Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge 2025-2026
You are invited to participate in the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge, a global innovation competition open to students at Stanford and universities around the world.
The 2025-2026 design theme is Prevention by Design: Creating Healthy Lifestyles for Long Lives.
Preventive health has become increasingly critical in the face of longer lives and rising chronic disease rates. The Stanford Center on Longevity’s New Map of Life envisions a future where health is not just about treating illness but about building lifestyle habits, and environments conducive to those habits, that increase resilience and improve well-being for people of all ages and backgrounds.
The 2025-2026 Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge invites student designers to create solutions (e.g., physical products, digital solutions, community programs or services) that empower individuals to lead healthier, longer lives through lifestyle factors such as sleep, nutrition, physical activity, mental health, social relationships, and financial health, particularly with approaches that are accessible, engaging, and adaptable to diverse needs and life stages. Learn more.
- Create a design for a product, service, or program that addresses the Challenge theme, “Prevention by Design: Creating Healthy Lifestyles for Long Lives.”
- Submit your design online any time between September 14 and December 1, 2025: https://designchallengestanford.skild.com/
- 6-8 Finalist teams will be announced on January 21, 2026.
- Finalists will be awarded $1,000 USD and paired with an experienced mentor to help prepare for the finals.
- Finalists will present their design before a panel of judges at the finals in April. Grand prizes will be awarded (1st place: $10,000 USD, 2nd place: $5,000 USD, 3rd place: $2,000 USD).
- Students of all majors/fields of study are welcome to participate!
- Each team must consist of at least one full-time student.
- Teams may have a total of up to 5 members, and may also include students from other universities and/or non-students. Students may also compete alone, as a team of 1.
- Only students are allowed to present at the Finals.
