What you can win in the Student Investor Challenge

Every stage of the Student Investor Challenge puts something real on the table — for the students and for their school. The competition is education-first, but the rewards for the teams that climb highest are genuinely worth chasing. This is a plain guide to what those rewards are, who can win them, and how the structure of the game decides who gets what.

Before we get to the prizes, a quick reminder of the shape of the competition, because the two things are tied together. The challenge is played by teams of four students, signed up by a teacher, and it runs over three rounds. In round one, every team runs two virtual portfolios — an Active book you can trade daily and a Strategic book with a limited number of trades — each starting with a virtual £100,000. The best teams progress to a four-week online semi-final, and the eight strongest of those reach a live national final. You can read the full mechanics on the how it works page; here we are following the trail of rewards.

First prize: a week in New York

The headline prize goes to the winning team at the national final. It is a week-long, all-expenses-paid educational trip to New York for all four team members and their teacher — not a voucher, an actual trip. The itinerary includes excursions to the city’s financial district, where the students see the institutions they have spent a whole competition learning about, alongside New York’s landmarks. Each winner also gets £200 of spending money for the trip.

On top of the travel, every member of the winning team receives a £1,000 scholarship. That scholarship is not just a cash line — it comes with assessment recognition, which is explained further down, and it is the part that can genuinely shape what a student does after school.

Second and third prizes

The teams that come second and third at the final are far from empty-handed.

• Second prize — an exclusive VIP trip to London or a gift-experience voucher, £150 of spending money, and a £750 scholarship with assessment recognition for every runner-up team member.
• Third prize — a VIP trip to London or a gift-experience voucher, with £100 of spending money for each member of the team.

The pattern is deliberate: the prize ladder rewards depth of achievement rather than a single winner-takes-all jackpot. Reaching the final at all — being one of eight teams out of thousands — already places you among the strongest young investors in the country.

Trader of the Year awards

Not every reward depends on reaching the live final. Two “Trader of the Year” awards recognise pure round-one performance across both portfolios:

• Online Trader of the Year — awarded to the UK team with the best combined performance across the Active Investor and Strategic Investor games in round one. Each member of that team wins £150.
• International Online Trader of the Year — the equivalent award for the best-performing team from a school outside the UK, worth £100 per member.

These awards matter because they are decided on the trading itself — how well you actually ran your two £100,000 books — rather than on the prediction rounds and business challenges that come later. A team can have a brilliant round one, top the tables, and be recognised for it even if the later stages do not go their way. It is worth watching where you sit on the combined league table through the round, because that ranking is exactly what these awards are built on.

Who can actually win

This is the part teams most often get wrong, so it is worth being precise. With one exception, only UK teams are eligible for the listed prizes and for the semi-finals and later stages of the competition. Teams from schools outside the UK take part in round one only, and they compete specifically for the International Online Trader of the Year prize.

Teachers are warmly encouraged to enter and even play against their own students in the first round — but they are not eligible for the prizes themselves. And to take up any of the scholarships, students must meet the standard entry requirements for the course. None of this changes the value of playing; it simply means it pays to know which prizes your team is actually in the running for before round one begins. If you have not entered yet, the walkthrough on how to enter the challenge covers registration step by step.

The scholarship and “assessment recognition”

The scholarships are perhaps the most interesting prize, because they reach beyond the competition itself. Each scholarship applies towards the first year of an undergraduate degree at The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF), the professional body that supplies teachers with the reference numbers used to register teams.

“Assessment recognition” is the phrase that trips people up. Here is what it means in practice: the presentation component of the national final is recognised within the year-one LIBF module Principles of Finance. In other words, the work a finalist team does on stage is not just for show — it counts towards a real, university-level finance qualification. For a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old thinking about a career in finance, that is a genuinely unusual head start, and it is why the scholarship is arguably worth more than the trip.

What the school gets

The rewards are not only for the students. A team reaching the later stages brings recognition to its school or college — the kind of profile that supports a school’s wider work in financial and economic education. Teachers use the challenge as a ready-made, real-world extension to lessons in economics, business and maths, and a strong run gives a department something concrete to celebrate. The 2026 national final gives a sense of the scale and the atmosphere of the closing stage.

The prize you always take home

It would be dishonest to write a whole guide to the prizes without saying the obvious thing: the overwhelming majority of teams will not go to New York, and that is completely fine. Thousands of teams enter; eight reach the final. The prizes exist to give the competition an edge and a goal, but they are not the point.

The reward every team takes home — win or lose — is the experience of running real money-shaped decisions on a live market for weeks on end. You learn how a share price actually moves, why patience so often beats activity, how to disagree well with three teammates, and how to sit with a decision that did not work out. Those are the habits that make someone good with money for life, and no one can take them off you at the final. If you want to feel that before you commit, the fastest way is simply to start a virtual portfolio and play.

FAQ

What is the first prize in the Student Investor Challenge?

First prize is a week-long, all-expenses-paid educational trip to New York for the whole winning team of four and their teacher, including excursions to the financial district and the city’s landmarks, plus £200 of spending money each. Every winning student also receives a £1,000 scholarship towards the first year of an undergraduate degree at LIBF, with assessment recognition. Students must meet the entry requirements.

Who is eligible to win the prizes?

Apart from the International Online Trader of the Year award, only UK teams are eligible for the listed prizes and for the semi-finals and later stages. Teams from schools outside the UK take part in round one only and compete for the International Online Trader of the Year prize. Teachers may enter and play, but they are not eligible for the prizes.

What is the LIBF scholarship attached to the prizes?

Winning and runner-up students receive a scholarship towards the first year of an undergraduate degree at The London Institute of Banking & Finance — £1,000 for first-prize winners and £750 for second-prize runners-up. The presentation component of the national final also gives assessment recognition in the year-one module Principles of Finance. Students must meet the standard entry requirements to take up a place.

Do you need to win to get something out of the challenge?

No. The prizes are there to motivate, but the real reward is the experience of running two virtual £100,000 portfolios across a full round, learning how live markets move, and practising teamwork and decision-making. Most teams never reach the final, yet still finish understanding markets far better than when they started.