Apple’s Swift Student Challenge 2027 takes entries from February 8 to February 28, 2027, and for the first time you can build your app for any Apple platform. Apple announced the dates in a post on its developer news site, and the Swift Student Challenge page lists iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS as fair game.
That’s the twist. An Apple Watch app, an Apple TV game or a Vision Pro experience can now compete with the usual iPad and iPhone entries. Everything else about the challenge looks familiar: a three minute app, strict offline rules, and a trip to Cupertino for the best entries ahead of WWDC 2027.
Swift Student Challenge 2027 dates, the deadline and three free Apple prep sessions
Apple’s official rules put the final deadline at 11:59 p.m. PST on February 28, 2027. Before the window opens, Apple is running three free online Meet with Apple sessions, listed on its get ready page:
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| Date | Session |
|---|---|
| December 10, 2026 | Get started with agentic coding in Xcode |
| January 14, 2027 | Get ready for the Swift Student Challenge |
| February 4, 2027 | Create your app’s story |
The first session tells you where Apple’s head is. Apple says the sessions cover “new coding intelligence features,” and the agentic coding session lands two months before submissions open. Apple also points students to its Develop in Swift tutorials, which cover SwiftUI, AI and machine learning, and spatial computing.
Apple hasn’t announced dates for WWDC 2027 yet.
Who can enter the Swift Student Challenge: ages from 13 to 16 and the enrollment rules
The eligibility page sets the minimum age by country, measured when you submit. It’s 13 in most countries and regions, but higher in several:
- 14 or older in Austria, Bulgaria, China mainland, Cyprus, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, South Korea and Spain
- 15 or older in Czechia, France, Greece, Peru and Slovenia
- 16 or older in Brazil, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore and Slovakia
You also need to meet one enrollment rule. You can be enrolled at, or have graduated in the last 90 days from, an accredited school, an official homeschool equivalent or an Apple Developer Academy. You can be enrolled in a STEM organization’s curriculum. Or you can have finished high school in the past six months and be waiting on, or holding, a place at an accredited institution. Full time and professional developers can’t enter, and you need at least a free Apple developer account.
Your app must run in three minutes, fit in 500MB and work offline
The new platform freedom comes with the same tight box as before. Apple’s rules say your entry must be:
- An Xcode app or an app playground built with Swift Playground, sent as a ZIP file. Command line tools and packages don’t count.
- Built with and running on Xcode 27 or Swift Playground 4.7 or later.
- Something a judge can experience within three minutes.
- No bigger than 500MB as a ZIP file.
- Fully offline. Judges test without a network connection, so every resource has to be inside the ZIP.
- Your own individual work, with all content in English.
AI is allowed, with conditions. The rules say you can use AI tools for specific tasks if you fully disclose that use, and you still have to show significant individual work and real understanding of your app. Your written answers must be your own. On-device Apple Intelligence frameworks are fine to use.
Here’s the practical catch for the new platforms. A watchOS or visionOS app has to make its point in three minutes, offline, to a judge who may never have seen your idea. Apple’s rules don’t say how judges run those entries, so a clear first screen and a short path to the good part will help more than a long feature list.
What Swift Student Challenge winners get, and how many Apple picked last year
Every winner gets one year of Apple Developer Program membership, which normally costs $99 a year, plus a special gift. From that group, Apple names Distinguished Winners for the strongest entries. The rules say Apple may invite them to visit Cupertino in summer 2027 and will cover travel and lodging, including for one parent or guardian of a winner who is a minor. Invited students have two weeks to confirm.
Apple doesn’t say how many winners it will pick for 2027. For scale, Apple’s 2026 results post counted 350 winning submissions from 37 countries and regions, and 50 Distinguished Winners went to WWDC at Apple Park in June for a three day visit.
Judges score technical accomplishment, creativity, and your written answers on the submission form. You can win a Swift Student Challenge award up to three times, but you can be a Distinguished Winner only once. If you’re new to Swift, Xcode 27.1 shipped with Swift 6.4, and the Xcode 27 requirement means you’ll want a Mac that runs the current release before February.
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