Food + Water + Waste
XPRIZE Water Scarcity
Revolutionizing Desalination for Global Water Use
- 1 Launch
- 2 Registration
Purpose
Designed to drive widespread access to clean water, this prize challenges teams to create breakthrough seawater desalination systems that are reliable, affordable, and sustainable.
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Sponsor
Sponsors fund the prize journey from bold idea to breakthrough—shaping each competition, supporting global teams, and accelerating solutions that scale. Their backing powers impact that lasts well beyond the prize.
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Partners
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Barrier
Today, 80% of the world’s population suffers from serious threats to their water supply. By 2030, we will lack 40% of the water needed to meet global needs. Traditional desalination remains unaffordable for low- and middle-income countries, vulnerable to climate change and pollution, and environmentally damaging, making it unsustainable to mitigate water scarcity.
Breakthrough
Create reliable, affordable, and sustainable seawater desalination solutions that unlock Earth’s oceans to increase clean water access for the greatest number of people globally.
The Impact
XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a $119 million, 5-year prize designed to drive widespread access to clean water by creating reliable, affordable, and sustainable seawater desalination systems. As climate change accelerates, pollution worsens, and global populations rise, billions of people are living under growing water stress. By 2030, the world could face a 40% shortfall in freshwater supply. The time for a new water paradigm is now.
The prize challenges innovators to design and demonstrate novel desalination technologies that are energy-efficient, low-cost, and environmentally sustainable. Solutions must increase access to clean water without relying on fragile infrastructure or creating downstream harm to ecosystems.
What sets this challenge apart is its systems-level ambition. Teams must prove their solutions work not only in the lab but also in real-world conditions—the solutions from this prize will be critical for global access to desalination technology, but especially important for sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, coastal urban centers, and those facing the harshest climate threats.
By tapping Earth’s largest water source—the ocean—XPRIZE Water Scarcity seeks to create a future where safe, abundant, and equitably shared water sustains both people and nature.
Prize Schedule
XPRIZE Water Scarcity launched on February 29, 2024.
Track A — Desalination: System-Level Innovation Qualified teams must complete testing by December 19, 2025. Semifinals testing will take place in Q4 2026, Finals testing from Q4 2027- Q3 2028, with winners announced Q4 2028.
Track B — Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods Qualified teams must complete testing by March 31, 2026. Semifinals testing will take place in Q4 2026, Finals testing in Q3 2027, with winners announced Q4 2027.
Tracks
The $119M XPRIZE Water Scarcity features two tracks tackling system-level innovation and novel desalination materials and methods. Both tracks will advance through Qualification, Semifinals, and Finals testing, with awards at each stage to sustain innovation and recognize bold achievements. The competition will also feature a separate Ideas Competition.
Track A — Desalination: System-Level Innovation
The winning team will reliably and most sustainably generate at least one million liters of potable water daily (1,000 m3/ day) from seawater at the lowest cost over the course of 1 year, demonstrating scalability for global impact.
Track A includes multiple awards: Qualified Team Milestone Award winners will share $3M; up to 20 Semifinalist Milestone Awards of $250K each; up to five Finalist Milestone Awards of $2M each; up to four Semifinalist Moonshot Awards of $2M each; up to four Finalist Moonshot Awards of $3M each; and Grand Prize Winners will receive $40M for First Place, $20M for Second Place, and $10M for Third Place.
Track B — Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods
The winning team will demonstrate a novel material and/or method that can sustainably and cost-effectively treat seawater to potable water quality, using any salt-water separation technique, with an operational lifetime of 10 years or more.
Track B includes multiple awards: up to 30 Semifinalist Milestone Awards of $10K each; up to five Finalist Milestone Awards of $220K each; and Finals prizes of $8M for First Place, $1M for Second Place, and $500K for Third Place.
Ideas Competition: The Value of Water
The winning team will devise the most novel, inclusive, engaging, and sustainable campaign to transform the global perception of the value of water.
The Ideas Competition includes multiple awards: $30,000 for First Place; $20,000 for Second Place; $15,000 for Third Place; and up to seven runner-up prizes of $5,000 each.
Competition Materials
The Competition Guidelines 3.0 (updated as of January 23, 2025) summarize the high-level requirements and procedures of the competition. These guidelines are based upon extensive research and consultation with dozens of experts and researchers across a wide array of relevant fields. Public feedback, open from March 1 to June 1, 2024, provided further refinement. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].
*Note: In an effort to widen the impact and reach of the competition, we have updated Track A - Desalination: System-Level Innovation to allow for partial/component level solutions to enter. And, Track B - Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods, has been updated to allow any novel desalination materials and methods to enter.
