In the rare case you might need to escape (i.e., prevent from executing) a shortcode in a Hugo markdown (.md) file, and display the shortcode as {{< myshortcode >}} you will probably find that escaping the double curly braces with \ is not working for this, producing a result similar to this \{{< myshortcode >\}} or this \{\{< myshortcode >\}\} or that the shortcode is executed nevertheless.

A simple method that works at the time of writing, is adding /* after the opening double curly braces and the angle bracket or percent sign (i.e., {{</* or {{%/*) and adding */ after the closing angle bracket or percent sign and double curly braces (i.e., */>}} or */%}}). So, if for example, you have the shortcode myshortcode and you want to use it to a code highlight without being executed during page building from the Hugo engine, you should try including it in your markdown file as:

{{</* myshortcode */>}}

The above will produce an output like the following:

{{< myshortcode >}}

Enjoy coding!

References for further reading:

1. How is the Hugo Doc site showing shortcodes in code blocks?
2. How To Escape Shortcode In Hugo Template