Technovation Girls
A free global season where girls aged 8 to 18 build an app or AI project and pitch it as a venture.
Run by Technovation
Key facts
- Eligible grades
-
Not confirmed. Check the organiser's rules before entering.Technovation sets divisions by age, not grade.
- Official divisions
-
Three divisions set by the age of the oldest team member: Beginner 8 to 12, Junior 13 to 15 and Senior 16 to 18, with Scratch accepted in the Beginner division.
Based on the organiser's own divisions.
- Eligible ages
-
Ages 8 to 18 as of 1 August of the season year. Three divisions set by the age of the OLDEST student on the team: Beginner 8 to 12, Junior 13 to 15, and Senior 16 to 18.
The lower bound is 8, not 10 as some third-party listings still say. Because division follows the oldest member, adding one older teammate moves the whole team up a division.Source, checked 2026-09-02
- Individual or team
- Team · Teams of 1 to 5 students. A student may only join one team. Students may take part for multiple seasons until they turn 18 and may keep the same teammates and mentors, but cannot submit the same materials to the competition across multiple years.
- Where it runs
- Online · International
- Entry cost
- FreeAll curriculum and materials are free. Technovation notes it does not provide technology, and there may be a cost to the partner or volunteer running a local programme, so a school-run club is not necessarily free to the school.
- Registration deadline
- Set locally, not published as a single national date 2026-27 dates were not published at the time of checking; registration notification sign-up was open. For reference, the previous season ran registration 13 August 2025 to 18 March 2026, with submissions due 20 April 2026 at 5 p.m. PDT. Note the registration and submission deadlines are separate and about a month apart.
- Competition dates
- Season runs roughly October to April, with regional and global judging following submission.
- Difficulty
- Some preparation neededYou will want a few weeks of targeted practice. Most motivated students place respectably.
- Prizes
- Scholarships, cash awards and an invitation to the global summitEducational scholarships and stipends rather than open cash. In a recent cycle, 15 global finalist teams pitched at the World Summit with each member receiving a $500 educational stipend, and two special awards for Climate Change and Combating Hunger were open to every submitting team at $500 per member. Amounts were not confirmed for the current cycle.
What Technovation Girls is
Technovation Girls is the world's largest technology entrepreneurship programme for girls. Teams of one to five work with a volunteer mentor through a season that runs from autumn to spring, learning coding and entrepreneurship, then submitting an app or AI project together with a business pitch. The programme is free, runs in dozens of countries, and provides the entire curriculum, so it works for teams with no prior coding experience.
How the competition works
Teams identify a problem in their community and build a mobile app, web app or AI-powered tool to address it, plus a business plan and a pitch video shared via YouTube or Vimeo as unlisted or public. The code and any AI training data must be submitted. Judging runs in three rounds: Quarterfinals, where every submitting team is a quarterfinalist, then Semifinals, then Finals at the Technovation World Summit.
Eligibility notes
Open to girls and non-binary students worldwide. Teams need an adult mentor, who Technovation trains and does not require to have a technical background.
Is Technovation Girls right for you?
- Experience needed
- None. Curriculum and mentoring are provided free.
- Time commitment
- Several months across a season.
- What you actually do
- Identify a problem in your community, build an app to address it, write a business plan and pitch it.
A good fit if
- You want structure and a mentor rather than a blank page
- You are interested in technology plus entrepreneurship
- You want a global programme that is free
Probably not for you if
- Students wanting a pure coding contest
Common mistakes
- Building before researching the problem, when judges score problem understanding heavily.
- Neglecting the business plan and pitch video.
- Leaving the team's roles undefined.
How to register
- Register on technovation.org when the season opens, usually in October.
- Form a team of one to five students, or ask to be matched with one.
- Find a mentor, or use the platform to be matched with a trained volunteer. No technical background is required of them.
- Work through the free curriculum together and build your project. Technovation recommends starting no later than January.
- Submit the app or AI project, pitch video and business plan before the spring deadline.
What skills you need
- Coding in any language or block tool
- Problem identification
- Business planning
- Pitching
- Team collaboration
Recommended resources
-
Technovation official site
Registration, the full curriculum, mentor matching and the season calendar.
-
MIT App Inventor
Free block-based app builder used widely by Technovation teams with no coding background.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Technovation provides the full curriculum and teams commonly start with no coding experience. Block-based tools such as MIT App Inventor are widely used.
Do I need a mentor?
Yes, each team works with an adult mentor, but Technovation matches teams with trained volunteers and no technical background is required of the mentor.
Reviews, tips and resources from other students
Posts are public. Do not share your full name, school, address or contact details.
Something out of date?
If a deadline, fee or eligibility rule on this page no longer matches the official site, flag it and it goes into the review queue.
You might also look at
- Grades6 to 12
- CostFree
- FormatEither
- WhereOnline
- Grades9 to 12
- CostFree
- FormatTeam
- WhereBoth
- Grades6 to 12
- CostFree to $499
- FormatTeam
- WhereBoth
- Grades6 to 12
- CostFree