KIVO-2026

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University)
Alfa-Future
Alfa-Bank

Education Innovation Competition

We help innovators find expertise and community.

12,000+ projects
77 regions in Russia
8 neighbouring countries (near abroad)

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

KIVO brings together people who create new educational formats, tools, and practices.

We support projects at different stages of development — from first ideas to solutions ready for scaling.

The competition helps participants see their project from the outside, receive professional feedback, find like-minded people, and discover new opportunities for growth.

Become a Jury Member for the 2026 International Innovations in Education Contest

JOIN THE JURY

We are looking for distinguished experts from various educational fields to join the international jury of the 2026 Innovations in Education Contest. This is a unique opportunity to evaluate groundbreaking projects, share your professional insights, and contribute to shaping the future of education worldwide.

The contest brings together educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers who are reimagining learning. As a jury member, you will assess submissions, score them according to transparent criteria, and help select the most impactful initiatives. Your expertise – whether in teaching methods, AI, inclusive education, EdTech, or lifelong learning – is invaluable to our mission.

Why join?

Influence the global educational agenda

Connect with leading innovators and peers

Gain international recognition for your contribution

Receive a certificate of appreciation for your jury service

Please note: jury members evaluate projects without providing individual feedback to participants, and this is a voluntary expert role.

We invite you to complete the expert questionnaire below. The selection process is based on your professional background, achievements, and motivation.

BECOME A JURY MEMBER

WHAT DOES A PARTICIPANT GET?

Season 2026: strengthening support for participants.
KIVO helps not only to pass the selection but also to develop the project.

Expert feedback

Each project receives recommendations and an outside perspective from industry experts.

Participant community

After submitting an application, participants get access to the closed KIVO community.

Opportunity to refine the project

First-wave participants can update their project before the second submission.

Special nominations

The competition's partners select projects according to their own areas and objectives.

Year of support

The absolute winner receives personal expert support.

International context

In the 2026 season, KIVO is developing international partnerships and a global dialogue about education.

PARTICIPANT'S STORIES

KIVO-2025 WINNER
Alexandra Kazarinova

«Clear Books», St. Petersburg

My overall impression of the competition is as if I was embraced and guided along the way, and all this time I felt the energy of its organizers. The money I received as the absolute winner and the winner in the nomination will go towards New Year's gifts – we will print a book and send it to the parents who submitted requests.

KIVO‑2025 PARTNER, KIVO‑2023 FINALIST
Yulia Rodionova

Head of the social project on career guidance and cyber-socialisation "City of Skills. SkillCity Ecosystem", Kirov

When we entered KIVO in 2023, our goal was simple – to make ourselves known. Making it into the TOP‑30 already felt like a victory. But KIVO gave us much more.
The next year we returned to the Competition as partners. And in 2025 we launched our own nomination and announced the winners live. The most valuable thing turned out to be the social connections built within the community. Representatives of the Novosibirsk Open College became speakers at our Forum. Later we co‑organised their international conference. I am sure that our friendship and partnership will only grow stronger.

KIVO‑2025 PARTICIPANT
Alexey Baskov

CEO Team LAB, Moscow

Participating in KIVO helped us look at our project from a different angle. We actively studied the educational programme and tried to apply all the tools to our product. In the end, we made it into the TOP‑100! For us, this is a unique opportunity to tell about our project and prove its innovativeness. But the most valuable thing is the community of participants from all over Russia! You can ask any question and you will definitely get help! That's how we found partners for launching a new joint project! And as a graduate of a specialist programme, I was very pleased to win a special nomination from Moscow City University – which gives extra points for admission! I recommend everyone to take part in the competition!

FINALIST KIVO‑2024
Lada Ovchinnikova

"Creative Career Guidance", Kaliningrad

KIVO in 2024 became both a springboard and a compass for me. Back then, our small team, despite being busy, managed – relying on an objective outside perspective and the experts' experience – to bring our idea to implementation and to important results. We received proof that you just need to learn, do, share, and talk about it.
I found a bright and diverse community of like‑minded people – and within it, experienced and sensitive moderators from the education field. It is thanks to these meetings that I was able to significantly expand my competences, re‑orient myself towards becoming a career guidance specialist, and truly feel like an innovator ready to invent, implement, unite, and support.
If it weren't for KIVO, I would not have known about so many platforms, wonderful and powerful educational businesses!

