Deadline: February 28, 2026
Applications are open for the Swift Student Challenge 2026. Apple is proud to support and uplift the next generation of developers, creators, and entrepreneurs with the Swift Student Challenge. The Challenge has given thousands of student developers the opportunity to showcase their creativity and coding capabilities through app playgrounds, and learn real-world skills that they can take into their careers and beyond.
Benefits
- They will name Distinguished Winners whose work is truly exceptional and invite them to join — in person — for three inspiring days at Apple in Cupertino, where they’ll gain invaluable insights from Apple experts and engineers, connect with their peers, and enjoy a host of unforgettable experiences. Travel and lodging included.
Eligibility
To be eligible for the Challenge, you cannot be employed full time as a developer, and at the time you submit your app playground you must:
- Meet the minimum age for requirement for your country or region as follows:
- 14 years of age or older in Austria, Bulgaria, China mainland, Cyprus, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, South Korea, and Spain.
- 15 years of age or older in Czechia, France, Greece, Peru, and Slovenia.
- 16 years of age or older in Brazil, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, and Slovakia.
- 13 years of age or older in all other countries and regions.
- Be registered for free with Apple as an Apple developer or be a member of the Apple Developer Program; and
- Fulfill one of the following requirements:
- Be enrolled in, or have graduated within the last 90 days from, an accredited academic institution or official homeschool equivalent, or an Apple Developer Academy;
- Be enrolled in a STEM organization’s educational curriculum; or
- Have graduated from high school or equivalent within the past 6 months and be awaiting acceptance or have received acceptance to an accredited academic institution.
Application
- Your submission must be an app playground (.swiftpm) in a ZIP file.
- Your creation should not rely on a network connection and any resources used in your app playground should be included locally in the ZIP file. Submissions will be judged offline.
- Your ZIP file can be up to 25 MB.
- Your submission must be created by you as an individual or a template modified by you as an individual. Group work will not be considered. You may include third-party open source licensed code and/or public domain images and sounds, with credit and an explanation of why it was used.
- Your app playground must be built with and run on Swift Playground 4.6 or Xcode 26, or later. You may incorporate the use of Apple Pencil.
- All content should be in English.
For more information, visit Swift Student Challenge.
