MIT Solve Global Challenges 2027 Open with Over USD 1 Million in Prize Funding and Nine Months of Support

MIT Solve is accepting applications for its 2027 Global Challenges, offering technology-based solutions a pathway to funding, expert support, and partnerships. The current round covers climate, economic prosperity, health, and learning, alongside the 2027 Indigenous Communities Fellowship.

Selected Solver teams receive a US$10,000 grant, with additional sponsor prizes available under their respective conditions. The shared application deadline is 2 November 2026 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

The MIT Solve challenges directory also features partner initiatives with their own application processes. One currently open opportunity is Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, whose application phase ends on 23 November 2026.

This guide explains the current challenges, funding, programme support, application process, and selection timeline. Information was checked on 4 October 2026.

What Is MIT Solve and How Do Its Challenges Work?

MIT Solve uses open innovation to identify solutions to difficult social and environmental problems. Its challenges connect innovators with resources that can help their work reach more people.

The challenges page describes a research-based approach and reports:

• More than 110 challenges conducted.
• More than 30,000 solutions submitted.
• Submissions representing 190-plus countries.

The platform brings together several routes. The Global Challenges lead to the Solver programme. The Indigenous Communities Fellowship addresses a dedicated community context. Custom challenges are developed with partners around specific problems and may offer different prizes or support. Consequently, an award announced for one initiative should not be assumed to apply to every listing.

For readers exploring social innovation funding, the directory is useful both for finding current applications and understanding the kinds of problems Solve and its partners support. The practical starting point is the individual challenge brief: it defines the problem your solution needs to address.

Solve interprets technology broadly. Digital tools such as software, SMS, AI, robotics, and drones are among the approaches it considers, alongside traditional, ancestral, and natural technologies. The essential connection is the practical application of science and evidence-based knowledge to the problem being addressed.

MIT Solve Challenges Currently Open for Applications

The official listings identify these opportunities as accepting solutions. The 2027 challenges opened on 22 September 2026; their programme year is 2027 even though applications close in 2026.

The 2027 Global Climate Challenge

The climate challenge focuses on solutions that help people adapt to a warming world while reducing emissions. Its priorities include:

• Lower-carbon, resilient cities through construction, retrofitting, mobility, and circular materials.
• Protection against heat, flooding, drought, wildfire, and other hazards.
• More resilient, low-emission, or nature-positive agrifood systems and regional supply chains.
• Restoration and sustainable use of oceans and coastal systems.

The brief emphasises practical delivery within existing infrastructure, budgets, and local capacity. Technology should strengthen communities’ ability to make decisions and respond to climate pressures.

As an application-writing approach, explain the specific climate risk or source of emissions you address. Then describe how your intervention changes it, how you will measure that change, and what it costs to operate.

A project promising reduced food waste, for example, should distinguish measured reductions from future projections. Explaining the evidence behind an expected benefit makes the proposal easier to assess.

The 2027 Global Economic Prosperity Challenge

This challenge connects three foundations of lasting prosperity: financial resilience, access to quality employment, and safe, affordable housing.

The 2027 priorities include helping households and small businesses handle financial obligations and shocks; creating routes into quality work as technology changes labour markets; and improving access to affordable, climate-resilient homes.

Solve’s wider economic prosperity work supports technology that expands access to financial services, jobs, capital, and essential infrastructure. Examples in its portfolio include digital addressing, market access for small-scale fishers, and tools connecting displaced language professionals with clients. These examples illustrate the variety of approaches rather than prescribing a particular business model.

For a stronger proposal, define the economic outcome you intend to change. More registrations on a platform may indicate interest, but sustained income, lower borrowing costs, secure housing, or improved job quality can show whether users are better off.

Explain how your solution produces that outcome and what evidence you will collect to demonstrate progress.

The 2027 Global Health Challenge

The health challenge seeks technology that makes good health and quality care more equitable. Its priorities are:

• Maintaining care during outbreaks, climate emergencies, conflict, or financing disruptions.
• Improving prevention and management of noncommunicable diseases, mental health conditions, and care needs associated with ageing.
• Expanding primary care by supporting frontline workers and reducing barriers such as cost, distance, and administration.

The brief also stresses community trust and the need to manage risks when using AI, including bias and privacy concerns.

A useful proposal should describe the point in the care pathway where your solution helps. Explain who uses it, how it fits existing services, and what evidence supports its performance.

Distinguish a tool that has been tested in practice from one whose expected benefits still need validation. This helps reviewers understand both the opportunity and the work required before wider implementation.

The 2027 Global Learning Challenge

The learning challenge looks for solutions that improve what learners actually understand and can do. Priorities include:

• Evidence-based support for teachers.
• Education in emergency or resource-constrained settings.
• Assistive and multilingual technologies.
• Better assessment and early identification of learning difficulties.

The brief favours technology that deepens learning, preserves human relationships, integrates with curricula, and strengthens public education systems. For tools serving children, it highlights privacy, safety, fairness, human oversight, and responsible data governance.

In preparing an education proposal, explain how learning gains will be measured. Usage statistics alone do not show whether reading, numeracy, practical skills, or other intended outcomes have improved.

If your tool depends on connectivity or particular devices, explain how it will work in the settings you aim to serve. A convincing implementation plan should account for the conditions in which learning actually takes place.

The 2027 Indigenous Communities Fellowship

The fellowship supports solutions that combine technology with culturally grounded knowledge and community priorities.

Its 2027 themes include energy and environmental sovereignty, stewardship and climate adaptation, ethical data and AI tools, economic opportunities, culturally grounded education and language revitalisation, and holistic health.

Solve’s Indigenous Communities work places culture and traditional knowledge at the centre of solutions developed for and with communities. Its portfolio spans areas such as agriculture, energy, mapping, and financial services.