2023 FINALIST
Varvara Antipenko

"Teacher for Substitute", Novosibirsk

KIVO is definitely more than a competition. On the level of ideas, on the level of organisation, and on the level of values. The organisers manage to very elegantly bring together science and education, search and initiatives, incentives and experiments on their platform. KIVO is a platform for dialogue, for joint discoveries.

2022 FINALIST
Vyacheslav Vasilyev

"Altshu University", St. Petersburg

For our team, an evidence‑based approach is very important in our work. Therefore, participation in KIVO was primarily an opportunity to get direct feedback from experts of the HSE University Institute of Education. And a valuable insight after the creative programme of the competition was the theme of a creative approach to popularising one's projects. Inspired by this idea, we created the channel "Authors of Their Own Development" with stories of independent experts in various fields; now it has over 80 videos.

KIVO‑2021 WINNER
Gulshat Sukhanova

Mentor of the WM Products project, Moscow – Samara

The organisers of the competition managed to create an amazing atmosphere of mutual support – both during the Summer School and the acceleration period, and at the final performance stage! It was very pleasant to feel surrounded by like‑minded people and future partners, rather than in an environment of competitors fighting for first place! I think this is a very important aspect of the competition – such effective networking gives hope that after the final all projects will get development, not only the winners' projects! Many thanks to the organisers for this!

KIVO‑2018 SEMIFINALIST and KIVO‑2021 JURY MEMBER
Yana Stafichuk

Dnevnik.Ru, Moscow

KIVO is a unique event that has been introducing unique projects for many years. For myself, in 2021 I singled out two projects: IZIDZ, which helps schoolchildren cope with homework – it received a special prize from Dnevnik.Ru – and also a project from Kazakhstan for schools, OPSY, which helps provide psychological assistance to schoolchildren, seemed important and interesting to me.

KIVO‑2014 WINNER and KIVO‑2021 JURY MEMBER
Diana Kolesnikova

Head of R&D Uchi.ru, Moscow

I try not to miss the KIVO final. Only here, on one stage, educational projects from different regions and subject areas come together. Different stages, different scales, different business models. Thank you to the participants and organisers for the opportunity to be amazed, to draw new ideas, and to find business partnerships.
In 2015, participation in the competition and winning it helped me believe in myself and continue testing various career‑guidance products. Important were the trips made possible by a travel grant to the US West Coast and then the East Coast. New contacts appeared, and more people learned about my project.

KIVO‑2021 FINALIST
Nikolay Pronev

School Cryptocurrency, Moscow

The most important value of our time is human relationships. And KIVO fully and more gives opportunities to establish contacts with innovators and companies that are ready to support your fantastic but so‑needed ideas! P.S. A lot of good things have already been said about the KIVO Summer School, and it is all true, but we really hope that next year graduates of past seasons will be allowed to participate. Huge gratitude to all KIVO organisers from the teachers, schoolchildren and their parents of the project "School Cryptocurrency".

KIVO‑2020 SEMIFINALIST
Lyubov Druzhinina

Online‑Rozetka, Moscow

The KIVO Summer School gave our team the opportunity to think about Online‑Rozetka in a new way, to turn it to a completely new market for us – corporations. Before that, we had worked only with people from the education sector. At the Summer School, we started studying a new target audience and began to restructure our product according to its needs.