Competition Guidelines 3.0 (PDF)
XPRIZE competitions are driven by teams of innovative groups and individuals, comprising subject matter experts, enthusiasts, start-ups, student teams, amateurs, and all problem-solvers in between. A winning idea can come from anyone, anywhere.
XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a multi-track competition that focuses on addressing the challenges and opportunities related to seawater desalination and water access. It is structured into two complementing tracks designed to individually and collectively drive meaningful impact to address water scarcity on a global scale.
$108M Track A - Desalination: System-Level Innovation
$10.9M Track B - Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods
In addressing global water scarcity, we focus on two strategic pathways:
Track A - Desalination: System-Level Innovation - the winning team will reliably and most sustainably generate at least one million liters of potable water daily (1,000 m3/ day) from seawater at the lowest cost over the course of 1 year, demonstrating scalability for global impact.
Track B - Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods - the winning team will demonstrate a novel material and/or method that can sustainably and cost-effectively treat seawater to potable water quality, using any salt-water separation technique, with an operational lifetime of 10 years or more.
By concurrently driving these advancements forward, we pave the way for a water-secure future that is both economically viable and environmentally sustainable.
Welcome to the Resources page for the $119M XPRIZE Water Scarcity Prize. Please see the attached resources that provide important information for all teams interested in competing to review. We will be updating the contents of this page with more resources as they become available.
Additional questions not covered in these resource documents should be queried to [email protected].
ARABIC - Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
CHINESE_Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
ENGLISH_Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
FRENCH_Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
KOREAN_Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
PORTUGUESE (Brazil)_Water Scarcity Fact Sheet 3.0.pdf
Desalination: System-Level Innovation: April 30, 2025
Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods: June 30, 2025
IMPORTANT: All Qualifying Submissions from Teams must be submitted through the XPRIZE Prize Operations Platform. We will not accept any submissions through any other form of transmission.
XPRIZE Water Scarcity Registration officially opens March 1, 2024.
Registration deadline for Track A - Desalination: System-Level Innovation will close March 31, 2025 and registration for Track B - Desalination: Novel Materials and Methods will close May 31, 2025.
Teams can register through the XPRIZE Prize Operations Platform (POP), the central platform for competing teams during the life cycle of the prize. POP is a virtual system that allows competing teams to interact with each other and with the XPRIZE Prize Operations team.
POP is mostly used for completing prize activities, such as submitting documents for registration and testing, and finding team members.
Registration process:
- All prospective teams are required to create a free account profile on POP which enables access to the site. Click the “Login” button at the top right and create an account. After creating an account, navigate to the competitions page and click “Create a Team” on the XPRIZE Water Scarcity panel.
- Once complete, you have formed a team! You may invite other team members to join your team. All team members must also create a POP account.
- Important Note: creating a Team profile is not the final step to registration. Registration is only complete once a team pays the registration fee, signs the competitor agreement and fulfills all required activities.
- Visit the Activities page to complete the first prize activity, which will automatically be assigned. Thoroughly review the Competition Guidelines, which include information about team registration, fees, and other required activities, competition timeline and milestones, and more key competition information.
- Contact [email protected] with questions. We're here to help.
Competing teams often include startups, university groups, companies of all sizes, high school students, families, and even individuals. Teams can come from any background, including, but certainly not limited to, scientific and/or technical disciplines like chemistry, material science, environmental engineering, system design and engineering, and more. A team can also be a consortium of multiple entities. We believe great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere!
We always encourage teams to get in touch with one another through the XPRIZE Prize Operations Platform (POP) and share resources and talent where applicable and beneficial.
We welcome partners throughout all phases of the competition, and in all capacities. Whether you want to help recruit teams, support team success, secure an XPRIZE speaker or expert for your event, help scale winning solutions or assist with testing operations.
Contact [email protected] to get involved, and follow the competition by subscribing to the XPRIZE Food + Water + Waste Domain newsletter at xprize.org/get-involved.
As of the date of submission, each Team must own, or hold appropriate license rights to, all technologies, methods, resources, and Intellectual Property included in its submission.
XPRIZE will adhere to national or international regulations regarding ownership of the data used to validate team’s insights produced as part of the competition. Teams will retain ownership of their Intellectual Property on any technology or data integration techniques and processes they bring to the competition, and which they develop as part of their competition entry. All details relating to team technology, innovations, or methods submitted to XPRIZE at the submission deadlines will remain strictly confidential unless clearly and specifically noted.
Please refer to the Competition Guidelines for additional details.
You can find more information on the Sponsor Competitor Undertaking by clicking here.
If you’d like to get involved with the competition, or if you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].
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