The winners of the Swift Student Challenge 2026 have been announced.
Apple chose 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from around the world while detailing four distinguished winners and their apps.
Apple has announced that the annual Swift Student Challenge sees people from 37 different countries and regions chosen as winners. Of those 350, 50 were invited to attend the company’s WWDC event in June 2026.
But while there are dozens of winners this year, Apple took the time to name four in particular. The four young app developers used their apps to solve real-world problems, from creating artwork with tremors to escaping a flood zone. Apple also emphasized the use of AI during development.
“The depth of creativity we see in the Swift Student Challenge never ceases to amaze us,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, in Apple’s press release. “This year’s winners have found remarkable ways to harness the power of Apple platforms, Swift, and AI tools to create app playgrounds that are as technically impressive as they are meaningful.”
Firm hands — Gayatri Goundadkar
Created by 20-year-old Gayatri Goundadkar, Steady Hands was designed to help her grandmother create artwork using an iPad despite her shaking hands.
Using Apple’s accessory features, such as Touch Accommodations, Goundadkar learned the concepts of SwiftUI, then leveraged Anthropic’s Claude AI to find a solution.
The result is an app that uses Apple’s PencilKit and Accelerate frameworks to monitor the movement of an Apple Pencil and then identify tremors. These tremors can then be taken into account.
Pitch Coach — Anton Baranov
At 22, Anton Baranov is a computer science student at the Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He developed Pitch Coach after hearing his mother, a linguistics and literature professor, explain how students sometimes struggle under pressure in his class.
Four of the winners of the Swift Student Challenge 2026
Pitch Coach is designed to help users overcome presentation anxiety. The app uses Apple’s Foundation Models framework to generate feedback and help users avoid filler words like “like” or “um.” Now, Pitch Coach helps everything from students giving presentations in class to stand-up comedians.
Asuo — Karen-Happuch Peprah Henneh
Having only learned Swift earlier this year, Henneh created Asuo to help people in flood-prone communities find safety when they need it. The app provides real-time driving directions in flood zones and includes VoiceOver support to help visually impaired users.
At its core, Asuo calculates rain intensity and then uses a steering algorithm informed by historical flood data. Henneh used Figma to create the app’s interface before turning to Claude to help build the rain simulator.
LeViola — Yoonjae Joung
Yoonjae Joung came up with the idea for his app after realizing that he missed playing an instrument that he had to leave at home. He realized he didn’t have room for his viola when he was packing for an exchange program at New York University.
He was inspired to create LeViola, an app designed to make learning and playing the viola easier, even if you don’t have one.
Joung used the machine learning frameworks built into the Apple device to analyze the movement of his left hand to determine which notes were being pressed. Tracking the right arm angle means the app can differentiate between strings.
LeViola is still in its early stages, but Joung says he can create similar apps for other instruments as well.