A practical way to frame a proposal is to explain how community input has shaped the work, who guides important decisions, and how the benefits will endure.

Funding and Prizes for the 2027 Solver Class

Every selected team in the Global Challenges and Indigenous Communities Fellowship receives the US$10,000 MIT Solve Solver Award.

Solve also describes access to more than US$1 million in prize funding. Its FAQ reports average funding of around US$40,000 per selected team; that average is not a guaranteed individual award.

Additional named prizes currently include:

The prize listings appear across the challenge pages, with eligibility varying by award. Some also consider alumni teams. The published figures should not be added together and presented as an amount available to every applicant or every winner.

The pages also name the Morgridge Family Foundation Innovation Prize, Collegium Prize for Innovation, and Philips Foundation Social Impact Award, with further details still to be announced on the relevant listings.

What the Nine-Month Solver Programme Provides

Selected innovators receive unrestricted funding and join a nine-month support programme. The programme’s published resources include:

• Leadership coaching.
• Workshops on subjects such as business models, marketing, and impact measurement.
• Monitoring and evaluation support.
• Access to in-kind or pro bono resources.
• Connections with experts and other Solver teams.
• Opportunities for visibility and pitching.

This combination can be particularly useful when a solution has demonstrated promise but needs help with implementation. For example, a team may need to refine its pricing, strengthen its evidence, identify a delivery partner, or prepare for expansion.

Applicants should explain which of these barriers matters most to their project and how outside support could resolve it.

The current challenge FAQ estimates approximately 25 hours of programme activities over nine months, with flagship events requiring additional attendance. Continued access to community resources and funding opportunities extends beyond the initial programme.

Application Deadline and Selection Timeline

The deadline is noon Eastern Standard Time, not the end of the day. The application guide states that late submissions are not accepted, including those affected by technical or connectivity problems. Programme participation and pitching are in English, and the designated team lead is expected to represent the solution during selection and programme activities.

How to Apply to MIT Solve

1. Choose the relevant challenge. Read its brief and focus on the problem your solution most directly addresses.
2. Create an account or log in. Select the challenge and use the Start Solution option.
3. Set up the submission. Apply through an individual account or a team; the platform supports invitations for collaborators.
4. Complete the solution profile. Some challenges allow a reusable profile containing basic information about your work.
5. Answer the application questions. Complete every required field and provide relevant optional information.
6. Review and submit. A saved draft does not count as a submitted application.
7. Refine before the deadline if needed. The platform permits edits to submitted applications before closing.

The downloadable application questions are a preparation resource. Submission must take place through the online platform.

Before you begin, it can help to assemble a short project description, evidence from testing, a realistic delivery budget, and an explanation of how the work will be sustained. These are preparation suggestions, not a substitute for the official application fields.

How MIT Solve Evaluates Solutions

The selection process includes screening, expert review, further judging, and finalist pitching. The published criteria cover:

• Challenge alignment.
• Potential impact.
• Practical feasibility.
• Innovation.
• Design informed by communities.
• Scalability.
• Partnership potential.
• Evidence that the technology works.

Some criteria are considered from finalist selection onward.

Use these criteria to check the logic of your submission. Can a reviewer follow the connection between the problem, the intervention, and the expected result? Have you separated existing evidence from assumptions? Does your expansion plan explain delivery capacity as well as demand?

An application becomes easier to assess when it explains a few concrete points clearly: the people experiencing the problem, the change your solution enables, what has been tested, and the resources needed for the next stage.

Avoid replacing those details with broad statements about innovation or impact.

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow as a Separate Open Opportunity

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, powered by MIT Solve, invites school-based projects that use STEM to address community problems.

Suggested themes include environmental sustainability, accessibility, social change through sport and technology, and open innovation. The application asks five core questions about the problem, the proposed project, those it serves, planned activities, and how success will be measured.

The published phases are:

• Applications: 30 September–23 November 2026.
• Semi-finalists: 20 January–3 March 2027, including a three-minute project video.
• Finalists: 18 March–21 April 2027, including preparation for live presentations. The final event date and location remain subject to confirmation.

Support includes application clinics, design-thinking workshops, expert sessions, and mentorship.

Samsung states that 500 schools will receive technology and classroom-resource packages. Its tiers include:

These are school prize packages, distinct from the Global Challenges’ Solver grants. Samsung US

Application Help and Future Opportunities

MIT Solve offers application clinics where prospective applicants can learn about the challenges and improve their submissions.

Its Marketplace newsletter shares open and upcoming challenges, funding opportunities, resources, and events. Questions can be directed to help@solve.mit.edu; Solve asks applicants to allow approximately three to five business days for a response. MIT Solve

The directory also contains past challenges. Examples currently marked closed include the 10th Anniversary Global Challenge, Amazon Sustainability Pilot Program, Truist Foundation Inspire Awards Year 4, and FII Innovators Pitch.

Their pages can help readers understand previous themes and solutions, but they should not be treated as open applications.

For organisations interested in running a challenge, Solve also offers a custom challenge service covering design, promotion, selection, vetting, and support around an organisation’s social-impact goals.

Conclusion

The MIT Solve Global Challenges 2027 provide a route to funding and structured support for solutions addressing climate, economic prosperity, health, and learning, with a dedicated Indigenous Communities Fellowship alongside them.

The most useful application will connect a defined problem with a credible intervention, show what has already been learned, and explain how additional support can improve delivery.

Prepare early and submit by 2 November 2026 at 12:00 p.m. EST. Readers considering Samsung Solve for Tomorrow should follow its separate process and 23 November 2026 deadline. Check the individual official listing for the latest prize conditions and application instructions.

Official details and applications: MIT Solve Challenges

For more global opportunities, click HERE.