Ministry of Science and ICT holds award ceremony at Pangyo Virtual Convergence Industry Hub
497 teams, 1,029 people participated... First reflected in AI utilization evaluation
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kwon Ha-young = In a competition contested by young developers in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual convergence (XR), 32 teams advanced to the podium in recognition of their excellent service and content development achievements.
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 30th that it held the '2026 AI/XR Service Developer Contest' awards ceremony at the Virtual Convergence Industry Hub in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do.
This competition, now in its 6th year, is a competition to discover and nurture young people with the ability to implement creative ideas into actual services and content. The cumulative number of participants is 2,439 teams and 5,688 people.
The competition was divided into the 'Developer Division', which develops AI/XR services, and the 'Creator Division', which utilizes a global user-generated content (UGC) platform. Starting this year, participants were provided with additional AI development tools and AI utilization was reflected in the evaluation.
A total of 497 teams and 1,029 people participated in this year's competition, including 258 elementary, middle, and high school students and 771 college students and above.
After five months of service and content production training and 1:1 mentoring, the idea was developed into actual services and content, and 14 domestic and foreign companies, including Roblox and Nexon Korea, participated as sponsors and supported task presentation, mentoring, and evaluation.
The 32 teams (84 people) selected through three stages of document evaluation, presentation evaluation, and final evaluation, with a competition rate of 6.4 to 1, were awarded the grand prize of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT (4 teams), the top prize of the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) Director's Award (4 teams), and the excellence award of the Korea Radio Promotion Association Chairman's Award and the Sponsoring Company Representative Award (24 teams). The total prize money is 77 million won.
The grand prize winners were two teams each from the developer and creator categories.
In the developer category, the 'Gamut' team, which developed an AI and 3D-based personalized fashion social network service (SNS), and the 'Two Code' team, which developed a web-based science experiment and inquiry learning service 'Ans2Quest', received the Minister's Award.
In the creator category, the 'Jeongjun people' team, which used Maple Story characters, and the 'SSAMPPONG Studio' team, which created a third-person shooting game set in a Korean alley, were selected as grand prize winners.
The Ministry of Science and ICT also provides follow-up support for the winning team's employment, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.
Among the winning teams in the adult category, we will provide internships and start-up consulting in connection with sponsoring companies, and the grand prize winning team in the developer category, 'Gamut', will also be provided with the opportunity to participate in the 'K-Digital Grand Championship'.
