Apple is proud to support and uplift the next generation of developers, creators, and entrepreneurs with the Swift Student Challenge. The Challenge has allowed thousands of student developers to showcase their creativity and coding capabilities through app playgrounds and learn real-world skills that they can take into their careers and beyond.
From connecting peers to mental health resources to identifying ways to support sustainability efforts on campus, previous Swift Student Challenge participants around the world used their creativity to develop apps to solve real-world problems. Apple encourages you to brainstorm and develop thoughtful ideas for apps that address important issues in your community and beyond.
Dream, draft, and organize ideas for your app playground, download what you’ll need to make your vision a reality, and start building!
Benefits
- They’ll select 350 Swift Student Challenge winners whose submissions demonstrate excellence in innovation, creativity, social impact, or inclusivity. From this esteemed group, they’ll name 50 Distinguished Winners whose work is truly exceptional and invite them to join them at Apple in Cupertino for three incredible days.
- All winners will receive one year of membership in the Apple Developer Program, a complimentary voucher to take an App Development with Swift certification exam, a personalized certificate from Apple, and AirPods Max.
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.
You can receive a Swift Student Challenge award up to four times. You may be selected as a Distinguished Winner one time only.
Requirements
- 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 HERE to Applyrun on Swift Playground 4.5 or Xcode 16, or later. You may incorporate the use of Apple Pencil.
- All content should be in English.
Deadline: February 23, 2025
Click HERE to Apply
