The Conrad Challenge

No. Conrad judges the completeness and feasibility of the innovation and the business plan. A prototype or test data helps, but teams reach the finals without one as long as the chain from problem definition to customer validation to business model holds together. The Innovation Stage deliverables are a 3,000-word innovation brief, a three-to-five-minute video and a public website.

Yes. Conrad explicitly allows siblings, classmates, and students from different schools or even different countries on the same team, so students from different Irvine high schools can team up. Teams run two to five members, aged 13 to 18, with one adult coach aged 18 or older supervising. Members cannot be added after the Activation Stage submission - only removed - so lock the roster before the late-October deadline.

The 2026-27 season opened August 27. Stage 1, the Activation Stage with its Lean Canvas, is due October 30, 2026; Stage 2, the Innovation Stage, is due January 8, 2027; and the Innovation Summit finals run April 21-24, 2027 at Space Center Houston and NASA's Johnson Space Center. Everything before the Summit happens online, and the Innovation Stage writing period overlaps with fall-semester coursework, so plan the schedule with a teacher ahead of time and avoid the busiest midterm weeks.

Phase one is free. The Innovation Stage costs $499 per team, due by January 7, 2027, and finalists pay their own travel and lodging to Houston, with each accompanying guest at the Summit charged $499. Space Center Houston offers Phase 2 financial aid, with the application window running November 2 to December 3, 2026, so families who need it should plan well ahead.

Five: aerospace and aviation, cyber-technology and security, energy and environment, health and nutrition, and water - broad enough that most research interests fit somewhere. The value of Conrad is that it forces a full entrepreneurial pass: lean canvas, customer validation, business model, financial projections, and finally a pitch to real investors, which turns a STEM project into a story a student can actually tell.

The Lean Canvas is twelve questions, most capped at roughly 40 words, and first-round judges look at whether the problem is real and the customer is specific rather than at technical detail. 'We want to solve water pollution' is far weaker than 'we target nitrate levels in irrigation water for smallholder farms in California's Central Valley.' Spend the limited word budget narrowing the customer. Irvine students who want line-by-line feedback can join EDUBUS's Conrad Challenge prep course.

There is no cash prize. The top-scoring team in each category is named a Pete Conrad Scholar and receives a medal and certificate plus an award package that in past years has included laptops, roughly $20,000 in patent attorney services, a market feasibility study for the product, introductions to startup funding resources, and sponsorship to attend a summer entrepreneurship program.

Yes. Past participants may re-enter as long as they still meet the 13-to-18 age requirement and the other eligibility rules, and they can either continue the same innovation or start a new one. Second-year teams often do better, because the lean canvas and innovation brief follow learnable conventions and the previous year's judge feedback is the most useful preparation material available.