Line chart, Bar/column chart, Scatterplot, Map
Data Requirements
You can transform, reshape, or aggregate freely. You can also add open‑source supporting datasets—just cite them.
Accessibility Requirements
- ≥4.5:1 contrast ratio
- Alt text for every visual
- Avoid using color alone for meaning
- Ensure a proper keyboard navigation order
👀 Who Is Viewing This Report?
Audience
Sports analysts, journalists, Olympic historians, fans, and global stakeholders.
What They Need
Reports that help them understand:
- How athletes and nations have evolved over time
- How medal trends shifted across eras
- The emergence (or decline) of specific sports
- The stories and patterns behind Olympic achievements
They want clear, insight‑rich visuals that show both the big picture and the compelling details.
📬 How to Submit
- Publish to the Power BI Contests gallery
- Include “Week 3:” in your post title
Example: “Week 3: The Evolution of Olympic Medal Trends” - Choose category World Champs ATL
- Add a short description of what you explored
- Share your link in the contest thread below this post
🏆 Judging Criteria
Your entry will be evaluated on:
- Insightfulness (10 pts) – Does your report surface meaningful trends and comparisons?
- Visual Effectiveness and Clarity (10 pts) – Is the story easy to follow and well-structured?
- Creativity and Innovation (10 pts) – Are your visuals engaging and innovative?
- Accessibility (10 pts) – Does it meet the basic accessibility standards of appropriate color contrast, inclusion of alternative text, and set tab order?
👩🏼⚖️ Judges
Our panel of esteemed judges includes:
- Chris Hamill is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and a leading expert in Power BI report design. With nearly a decade of experience in business intelligence and a foundation in corporate finance, Chris specializes in crafting user-centric dashboards that drive clarity and impact.
- Diana Ackermann is a freelance statistician with 15+ years of turning messy data into clear, executive-ready insights. She fell in love with Power BI building forecasting and supply‑chain reporting into a SaaS solution, and she’s been focused on practical, leadership-friendly analytics ever since. Diana judged the 2023 Information Is Beautiful Awards and now contributes to the Workout Wednesday team, all while sharing her expertise widely through conferences, podcasts, and meetups.
- Shannon Lindsay is a Program Manager at Microsoft and an analyst, BI leader, and community builder dedicated to making data visualization in Power BI both engaging and inclusive. Shannon focuses on accessibility judging for Microsoft Fabric Community Contests.
🏆 Prizes
- Finalists: Finalists will be selected each week, along with one wildcard finalist. Each of the 4 finalists will receive a FabCon ATL conference pass and 3 nights hotel accommodation in Atlanta, Georgia.
- Top entries: Top entries from all rounds will also be featured on the Power BI Community Website, giving you an opportunity to showcase your work to a global audience!
- Fan favorites: Entries with the most likes/kudos will also be featured as fan favorites!
🏆 What’s Next?
This is the final week of prelims.
At the end of Week 3, the judges will:
- Select the Week 3 finalists
- Begin evaluations to choose one wildcard finalist from the entire set of submissions across Weeks 1–3
Finalists will receive a FabCon ATL conference pass + 3 hotel nights in Atlanta. Top entries also get featured on the Power BI Community site!
Ready to make your mark?
This is your last chance to secure a spot among the finalists before the wildcard selection begins. Dive into the data, explore over a century of Olympic stories, and bring the Games to life in Power BI.
Good luck - and let’s close out the prelims with a strong finish!
Community Admin
