Eligibility

The Swift Student Challenge is designed for student developers who are cultivating their software development skills. Make sure to review the current eligibility conditions to confirm that you’re qualified to participate. Please note that we can’t accept submissions from applicants who are employed as professional developers.

Applying

To be eligible for the Challenge, at the time you submit your app playground you must:

  • Be 13 years of age or older in the United States, or the equivalent minimum age in the relevant jurisdiction (for example, 16 years of age in the European Union);*
  • 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 an accredited academic institution or official homeschool equivalent;
    • Be enrolled in a STEM organization’s educational curriculum;
    • Be enrolled in an Apple Developer Academy; 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.

Building your app playground

Create an interactive scene in an app playground that can be experienced within three minutes. Be creative. If you need inspiration, use the provided templates for a head start on more advanced creations. Make them your own by adding graphics, audio, and more.

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 run on Swift Playgrounds 4.4 or later (requires iPadOS 16 or macOS 13.5, or later — this includes the use of iOS 17/iPadOS 17 only) or Xcode 15 on macOS 13.5, or later. You may incorporate the use of Apple Pencil.
  • All content should be in English.