KIVO‑2020 SEMIFINALIST
Natalya Ivanova

Project "Art Routes Without Barriers", Barnaul

The KIVO Summer School is a large‑scale event for the transformation of both our projects and ourselves. This year it was held online, but the semi‑finalists of the competition, in my opinion, only benefited from this. Over 3 weeks, we attended lectures by famous speakers, workshops, discussed pressing issues in the format of collective mastermind groups. All this allowed us to concentrate as much as possible on the project and the prospects for its promotion. The Summer School programme was built on the principle "from a calm pace to full immersion", thanks to which every day I immersed myself more and more in the values of my project, analysed social effects and forecasted scaling. Regular consultations with a tracker and his recommendations were very important (my tracker was Nadezhda Averina): this is not only project mentoring, but also psychological support and motivation, which we often lack. A nice bonus of the Summer School was the random‑coffee format, when participants randomly met with honoured experts. I managed to talk with the KIVO‑2019 winners Alla Mallabiu and Zoya Boytseva, who gave me very valuable recommendations on the development of inclusive values in my project. The format of classes at the Summer School was very dynamic, maximally meaningful, maintaining concentration of attention and effort. Despite being online, a very warm and friendly atmosphere developed at the School.

KIVO‑2019 SEMIFINALISTS
Alla Mallabiu, Zoya Boytseva

Inclusive Comic "Team S.L.U.H.", St. Petersburg

Our project offers a solution to combat bullying of children with disabilities in schools. The team came up with a children's comic with superheroes who learn a "secret language" – the sign language of the deaf and hard‑of‑hearing. At the Summer School, expert assessment of our project is very important to us. We came here to understand what schools need, how we can build interaction with them. We have already translated the comic into six languages and are now translating it into two more. We would like to work on the project correctly and build the programme taking into account the experts' wishes. We also want to get acquainted with KIVO partners. The corporation "Russian Textbook" seemed very interesting to us, because our project is aimed at schoolchildren. Through our comic, children learn that there are heroes with hearing impairments living in the world, that some children wear hearing implants. If a child knows what it is about, then misunderstanding and aggression will not arise. It is important for us that as many schoolchildren and teachers as possible learn about this.

KIVO‑2020 SEMIFINALIST
Lyudmila Shapovalova

Project "Network School of Developmental Education"

For us, the KIVO Summer School was a kind of test and prioritisation. We managed to look at ourselves through the eyes of different people. We became convinced that we should more often "go out to the people". Working with experts, specialists and trackers was very useful in terms of expanding our knowledge about business projects. It was very useful to look at other teams in the market of educational projects. Thanks to the organisers for such an atmosphere.

KIVO‑2020 SEMIFINALIST
Leonid Gushchin

Constructor Yeryoma, Yekaterinburg

The School was very concise and intense. Even those things that I seemed to know before the School, I began to understand much better after it. In general, I got the impression that in such an area as a startup, knowing is not enough, you have to dive in, try – then you begin to really understand the processes taking place in the market. Besides the area of knowledge, a certain area of ignorance also opened up; it became clear what needs to be worked on further, what steps to take.

KIVO‑2019, 2020 EXPERT
Ekaterina Morozova

Director of the Skolkovo Open University

I believe that KIVO is an excellent tool, firstly, for large players, customers, such structures as Skolkovo, the HSE Institute of Education, the Ministries of Education and Enlightenment. It is necessary that people with truly interesting ideas and projects appear before us, whom we can pick up, support, include in our ecosystem and help in development. Secondly, the competition is an excellent way for participants to test their ideas through the jury, undergo an educational programme, and even better, in the end receive financial resources or help from partners to develop their project. Sometimes, when you are at the start and have a brilliant idea – you may lack just a few thousand rubles or a couple of worthwhile recommendations to launch your project.

KIVO‑2019 EXPERT
Ekaterina Latypova

Director of Digital Communications at the corporation "Russian Textbook"

We have been partners of KIVO for several years because we believe that well‑developed individual initiatives can give a quality result in changing the education system. Year after year, the quality of the submitted projects improves, they become more complex and comprehensive. We believe that it is precisely this systematic approach year after year to supporting the best initiatives of the competition that bears fruit and gradually improves our entire education system.

KIVO EXPERT
Andrey Andrusov

Deputy Director of the Centre for Promoting Innovations in Society "SOL"

Through "SOL" we process dozens of projects a year, and we give money to one or two. We would like investment figures to be a hundred times larger. That means we need to create more. Everyone who has an idea should know where to go and what to do so that the idea turns into a big wonderful project. That is why we love the mission of KIVO so much. When every schoolchild knows about such competitions and that at 17 they can launch their own startup with their help, then everything will definitely be fine. After all, the future of education is a Klondike.

