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ARC Prize Foundation (hosted on Kaggle) · Paid competitionARC Prize 2026
The highest-profile AI reasoning competition in the world — François Chollet's ARC-AGI benchmark, with a prize pool of up to $2M. Final submissions close 2 November 2026, and even a strong paper-prize entry is a serious research credential.
Dates & timeline
Prizes
- Up to $2,000,000 across three tracks (ARC-AGI-3, ARC-AGI-2, Paper Prize), per the official site
- ARC-AGI-2 Progress Prizes, $275,000: 1st $75,000, 2nd $50,000, 3rd $40,000, 4th $35,000, 5th $25,000, 6th $20,000, 7th and 8th $15,000 each
- ARC-AGI-2 Grand Prize: $275,000 — artifacts must be open-sourced with a Solution Writeup within seven days of the submission deadline
- ARC-AGI-2 Bonus Prize: $150,000 to the first eligible solution scoring at least 85% on the private evaluation set
- ARC-AGI-3 Milestone #2 (passed, 30 Sep 2026): 1st $25,000, 2nd $10,000, 3rd $2,500 — open-source by the milestone deadline to be eligible
- ARC-AGI-3 Grand Prize: $700,000 to the first eligible agent scoring 100% on the ARC-AGI-3 evaluation
- Paper Prize track rewards novel ideas even without a top leaderboard score
- Founded by François Chollet and Mike Knoop
- Three 2026 tracks: ARC-AGI-3, ARC-AGI-2, and the Paper Prize
Why it's worth your time
ARC Prize is the competition built around the ARC-AGI benchmark — abstract reasoning puzzles that remain hard for frontier AI models — founded by François Chollet (creator of Keras) and Mike Knoop. The 2026 edition runs on Kaggle with three tracks: ARC-AGI-3, ARC-AGI-2, and a Paper Prize for novel ideas.
The headline number needs honest reading: the pool is described as up to $2M because the largest tranches unlock only if entries cross defined score thresholds — nobody may win them. But the ranked prizes are real money and do not depend on a score threshold — ARC-AGI-2 pays $275,000 in Progress Prizes across eight places, from $75,000 down to $15,000, and ARC-AGI-3's second milestone on 30 September paid $25,000, $10,000 and $2,500 — and the field is genuinely open: past top entries have come from individuals and tiny teams, not just labs.
Two rules shape your approach: solutions run without internet or API access (so no calling a hosted frontier model), and winners must open-source their code under a permissive license. For a student, even a mid-leaderboard finish with a public write-up is a research artifact worth more than most certificates.
How to apply
Read the ARC-AGI benchmark format on arcprize.org and try example tasks by hand first — understanding why they are hard is the entry ticket.
Join the competition on Kaggle and run the baseline notebooks.
Build within the constraints: offline execution, no external APIs, open-source-able code.
Submit before 2 November (papers by 8 November); consider a Paper Prize write-up even if your score is modest.
Frequently asked questions
Is the $2M real?
The headline is real, but a large share of it is threshold-gated: ARC-AGI-3's $700,000 Grand Prize goes only to the first agent scoring 100%, and ARC-AGI-2's $150,000 Bonus Prize only to the first solution reaching 85%. The ranked prizes do not depend on a threshold — $275,000 in ARC-AGI-2 Progress Prizes across eight places, still open until 2 November, provided you open-source your solution. ARC-AGI-3's Milestone #2 ($25,000 / $10,000 / $2,500) has already passed, on 30 September.
Can I use GPT, Claude or Gemini APIs?
No — submissions run in an offline Kaggle environment with no internet or API access. That constraint is deliberate and is why the leaderboard rewards genuinely novel approaches.
Why enter if I won't win?
Because the artifact is the value: an open-source ARC attempt with a clear write-up is a research credential recognised across the AI industry, and the Paper Prize explicitly rewards ideas over rank.
Official links
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