Wege Prize 2025

Wege Prize is an annual competition that ignites game-changing solutions for the future by inspiring college/university students around the world to collaborate across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries to redesign the way economies work. Participants contend for $65,000 (USD) in total cash prizes, all while learning—and helping to show the world—what the future of problem solving looks like.

Organized by the Wege Center for Sustainable Design at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD), the competition’s multi-disciplinary, five-person teams identify a “wicked problem” to address and develop a compelling solution — products, services, systems, and more — that builds on core principles of the circular economy by:

• Helping accelerate the transition to a circular economy and a shift towards renewables. 
• Providing unique value and exploring untapped potential through innovation.
• Demonstrating the potential for marketability, profitability, and financial sustainability.
• Exhibiting research, user consideration, and affected communities in all aspects of the solution’s design.

During the nine-month process, five-person teams compete to advance through the competition’s four phases, growing their ideas from informal proposals into real-world solutions informed by research, market analysis, prototyping and testing. At each phase, direct feedback from experts in sustainable business, design, the circular economy, materials, and more help the teams strengthen their ideas for real-world applications. Then, five selected finalist teams will present their game-changing ideas next May, with each of the winning teams sharing in the competition’s $65,000 USD prize pool.

With the support of The Wege Foundation, Wege Prize has advanced students work worldwide for a more sustainable future since 2013. Have an exciting idea to share? See details at this link, https://www.wegeprize.org/apply.