NeurIPS 2025 Competitions Announced: 18 Exciting Challenges Across AI Subfields

The NeurIPS 2025 Conference has officially announced its lineup of accepted competitions for this year’s Competition Track. Now in its ninth edition, the NeurIPS Competition Track continues to be a highly anticipated part of the conference, bringing together diverse communities to tackle real-world problems using cutting-edge AI and machine learning methods.

After a rigorous selection process from a pool of highly competitive submissions, 18 competitions were chosen—each offering novel challenges, learning opportunities, and collaborative environments. These competitions cover a broad range of AI domains, from physics-informed ML and scientific computing to generative AI, responsible AI, reinforcement learning, and signal reconstruction.

Whether you’re a student, researcher, or industry professional, NeurIPS competitions offer valuable exposure, mentorship opportunities, and a platform to demonstrate your skills. Participants not only learn from real-world data and problems but also get to contribute to impactful research.

What to Expect from NeurIPS 2025 Competitions

This year’s competitions span six main categories:

Physics and Scientific Computing

• FAIR Universe – Handling uncertainties and distribution shifts in precision cosmology.

• MyoChallenge 2025 – Advancing human-like athletic intelligence.

• Open Polymer Challenge – Using ML for next-gen polymer informatics.

Generative AI, LLMs, and Reasoning

• CURE-Bench – Reasoning models for drug decision-making in precision therapeutics.

• Early Training Scientific Knowledge Evaluation – Assessing reasoning in small language models.

• MMU-RAG – Benchmarking user-centric retrieval augmented generation across modalities.

• DCVLR – Vision-language reasoning via curated data challenges.

• Google Code Golf Championship 2025 – Optimizing minimalistic code generation.

• LLMs for Embodied Agents – Training agents to understand and interact with physical environments.

Multiagent Systems & Reinforcement Learning

• The MindGames Challenge – Investigating theory-of-mind and game intelligence in LLM agents.

• Mouse vs. AI – Benchmarking AI robustness using real-world neuroethological datasets.

• PokéAgent Challenge – Long-context learning through competitive gameplay.

Signal Reconstruction and Enhancement

• Ariel Data Challenge 2025 – Enhancing exoplanet signal extraction for space missions.

• Weather4cast 2025 – Multi-task challenges for forecasting weather and pollution trends.

• EEG Foundation Challenge – Decoding across EEG tasks and subjects.

• PNPL 2025 – Speech detection and phoneme classification on the LibriBrain dataset.

• SLC-PFM – Cancer pathology foundation models using self-supervised learning.

Responsible AI and Security

• Fairness in AI Face Detection – Advancing equitable models for biometric detection systems.

Why Join a NeurIPS Competition?

• Gain experience working on real-world datasets and complex tasks

• Engage in collaborative learning with top researchers and engineers

• Build your AI portfolio and research profile

• Join a global community of innovators and problem-solvers

Participants also benefit from exposure to the wider NeurIPS audience and the opportunity to publish post-competition analyses either in the 2026 NeurIPS Datasets & Benchmarks Track or in a dedicated PMLR volume.

How to Apply

1. Visit the official competition page

2. Explore the list of 18 competitions and choose one that aligns with your interests or expertise.

3. Register via the individual competition page—each competition has its own sign-up and rules.

4. Review the submission guidelines, deadlines, and evaluation criteria.

5. Start building your solution and submit before the stated deadlines.

How to Get Involved

If you’re interested in joining a competition, stay tuned to NeurIPS Competitions for details on individual competition timelines, registration, and platforms. For general inquiries, you can contact: competition-chairs@neurips.cc

Key Dates

Competition period: Varies by challenge
Post-competition analyses: Submit to NeurIPS 2026 D&B Track or PMLR
Contact: competition-chairs@neurips.cc

Get ready to tackle world-changing challenges and connect with a global AI community at NeurIPS 2025!

For more opportunities, visit opportunitiesforyouth.org.