The ULI Hines Student Competition – Americas — entering its 24th year in 2026 — offers graduate (or fourth-year undergraduate) students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams of five students pursuing degrees in at least two different disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data.
This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site. All participating finalist students typically attend the all-expenses-paid final presentation in the host city where the jury selects the winning project.
Each team must be composed of five students. This program is primarily open to graduate students; however, undergraduates in their fourth year, or in their fifth year of a five-year pre-professional program, such as a BLA or BArch, also may compete.
The team members must be pursuing degrees that represent a minimum of two disciplines that grant two different degrees, one of which must be a design discipline and one of which must be a non-design discipline.
