# List of challenge awards

This list of challenge awards is an index to articles about notable challenge awards, or inducement prize contests. A cash prize is given for the accomplishment of a feat, usually of engineering.

## Offered before 1900

| Country | Award | Sponsor | First Offered | Description |
| France | Alkali prize | Louis XVI of France, French Academy of Sciences | 1783 | For a method to produce alkali from sea salt (sodium chloride). Achieved by Nicolas Leblanc in 1791. |
| France | Food preservation prize | Napoleon | 1800 | For a new way to preserve food. Won by Nicolas Appert in 1910. |
| United Kingdom | Longitude rewards | Parliament of United Kingdom | 1714 | Established by the Longitude Act. For anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude |
| France | Montyon Prize | French Academy of Sciences, Académie française | 1820 | A series of prizes awarded annually for making an industrial process less unhealthy, improving a mechanical process, book which rendered the greatest service to humanity, "prix de vertu" for the most courageous act by a poor Frenchman |

## Offered in 20th century

| Country | Award | Sponsor | First Offered | Description |
| United States | Hearst Transcontinental Prize | William Randolph Hearst | 1910 | To the first aviator to fly coast to coast across the United States, in either direction, in fewer than 30 days from start to finish. Expired in November 1911 without a winner. |
| United Kingdom | Daily Mail aviation prizes | Daily Mail newspaper | 1906 | Between 1906 and 1930 for various different achievements in aviation |
| France | Deutsch prize | Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe | 1900 | For first machine capable of flying a round trip from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and back in less than thirty minutes. Won in 1901. |
| United States | Dole Air Race | James Dole | 1927 | Air race across the Pacific Ocean from northern California to the Territory of Hawaii. Two of the eight planes successfully landed in Hawaii. |
| Hungary | Erdős problems | Paul Erdős | 20th century | Payments for solutions to unresolved mathematical problems |
| United States | Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology | Foresight Institute | 1993 | For significant advances in nanotechnology |
| France | Grand Prix d'Aviation | Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe | 1904 | For the first person to fly a circular 1-kilometer course in a heavier-than-air craft. Won in 1908 |
| United States | Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition | United States Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center etc. | 1993 | Undergraduate and graduate student teams design and build an autonomous ground vehicle capable of completing several difficult challenges. |
| United States | Knuth reward check | Donald Knuth | 1984 | For finding technical, typographical, or historical errors, or making substantial suggestions for Knuth's publications. |
| United Kingdom | Kremer prize | Royal Aeronautical Society | 1959 | Series of awards for human-powered flight. First prize won in 1977 by the MacCready Gossamer Condor. |
| United States | Orteig Prize | Raymond Orteig | 1919 | For the first Allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York City to Paris or vice versa. Won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. |
| Germany | Wolfskehl Prize | Paul Wolfskehl | 1906 | For proving Fermat's Last Theorem. Won by Andrew Wiles in 1997 |

