The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has officially announced the next season of its student engineering competitions.
Building on the success of previous years, 2026 will see the return of the IMechE’s flagship competitions, including Formula Student, Design Challenge, Railway Challenge, Apprentice Automation Challenge, and UAS Challenge.
Engaging with thousands of young engineers each year, these industry-recognised competitions offer students of all specialisms the chance to develop their professional and team working skills while working at an international level on an exciting and relevant engineering competition.
These are a key contributor to the Institution’s strategy to both develop the pipeline of talent for the future of the engineering profession and provide opportunities for the engineering community to further develop their skills. Consequently, those who participate finish their year with a wealth of additional knowledge and problem-solving skills alongside their academic work, becoming well-rounded and more capable graduates who are ready to tackle the engineering challenges they will find in industry.
Registration for each competition will open later in September and the IMechE encourages all new and returning students starting the new university year to get involved and register their interest now to be informed when official team registrations open later this month.
Formula Student (FS) is Europe’s most established educational engineering competition and tasks student teams to design, build and race a single-seater race car, culminating with a live event at Silverstone with over 100 teams showing off their work. The project usually forms part of a degree-level project and is viewed by the motorsport industry as the standard for engineering graduates to meet.
Student teams must design and build an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) that can navigate waypoints, deliver a humanitarian aid package, and more, all while meeting specific targets for sustainability, weight and more. The competition ends at a final fly-off event in June/July where students demonstrate the flight capabilities of their UAS.
The Railway Challenge provides an opportunity for aspiring teams made up of students, apprentices and early career engineers in industry to compete in a railway industry-specific competition. Participants must design and manufacture a miniature (10¼” gauge) railway locomotive, showcasing their skills, expertise, knowledge, and business acumen at the finals at Stapleford Miniature Railway in the following June.
The Design Challenge gives small student teams of 2-6 members from universities and university technical colleges a taste of ‘real world’ engineering to design and build a small scale, low-budget device to a set technical specification, with 2026’s device being a pipe climbing device. Teams enter regional heats from March to June, with the finalists moving on to the national finals at the IMechE’s London HQ.