KIVO‑2018 FINALIST
Tatyana Klimova

"The Bot Knows", St. Petersburg

It was bright, exciting, emotional. I am infinitely grateful to Diana and everyone, everyone who created this competition, which helps: 1. Look at your project with a new, fresh perspective. 2. Shows strengths and what still needs to be worked on. 3. Communicate with experts and learn from experience. It was an amazing adventure that began in June and still continues. It seems to me that every time we were charged with energy and embodied all our thoughts into the project. Thank you for such motivation to action, for support, for believing in us :) After such a start, only forward!

2016 FINALIST
Maksatbek Abdunazar uulu

"Bilim", Moscow

After participating in the "KIVO Nursery" event, our project received a great response on social networks, and already in the KIVO final we received the Audience Choice Award. Such growth and recognition inspired us, gave us faith in ourselves and in the future of the project. Experts at the KIVO Summer School gave many advice and recommendations, advised us to work on scaling our methodology to reach the all‑Russian level. But our main victory is the support of the Institute of Education, which became a mentor and supervisor of our project, provided a cash grant, and also contributed to the development of the methodological and legal parts of the project. The Agency for Strategic Initiatives offered us to undergo an expert assessment, and thus we became residents of the HSE Business Incubator. Now, together with partners, we are developing a self‑study guide to the Russian language for teenagers. KIVO is an excellent platform for starting and developing your innovative educational project. We wish the competition continuous growth, and young specialists – not to be afraid to propose new ideas in education and to participate in the event.

2016 FINALIST
Oleg Demyanov

"Edugame Creator", Smolensk

At the KIVO Summer School, we managed to get many important comments and advice from experts from various fields. We did not win in the final, but thanks to the serious expertise, tips and competent assessment of our project at KIVO, we rethought the project concept and, focusing on the product's strengths, finalised it. Since the final, we have met with publishers of educational materials, and our project received support from ASI. The main result of participating in KIVO is getting to know many companies and experts involved in the development of educational projects, and, of course, useful feedback from all KIVO participants: organisers, experts, other finalists and visitors of the EdCrunch conference.

2016 FINALIST
Tatyana Dubovskaya

"Urbani Eco", Moscow

The competition allowed us to publicly announce our project, after which we simply could not fail to implement it. In 2016, we held a series of open lectures and the first Agrhackathon in Russia, which created solutions for home "smart" and vertical gardens. In 2017, we plan to repeat this event and hold four Agrhackathons related to city‑farms and "smart" suburban mini‑farms. At the same time, we are building a community for the development of city‑farming in Russia, and we also plan to create an online course on this topic. We hope that thanks to our team, the first rooftop farm will appear in Moscow this year. Personally, I want to thank the entire Competition team for their amazing sensitivity, responsiveness and help in the development of "Urbani Eco". I recommend everyone who is involved in educational projects or is just planning to, to participate in the Competition and use it as a platform for launching and developing their project.

2016 FINALIST
Elena Antonova

"Robots Go to School", Volgograd

At KIVO‑2016 we came with an idea. Rather even with a dream. With a dream of organising a big business, of entering the international market. We were at the very beginning of the journey, and it was unclear where to go next. At the Competition, everything changed: the "expert pipeline" helped us package our dream into a beautiful, structured presentation and develop a plan for further actions. KIVO‑2016 became a launch pad for us. We realised the significance of our project, received financial support in the competition final that accelerated our developments, believed in ourselves, and most importantly, decided where to move next. And then – only forward! Now we are working non‑stop on the first version of the product and will soon be ready to present a prototype to the public. Thanks to participation in the Competition, our project is now no longer just a dream or a beautiful idea, but a very complex high‑tech development. Of course, a long and difficult path awaits us, but the beginning has been made, and we are not going to give up.

