Announcing the Solar Decathlon 2025 Design Challenge Teams

Competition begins for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Decathlon® 2025 Design Challenge, with 122 teams from 93 collegiate institutions joining DOE’s longest-running student competition.

The Design Challenge encourages collegiate teams to create energy-efficient, resilient, and sustainable building designs that meet community needs through affordable upgrades, existing building retrofits, resiliency improvements, and more. Innovative solutions such as these play a vital role in helping the United States meet DOE’s buildings decarbonization blueprint goal of reducing building greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2035 and 90% by 2050.

“Students will compete with solutions for advanced high-performance, low-carbon buildings that address climate change through the built environment,” said Holly Jamesen Carr, Solar Decathlon lead in the Building Technologies Office. “We are particularly excited about the new Open Commercial division, which, for the first time in Design Challenge history, allows teams to design any kind of commercial building they wish.”

Explore the participating teams map to see if your alma mater or a nearby collegiate institution will be competing!

Design Challenge teams will present their residential or commercial building designs at the virtual semifinal competition event in February 2025. Selected finalist teams will then compete in person or virtually during the final competition event, hosted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, on April 25–27, 2025.

This year’s teams represent 19 countries and 27 states/districts, with 25 new collegiate institutions and 68 returning institutions.

Read more about the Solar Decathlon, as well as a full list of the Design Challenge Teams on energy.gov.