ULI Hines Student Competition – Americas
The first half of the competition brief will be released on January 2, 2026. Student teams will have from January 5 to January 19, 2026, to compete and submit their proposal for a site in Austin, TX.
Timeline:
Register September 2 – November 19, 2025
Host City Announced October 1, 2025
ULI Notifies Teams of their Eligibility December 5, 2025
First Half of Challenge Brief Released January 2, 2026
Full Challenge Brief Released January 5, 2026
Competition January 5 – 19, 2026
Finalists Announced by February 19, 2026
Finalist Site Visit March TBD, 2026
Finalist Presentations Thursday, April 2, 2026
Please see the How to Apply page for more information on how to register your team.
Overview
The ULI Hines Student Competition – Americas —entering its 24th year in 2026—offers graduate (or fourth-year undergraduate) students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams of five students pursuing degrees in at least two different disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data.
This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site. All participating finalist students typically attend the all-expenses-paid final presentation in the host city where the jury selects the winning project.
The competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges.
Longtime ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization, created the competition with a generous endowment after he received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in 2002.
Through 2025, at least 12,260 students on over 2,452 teams have participated in the competition since its first year in 2003, including 96 teams (480 students) who have made it to the finalist round. The winning team will receive $35,000 and all three of the finalist teams will receive $10,000. Another $10,000 will be allocated to honorable mention teams. More than 1,000 real estate and design professionals have served as advisers to these teams. In 2025, 83 teams submitted entries from 31 schools. In 2003, the competition’s first year, 49 teams submitted entries from 22 schools.
The competition is open to students around the world. Students in Europe may also wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe and students in the Asia Pacific region may wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Asia Pacific.
For more details about how to form a team and answers to some frequently asked questions, please check out the document below!
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Competition Mission
The competition strives to encourage cooperation and teamwork – necessary talents in the planning, design, and development of great places – among future real estate professionals and the many allied professions.