The Earth Prize: How to Enter the Environmental Sustainability Competition

By Dr. Harman Brah, MD · Judge, California Science & Engineering Fair

The Earth Prize is a worldwide environmental sustainability competition for students aged 13 to 19, and you enter by registering by January 10, 2027 and then submitting an Earth Prize Blueprint by January 31, 2027. Students can enter alone or in a team of up to five, and the competition gives out more than $100,000 in awards.

Those two January dates are the ones to plan around. Everything else in the cycle follows from the Blueprint.

Who can enter

Students aged 13 to 19 can take part, whether they are in a school, a homeschool or another education program.

You can enter on your own or with up to four teammates. A team of five is the maximum.

Students who are minors need a parent’s consent before they can take part, so build that step into the registration plan.

The 2027 timeline

• January 10, 2027: registration closes.
• January 31, 2027: Blueprint submissions close.
• March 3, 2027: 35 teams are named Earth Prize Scholars.
• May 3 to 9, 2027: seven Regional Winners are announced. Each receives USD 10,000 to put the project into practice.
• May 10 to 23, 2027: public voting.
• May 28, 2027: the Global Winner is announced at the ceremony.

Registering is a separate, earlier step from submitting. A team that waits until late January to register will miss the competition entirely.

What the Blueprint is

The Blueprint is the entry itself. The organizers call it “a validation-first framework,” built from seven building blocks and ending in a video pitch.

Validation-first means the judges want proof that the problem is real and that your idea can work, before they care how polished it sounds.

How the Blueprint is scored

Submissions are scored out of 25 points:

• Problem Validation: 5
• Proof of Concept: 5
• Solution Quality: 4
• Next Steps & Commitment: 4
• Feasibility & Planning: 4
• Communication & Inspiration: 3

The two largest criteria are about evidence. Ten of the 25 points go to showing the problem exists and showing your solution has been tested in some way.

Communication is the smallest weight. A great video cannot rescue a Blueprint with no evidence behind it.

Start with the problem, and the people it affects

Problem Validation asks for evidence and “real conversations with the people affected.”

That means talking to people, not only reading about them. If your idea is about runoff from local farms, the people who live with that runoff are part of your evidence.

Write down what you asked, who you asked and what you learned. That record is what makes the problem section credible.

How it differs from a science fair

The Earth Prize is closer to a startup pitch than to a research paper. Judges are asking whether the problem is real, whether the idea works and whether the team can carry it forward.

That makes it a good second home for research a student has already done. A student who ran a water quality or runoff project for a science fair already has data, and that data can become the proof of concept.

The research still has to be tied to a solution and a plan. Results on their own answer only part of the Blueprint.

The student does the work

The problem, the conversations, the testing and the pitch should all belong to the students. The Next Steps and Feasibility criteria ask whether the team can carry the project forward, and only a team that built it can answer that honestly.

The organizers offer free volunteer mentors on their Discord. An outside mentor can help a student sharpen the question, check whether the evidence actually supports the claim, and pressure-test the plan. The students still make the decisions and do the writing and recording.

What to do now

Register well before January 10, 2027, and get parental consent sorted early if anyone on the team is a minor.

Then pick one environmental problem you can reach in person, and start the conversations with the people affected. Plan backward from January 31, 2027 so the proof of concept and the video are not squeezed into the last week.

Our physician-led mentors help students turn real research into strong competition entries while the student does the work. See our science fair and research mentorship, or read about doing high school research without a lab.

FAQ

How old do you have to be to enter The Earth Prize?

Students aged 13 to 19 can enter, as long as they are in a school, a homeschool or another education program. Students who are minors need a parent’s consent to take part.

Can my child enter The Earth Prize with friends?

Yes. Students can enter alone or as a team of up to five.

What is the deadline for The Earth Prize 2027?

Registration is open until January 10, 2027, and Blueprint submissions close January 31, 2027. Both dates matter, because a team has to register before it can submit.

What do Earth Prize winners get?

Thirty-five teams are named Earth Prize Scholars on March 3, 2027. Seven Regional Winners, announced May 3 to 9, 2027, each receive USD 10,000 to carry out their project, and a Global Winner is announced at the May 28, 2027 ceremony.

Can my child use a science fair project for The Earth Prize?

It can be a strong starting point. The Earth Prize rewards proof that a problem is real and that a solution works, so data from an earlier environmental project can serve as the proof of concept. The Blueprint still needs a clear solution, a plan and conversations with the people affected.