Call for the ChallengeUS Future Leaders Competition 2025 is open now!!
The ChallengeUS Future Leaders Competition aims to critically engage and amplify youth voices from all over the world in civic ideas and challenges. The competition seeks to find, spotlight, and reward promising future leaders through scholarship prizes and award recognition. For this summer cycle, Climate Cardinals and ChallengeUS are partnering together to ask students to share how they approach climate.
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Participation in the Climate Cardinals x ChallengeUS Future Leaders Competition offers the opportunity to join the ChallengeUS Future Leaders Network (a global community of young changemakers), secure cash prizes that can be put towards educational and professional pursuits, and gain public recognition for exceptional work.
Participants are welcomed and encouraged to submit entries to multiple categories (creative writing, analytical writing, speech, and art) in order to maximize chances at winning.
For Creative writing, entries might include personal narratives, reflections, stories, poems, written speeches, memoirs, and other personal essays that address the prompt while showcasing the writer’s critical thinking, personal expression, and storytelling abilities. The emphasis is on originality, personal voice, and engaging the reader with thoughtful insight as well as emotional depth. For Analytical writing, entries might include argumentative essays, research papers, literature reviews, case studies, and other forms of academic writing that use sources and citations to drive key insights. Submissions are expected to present well-researched, evidence-based essays that address the prompt. The emphasis is on logical reasoning, structured analysis, and the ability to support answers to the prompt with facts, examples, or data.
As for Speech and Art, entries might include any form of verbal speech or presentation submitted in video form, drawings, paintings, digital artworks, photographs, mixed media pieces, cartoons, magazine covers, and other forms of artistic media, whether digital or traditional. The emphasis will be on effective verbal communication while providing unique perspectives, ideas, and insights addressing the prompt and interpretation of theme, creativity, and demonstrated skill, respectively. Contest results will be released on this page by the end of March 2026.
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ChallengeUS is a nonpartisan, nonprofit scholarship competition hub founded on the belief that youth (as a group) and competition (as a medium) are the engines that drive progress. The minds behind ChallengeUS fundamentally believe the most effective and sustainable way to solve problems is through empowering problem solvers. They are confident that in activating and elevating the voices of the next generation of future leaders, ChallengeUS can serve not just as a platform for student leaders and their innovative ideas and perspectives but also as a model for how to critically engage young people with global challenges.
Benefits
- One Best Overall “Grand Prize Winner” will be recognized along with four “Category Winner” honorable mentions (one from each submission category). This means 4 students, in total, will be recognized.
- The Grand Prize Winner will be awarded $500 (USD)
- The Grand Prize Winner and the Category Winners will be spotlighted in a biographical article by ChallengeUS
- The Grand Prize Winner and the Category Winners will receive a Certificate of Achievement and their submissions will be published by ChallengeUS
- All participants will gain access to the global ChallengeUS Future Leaders Network
Eligibilities
- Any student, residing in any country, currently enrolled in an accredited high school or undergraduate college/university, is eligible to participate
- Students taking academic gap years or semesters are also eligible
- Students that are homeschooled are also eligible
- Submissions (speech or writing) must be in English
- Participants from previous competition cycles are eligible to enter the current competition cycle, except those that won first place in any previous ChallengeUS competitions
Application Process
- Applicants are required to submit entries in the following categories in the “apply link” below. They are encouraged to submit entries to multiple categories according to their field of interests:
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Creative Writing: Word Limit: 1250 words. Writing submissions should be in PDF format with a readable font size (11 or 12 pt.) and a professional font style (Times New Roman, Arial)
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Analytical Writing: Word Limit: 1250 words. Writing submissions should be in PDF format with a readable font size (11 or 12 pt.) and a professional font style (Times New Roman, Arial)
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Speech: Speech Limit: 10 minutes. Speech submissions should be in MP4 format. High audio and video quality is expected.
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Art: Art submissions should be in PDF, JPEG, or PNG format. High image quality is expected
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Application Deadline: January 16, 2026 (4 Days Remaining)
Apply nowOfficial link
