Three previous winners of Apple's Swift Student Challenge reveal what got them started in programming, and how they won, as the company prepares to launch the next contest.

Apple has once more highlighted the work of students who've won its annual competition to promote its Swift app development language. This time, the company talked with three winners to learn about how they got into developing apps.

From playing games to making one

"My dad showed me a game that was made by a 14-year-old, and I thought that was so cool," begins Brayden Gogis. Daunted by the idea of developing for traditional games consoles, Gogis says that the App Store felt accessible — in part because of SwiftUI.

"SwiftUI is really helpful for making apps and games feel super interactive," he said, "because I can quickly prototype not only how something's going to look, but how it's going to feel."

Gogis was a winner in the 2019 Swift Student Challenge, with his Solitaire-inspired Solisquare app. He's now at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, and using SwiftUI for his Joybox social media app.

"The reason I enjoy coding is because I love people, and I want to improve people's lives in whatever way I can," he continued. "It's so good for your brain to take five minutes every day and focus on what you're grateful for, and share that with other people."

Moving physical media into the digital world

Sofia Sandoval was a 2024 winner for her Carino app, which is a digital evolution of the physical cards she used to make. Now studying computer science at Tecnologico de Monterrey, she says that she had begun feeling burnt out and homesick.

So as she always had while growing up, she turned to making cards for people — but now using Procreate on iPad, and creating her app in SwiftUI.

"Everyone gets texts these days," she said. "It's a special feeling to get an actual card, and even the creation process feels intentional, making sure that people feel loved and appreciated."

"I wanted to make the user experience feel like writing on a paper card," she continued "Using Swift and Swift UI, I created boundaries for the card and made it so you can flip it over, just like the real thing, and added functions for erasing and exporting the final designs."

Sandoval says she's since installed her app on Apple Vision Pro, "and it [has] really sparked my curiosity in learning how I can develop and adapt solutions for it.

Sign language to speech

Adrit Rao hasn't just won the Swift Student Challenge once, he's won it three times. Now a premed student at the University of California, Berkeley, one of his winning apps is Signer, for deaf people.

Using Apple's on-device Machine Learning, the app converts sign language gestures into speech. Rao says he was prompted to create it to facilitate real-time communication in everyday situations.

"The App Store offers a straightforward way to share what I've built with people beyond my own community," said Rao. "When you don't have to worry about how you're going to reach people, you can instead focus on the second step: What kind of problem are you going to target, and what kind of accessible solution are you going to build?"

Swift Student Challenge 2026

The next Swift Student Challenge opens for submissions on February 6, 2026 — but only for three weeks. Consequently, Apple is promoting it now to give people time to prepare.

Apple is also offering new Develop in Swift tutorials. These cover SwiftUI in general, plus app design, and topics such as spatial computing.

At the same time, students and educators can sign up for special Meet with Apple coding sessions.

Running for just three weeks, the Swift Student Challenge submission window presumably closes on or around February 27, 2026. Based on previous years, the winners can expect to be notified during March — and will then be officially announced at WWDC 2026.