## Offered in 21st century

| Country | Award | Sponsor | First Offered | Description |
| Africa (Various) | Afri-Plastics Challenge | Government of Canada, via Challenge Works | 2023 | For the reduction of marine plastics in Sub-Saharan African countries by developing and scaling innovative solutions to plastic mismanagement. |
| United States | America's Space Prize | Robert Bigelow | 2004 | For first US-based team to design and build a reusable crewed capsule capable of flying five astronauts to a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space module. Expired in 2010 without a winner. |
| United States | Ansari X Prize | Anousheh Ansari, Amir Ansari via X Prize Foundation | 1996 | For first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. Won in 2004. |
| United States | Archon X Prize | Stewart Blusson via X Prize Foundation | 2006 | For the first team to rapidly, accurately and economically sequence 100 whole human genomes to an unprecedented level of accuracy. Cancelled in 2013. |
| United States | Automotive X Prize | Progressive Corporation via X Prize Foundation | 2007 | For super-efficient low-emission vehicles in three categories. Awarded in 2010 |
| United States | Brain Preservation Technology Prize | Brain Preservation Foundation | 2010 | For long-term storage of a brain's connectome. Small mammal prize won in 2016 and large mammal prize in 2018 |
| United Kingdom | Brexit Prize | Institute of Economic Affairs | 2013 | For best plan for a UK exit from the European Union. Awarded in 2014. |
| United States | Buckminster Fuller Challenge | Buckminster Fuller Institute | 2007 | Annual international design competition for the most comprehensive solution to a pressing global problem. |
| United States | Centennial Challenges | NASA | 2003 | For various non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams. |
| United States | Cornell Cup USA | Cornell University | 2011 | Annual embedded design competition to empower student teams to become the inventors of the newest innovative applications of embedded technology |
| United States | DARPA Grand Challenge | DARPA | 2004 | Series of prizes for autonomous vehicles. |
| United States | DARPA Network Challenge | DARPA | 2009 | Contest to use social networking to locate ten red balloons placed around the United States. Won in less than 9 hours. |
| United States | DARPA Shredder Challenge 2011 | DARPA | 2011 | Contest to reconstruct documents shredded by a variety of paper shredding techniques. |
| United States | DARPA Spectrum Challenge | DARPA | 2013 | Contest for a radio protocol that can best use a given communication channel in the presence of other dynamic users and interfering signals. |
| United Kingdom | Earthshot Prize | The Royal Foundation | 2021 | Until 2030. Contests for sustainable development in environmental work annually. |
| United States | Elevator:2010 | Spaceward Foundation, NASA Centennial Challenges | 2005 | Until 2010. Contests for space elevator and related technologies. Annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems |
| International | Global Security Challenge | InnoCentive | 2006 | For the most promising security technology startups in the world. |
| United States | Google Lunar X Prize | Google via X Prize Foundation | 2007 | For landing a robot on the surface of the Moon, traveling 500 meters over the lunar surface, and sending images and data back to the Earth. Expired in 2018 with no winner. |
| Australia | Hutter Prize | Marcus Hutter | 2006 | For each 1% data compression improvement on a specific 100 MB English text file. |
| United States | Hyperloop pod competition | SpaceX | 2015 | To design—and for some, build—a subscale prototype transport vehicle to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. |
| United States | L Prize | United States Department of Energy | 2008 | For the replacement of two types of light bulb, an A19 60-watt incandescent light bulb and a PAR 38 halogen incandescent bulb |
| United Kingdom | Longitude Prize | Nesta | 2012 | For a team of researchers that develops an affordable, accurate, and fast point-of-care test for bacterial infection that is easy to use anywhere in the world |
| United States | Lunar Lander Challenge | NASA Centennial Challenges | 2006 | Series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieved the total delta-v needed for a vehicle to move between the surface of the Moon and its orbit. |
| United States | Methuselah Mouse Prize | Methuselah Foundation | 2003 | To the research team that broke the world record for the oldest-ever mouse; and to the team that developed the most successful late-onset rejuvenation strategy |
| United States | Millennium Prize Problems | Clay Mathematics Institute | 2000 | For solving any of: P versus NP problem, Hodge conjecture, Poincaré conjecture (solved), Riemann hypothesis, Yang–Mills existence and mass gap, Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture |
| United Kingdom | N-Prize | Paul H. Dear | 2008 | To launch a satellite weighing between 9.99 and 19.99 grammes into Earth orbit, and to track it for a minimum of nine orbits. The launch budget must be under £999.99 including the launch vehicle, all of the required non-reusable launch equipment hardware, and propellant |
| United States | Netflix Prize | Netflix | 2006 | For the best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films, based on previous ratings without any other information about the users or films. Won in 2009. |
| France | Peugeot Concours Design | Peugeot | 2000 | To design a Peugeot car for the year 2020 |
| United States | Prize4Life | Avi Kremer, ALS Association | 2007 | For the discovery of treatments and a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. |
| United States | Space Poop Challenge | NASA | 2016 | New designs for space toilet systems for use in space suits |
| United States | Tricorder X Prize | Qualcomm via X Prize Foundation | 2011 | For an automatic non-invasive health diagnostics system in a single portable package that weighs no more than 5 pounds (2.3 kg), able to autonomously diagnose 13 medical conditions |
| Australia | UAV Outback Challenge | Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation | 2007 | For the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. |
| United Kingdom | Virgin Earth Challenge | Richard Branson | 2007 | For a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases from the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially to global warming avoidance |
| United States | Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge | The Schmidt Family Foundation via X Prize Foundation | 2010 | For efficient capturing of crude oil from ocean water |
| United States | X Prize Cup | State of New Mexico via X Prize Foundation | 2005 | For e.g. rocket-powered bicycles, rocket jet packs, lunar lander and space elevator |