Smart Buildings Competition 2026 on Kaggle: $40,000 for AI that controls building HVAC
Kaggle competition to train HVAC control policies that work in buildings they have never seen. $40,000 in prizes, final submissions by January 15, 2027.
The Smart Buildings Competition is a Kaggle code competition hosted by the University of Washington, together with the NSF AI Institute in Dynamic Systems, Harvard University, Columbia University and Kajima Corporation. Participants train control policies for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) on simulated buildings. The policies are then tested on unseen buildings that can differ in size, layout, weather, materials and HVAC systems.
The prize pool is $40,000. The main leaderboard pays $25,000 across eight places, from $5,750 for first place down to $2,500. The paper track pays $15,000: smaller NeurIPS poster awards for papers sent by November 13, 2026, and final paper awards of up to $3,000 for papers sent by January 15, 2027. Papers go through OpenReview.
The competition is open worldwide to people aged 18 or over, or the age of majority where they live. Residents of Crimea, the so called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Cuba, Iran and North Korea cannot enter, and neither can people under US export controls or sanctions. Teams can have up to five members.
To take part, join the competition on Kaggle and accept the rules by January 3, 2027. Submissions are made through Kaggle Notebooks with up to 9 hours of run time and no internet access. Public external data and pretrained models are allowed. Final submissions are due on January 15, 2027, at 11:59 PM UTC.
The score rewards comfort for the people in the building while keeping energy cost and carbon emissions low. The organizers say winning solutions may get the chance to test their models on three real buildings. A NeurIPS workshop on the competition takes place in Paris on December 13, 2026.
Quick answers
How big can a team be?
Up to five people. The last day to join or merge teams is January 3, 2027.
Can I win money without a top leaderboard score?
Yes. Anyone who submits a write up of their solution can win a paper prize. These are judged on quality, novelty and clear writing, and the first round of papers is due November 13, 2026 for a NeurIPS poster award.
Do winners have to share their code?
Yes. Winners license their winning submission and its source code under CC BY 4.0.