Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC)

Collegiate Wind Competition

Invests teams delivering high impact prototypes with milestone support for Collegiate Wind Competition in energy systems.

The 2026 Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC26) is a Department of Energy student engineering competition organized by the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) in which U.S. university teams design, build, and test scaled wind turbines and present wind farm project development proposals. The competition is structured around three regional qualifying events — Pacific, Central, and Eastern — followed by a national championship. Rules for the 2026 cycle were published in August 2025. In September 2024, 35 teams qualified for the 2025 cycle, which provides a baseline for the competitive field size in adjacent years. The competition is administered by WETO as a workforce development activity, not as a direct funding mechanism for companies or startups.

Eligibility is restricted exclusively to U.S. university student teams. For-profit companies, nonprofits, government agencies, and individuals not enrolled at a U.S. university are ineligible to participate. The competition does not award grants, cooperative agreements, or prizes to commercial entities; any cash awards or recognition flow to the student teams and their faculty advisors. Award amounts for the 2026 cycle were not documented in the available research sources and are left unspecified. WETO's FY2026 budget request was zeroed out in the May 2025 federal budget request — meaning no new WETO grants or FOAs are expected for the period — but workforce development competitions like CWC have historically operated on lower, more stable administrative budgets and may continue despite the broader program pause.

Student teams interested in competing should consult the official CWC rules published in August 2025, which contain the turbine design specifications, scoring rubric, and regional event schedule. Faculty advisors at U.S. engineering programs with wind energy curricula are the primary organizational contacts for fielding competitive teams. CWC participation has historically served as a pipeline for early-career engineers into the geothermal, offshore wind, and distributed wind industries, making it relevant to universities building energy engineering programs even in periods when broader WETO commercial funding is paused.