2015 FINALIST
Anatoly Loginov

"Left‑handed project", Luhansk

There are many events that position themselves as a "factory of ideas". I would call KIVO a "factory where they teach how to implement already generated ideas and look for points of their further growth". Conventionally, all the work at the school can be divided into presentations by the organisers and invited experts, and the work of the participants themselves, the authors of projects. There was not a single formal lecture done just for show. The Summer School provides an excellent opportunity to see the results of presentations and revisions after individual consultations with experts, and to compare them with the first versions, which suggests that the complex of school events has a real effect. My project, which is a set of computer programmes aimed at developing left‑handers, won special nominations from the HSE Institute of Education and Microsoft, which served as a good impetus for the project's development. The KIVO‑2015 competition is over. Work on the "Left‑handed project" continues. We are developing programmes for preparing the hand for writing, and we expect to complete them in March‑April. In spring we also plan to launch the project's website.

2015 WINNER
Airat Bagautdinov

"Moscow through the Eyes of an Engineer", Moscow

The most important consequence of KIVO for me was understanding what our project needs. While you work slowly – you don't see the perspective. Experts at KIVO made me understand that I need to plan far ahead, helped me formulate my requests for the future. And, of course, the KIVO final was an opportunity to acquire many useful contacts that, I hope, will help the project develop. Now the project is developing within the intended framework, we are inventing new products and using new promotion channels. There are no leaps, but I hope they will come after active work with partners we found thanks to KIVO.

2015 FINALISTS
Vladlena Romanova, Nikolay Kryazhev

"Children's Banking", Arkhangelsk

KIVO for us is a most valuable experience and a launch pad for the project's implementation. We came to the competition with one idea, having no idea how to develop it further. At the Summer School, they helped us polish the very concept, put everything on the shelves, clearly explained how and by what means to promote the project, and, of course, the final chord – "access to the body" of specific investors and partners. Thanks to the valuable advice of the KIVO organisers, we managed, in our opinion, to present the project competently. As a result, we received a special prize from the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and the attention of many interested parties and companies. With the money allocated by ASI, we made a prototype of the application, which we are now testing on our target audience – children and parents. The next step is to create the first version of the service, which in the coming months can be downloaded to smartphones. We will present the finished product to a wide audience and investors. Our team worked on the project for about a year, but the dynamics of movement began only after participation in KIVO.

COMPETITION MECHANICS

The competition is designed so that every step is useful — regardless of the final result.

You are here

You have an idea, a prototype, a project you want to develop further, or a proven solution ready for scaling. That's all you need to get started.

Step 1: First application wave
(May 20 – July 15)

Describe your project and submit your application. After submission, you receive an invitation to the KIVO community.

The advantage of the first wave: after the application period ends, participants receive recommendations from experts and get the opportunity to refine their project and submit an updated version in the second wave.

Step 2: Second application wave
(July 20 – September 15)

The second wave is open to everyone: both those who applied in the first wave and new participants. Those who applied earlier have no competitive advantage: the current version of the project is considered in the selection. You can submit your application in either wave, at your choice.

Step 3: Expert selection

All applications undergo double-blind evaluation. Experts are selected according to each project's profile. The evaluation is based on psychometric principles.

A TOP-100 is formed: a status with significant image value for the project. Moreover, most projects from this list receive a nomination and a prize from one of the partners.

Step 4: Jury and online stage

From the TOP-100, the jury selects 20 best projects. Participants go through online interviews and poster presentations.

Step 5: In-person final

13 projects are invited to the two-day final at the venues of HSE University and Alfa-Bank. Educational program, networking, cultural events. The international jury gets acquainted with the projects and selects the winners of the nominations and the Absolute Winner of the season.

KIVO Team

KIVO is created by the team of the HSE University Laboratory for Innovations in Education together with partners and experts.

"For over 10 years, we have been researching and launching projects in the field of educational innovations, helping teams go from first prototypes to scalable solutions, and building a sustainable community of innovators around the competition. We believe in education as a space for experimentation and growth, so we bring together around KIVO people who are ready to try new things and share their experience!"

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Ready to evaluate the most innovative projects of 2026?

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We invite you to be part of the decision. Complete the questionnaire below and help us select the future leaders of education.

Apply as a jury expert today.

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