2026 - 27 Challenge Sneak Peek
The Challenge Experience is Destination Imagination®'s (DI) flagship program for pre-K, K-12 and university students. Teams develop solutions to project-based STEAM challenges and then present their solutions live at tournaments.
DI Challenges are the prompts or guidelines for what a team creates.
The Challenges are open-ended, allowing teams to express themselves creatively and take full ownership of their solutions. Challenges are designed to teach the creative process—a system of learning that is at the root of innovation and a child’s ability to bring an idea to life.
DI Challenges take on two distinct formats:
Team Challenges and Instant Challenges
Team Challenges
Each team selects one new and engaging Team Challenge requiring a solution that will be presented at the tournament. Team Challenges encourage students to explore their passions, discover their unique talents and abilities, and learn new skills. Team Challenges are available each year in the following categories: Technical, Scientific, Fine Arts, Improvisational, Engineering, Service Learning, and Early Learning.
Although each Team Challenge has a specific educational focus, they each also incorporate elements to make them truly multi-disciplinary and cross-curricular (i.e., the Fine Arts Challenge will have a technical element and the Engineering Challenge will have an artistic or storytelling component.)
INSTANT CHALLENGES
Instant Challenges are quick creative and critical-thinking exercises that build teamwork and reinforce problem-solving skills like rapid ideation and implementation.
Instant Challenges can be task-based, performance-based, or a combination of both. All teams practice Instant Challenges during the year and are given one at the tournament.
Here are the 2025 - 26 Team Challenge Previews
Teams are often given the ability to choose the Challenge they want to solve. Some programs assign teams to a certain Challenge based on interests.
TECHNICAL CHALLENGE: WIN IT BIG
The Technical Challenge prompts students to complete tasks by using engineering, research, strategic planning, and related skills.
The lights, the glamour, the prizes! In this season’s Technical Challenge, you get to explore game shows. Use your technical skills to design and create your very own game show, complete with a gimmick, a reveal, and an effect meant to dazzle the senses. What challenges might you face, and what prizes are waiting to be won?
Teams that choose the 2025-26 Technical Challenge will get to:
- Create and present a game show.
- Include a host character and at least one contestant.
- Build tension with a raising-the-stakes event.
- Design and create a gimmick, a reveal, and a razzle-dazzle effect for your game show.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
ENGINEERING CHALLENGE: ABOVE AND BEYOND
Our Engineering Challenge asks students to explore and apply engineering skills and tools to design and build solutions to specific applications.
We invite you to dive right into the middle of the action! With this season’s Engineering Challenge, you’ll tell a story that starts with an in medias res scene. Make sure to include something important that expands, extends, or goes above and beyond. Defy gravity as you load up your structure with weights placed as far away from the base as possible. We can’t wait to see how you’ll go above and beyond!
- Test how much weight a team-created structure can hold by placing weights onto the Structure as far from the center as possible.
- Create and present a story in which something important expands, extends, or goes above and beyond.
- Begin the Presentation with an in medias res scene.
- Include an expansion effect.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE: UNFORGETTABLE
Our Scientific Challenge blends the curiosity of scientific research with the creative expression of performance art.
Did you see that!? Are you sure? Can you trust your memory, or have your eyes been deceived? Find out in this season’s Scientific Challenge, when you explore the science of human memory and misdirection. Bring a memory to life with your memory depiction, complete with a special effect. How will your team be remembered?
Teams that choose the 2025-26 Scientific Challenge will get to:
- Create and present a story about how a character recalling a memory leads to a realization.
- Integrate your team’s research about the science of human memory into the Presentation.
- Create and present a memory depiction. Enhance the memory depiction with a special effect.
- Include a misdirection in your Presentation.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
FINE ARTS CHALLENGE: BECOMING SUPEROur Fine Arts Challenge helps students develop acting and creative skills through artistic media, theater arts, scriptwriting, and prop design.
Some are destined for great good, others for great evil. In this season’s Fine Arts Challenge, you’ll have the chance to show how one hard choice can set two characters on two different courses, as one becomes a superhero and the other becomes a supervillain. Use stage makeup and a technical costume to enhance some of your Presentation. It’s time to decide your fate!
Teams that choose the 2025-26 Fine Arts Challenge will get to:
- Create and present an origin story that shows how one character becomes a superhero and a different character becomes a supervillain.
- Use theatrical methods to portray a difficult decision, situation, and/or event.
- Use stage makeup on at least one team member.
- Design and create one technical costume.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
IMPROVISATIONAL CHALLENGE: CASTING SHADOWS
Our Improvisational Challenge is all about research, spontaneity, and storytelling. Teams receive topics and quickly produce skits.
Bright and dark, young and old, many and few…the world is full of opposites. Explore opposing themes while telling a story based on an inciting incident. Include a resolution trope and a random setting. Don’t get lost in darkness as you use a shadow screen and shadows to enhance your story! Get ready to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this season’s Improvisational Challenge!
Teams that choose the 2025-26 Improv Challenge will get to:
- Create and present an improvisational skit based on an inciting incident.
- Research pairs of opposing themes and incorporate a pair into the skit.
- Include a randomly selected setting.
- Research resolution tropes and incorporate one of them into the skit.
- Use a shadow screen and a box of materials to enhance the skit.
SERVICE LEARNING CHALLENGE: GIVE AND TAKE
Our Service Learning Challenge is designed to engage students in public service that addresses real-life community issues.
In this Challenge, your team will take on a service project that addresses a real community need. Then, you’ll tell a story about what happens when two characters team up to resolve a dispute. How will a misunderstanding throw a wrench into the situation? It’s time to flex your negotiation skills when you take on this season’s Service Learning Challenge!
Teams that choose the 2025-26 Service Learning Challenge will get to:
- Identify, design, carry out, and evaluate a project that addresses a need in a real community.
- Create and present a story about at least two conflicting characters who have to work together to address or resolve a dispute.
- Include a misunderstanding and at least two different viewpoints.
- Enhance your Presentation with a dispute depiction.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
EARLY LEARNING CHALLENGE: HELPING HANDS
Our Rising Stars for Early Learners Challenge offers simple experiences with the creative process, and it gives young kids (preschool through 2nd grade) a place to work together and make new friends.
Teachers, firefighters, librarians, nurses, pet adoption coordinators, food bank workers, and many other community helpers spend their days working to make our world a better place. It’s time to learn about how you can help too! Every day is a great day to lend a helping hand in this season’s Early Learning Challenge!
2025-26 Rising Stars Teams will get to:
- Research different kinds of community helpers.
- Create and present a play about community helpers working together to solve a problem.
- Design and create a set that shows where at least one of the community helpers works.
- Create and present a song about helping.
- Create and present one Team Choice Element that shows off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
INSTANT CHALLENGE
All teams will have the opportunity to solve an Instant Challenge. These challenges require teams to engage in quick, creative and critical thinking.
In a world with growing cultural connections, increased levels and types of communication, and a new need for real-time teamwork and problem-solving, the ability to solve problems quickly is becoming increasingly critical.
Each team will be asked to solve an Instant Challenge for their DI tournament. The team must think on their feet by applying appropriate skills to produce a solution in a short period of time.
Instant Challenges are performance-based, task-based, or a combination of the two. Although each Instant Challenge has different requirements, all Instant Challenges reward teams for their teamwork. Instant Challenges are kept confidential until it is time for teams to solve them.
