IMAGE: APPLE
Apple is once again offering students around the world the opportunity to showcase their coding skills with a new Swift Student Challenge in 2025, now a yearly fixture in Apple’s push to engage young developers – and to allow them to gain both recognition and career-building experience.
Submissions for the 2025 challenge will open in February, with a three-week window for entries. As with previous years, participants are expected to create apps using Swift, the same language that powers countless apps across Apple’s ecosystem. Apple will award 350 students whose apps stand out for innovation, creativity, and social impact, with 50 Distinguished Winners receiving the added recognition of a trip to Apple's Cupertino headquarters next summer.
But while Apple is offering the platform, the challenge is no walk in the park. Students like Kai Quan Tay and Xuan Han Tan, both previous winners of the Swift Student Challenge, know firsthand the work involved in building an award-winning submission.
IMAGE: KAI
Kai Quan, 16, won with his app playground Seymour (read our interview here), designed to help visually impaired individuals perceive depth using a built-in depth map and camera feed. His advice for aspiring participants is to stay focused on the core goal of their app, rather than getting lost in flashy features. “It’s tempting to start by thinking, ‘I want to use XYZ in my app,’ especially with all the buzz around AI. But if you don’t know the core objective, the app can feel shallow,” he says.
On the other hand, 17-year-old Xuan Han, who developed Lightspeed (read our interview here), a time-tracking app with an emphasis on efficiency and simplicity, stresses the importance of user experience. “Start from designing the UX,” he says. “Think from the user’s perspective, not the developer’s, and get feedback early on.”
To support participants, Apple has refreshed its Swift Coding Club resources, providing a starter kit designed to help students master Swift and SwiftUI. These tools enable students to dive deeper into app development, either for competition purposes or simply to hone their skills. Apple is also encouraging the use of its Develop in Swift tutorials, which give participants a more structured approach to learning Swift, SwiftUI, and Xcode. These resources are aimed not just at improving submissions but also at setting up students for potential careers in app development.
To sign up for the challenge, click here.
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