Hult Prize is a annual academic recognizing excellence in Business. Organized by Hult Prize Foundation, it covers the Global region. Established in 2010.
The Hult Prize is an annual global competition that challenges university students to build for-profit startups addressing at least one UN Sustainable Development Goal. Established in 2010 at Hult International Business School and run by the Hult Prize Foundation (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the program has grown into one of the world's largest student entrepreneurship movements, engaging participants in more than 130 countries. Finalists pitch to an international panel of judges at the Global Finals, and the US$1M prize is funded by the Hult family, founders of EF Education First.
The competition runs in five stages across a full academic year: campus and open-application qualifiers (September–February), national competitions (April–May), a digital incubator (June–July), an intensive Global Accelerator at Ashridge House outside London (August), and the Global Finals in September, where the winning team receives US$1 million in seed funding. For student founders, reaching nationals or the accelerator is a meaningful CV signal in its own right — the pipeline is competitive, with thousands of startups entering each cycle.
Eligibility is strict but simple: every team member must be enrolled in a degree-seeking program at a university or college, teams must have two to four members, and members must meet the minimum age requirement for the cycle (18 by the cutoff date). Registration for each cycle typically opens in the fall. Strong entries pair a scalable, revenue-generating business model with measurable SDG impact — judges consistently reward ventures that are investable businesses first, not grant-dependent projects.