On March 24, the 2026 "Innovation in Shanghai" International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was officially launched on Fuxing Island, Yangpu District, Shanghai. This competition, which has lasted for 15 years, expanded the launch ceremony into a three-day "Creation in Shanghai" LIT DAY entrepreneur activity day for the first time this year.
According to the Shanghai Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Center, this year's competition will focus on future industries, continue to focus on "early success", and build a competition matrix of "regional competition + professional competition + TOP100 innovation competition + linkage competition". The regional competition will set up tracks based on administrative areas and Lingang New Areas, covering areas such as integrated circuits, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, new generation electronic information, intelligent connected new energy vehicles, high-end equipment, advanced materials, new energy and green and low carbon. Companies under the age of 8 (registered after January 1, 2018) will be recruited to participate. At the same time, the "Team Group" is reserved for non-local companies that have not yet established companies, are willing to start a business in Shanghai, or have plans to launch a business, as well as early-stage projects that have been registered in this city for less than one year. While participating in the regional competition for the same project, you can also choose to register for a professional competition that meets the characteristics.
The competition adheres to both inclusiveness and precision in award setting, supports emerging start-ups, and pays more attention to discovering more start-up projects in future industry tracks. In the semi-finals, no more than 600 enterprise entries were selected and awarded "Excellence Awards", among which the start-up enterprise group and the growth enterprise group were distributed on a 2:1 basis. A total of 50 projects will be selected to win first, second and third prizes in the finals. The winning ratio for start-up teams, start-ups and growth companies will remain at 2:2:1.
It is reported that this year’s competition will further expand the scope of recruitment in domestic regions, and at the same time attract high-quality projects from around the world to participate through unified evaluation standards, covering overseas regions such as North America, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Singapore. All overseas contestants are unified into the "Team Group". Even if they have registered companies in their home countries, as long as they are willing to start a business in Shanghai, they will be regarded as local start-up projects and enjoy the same funding opportunities. Qualified winning teams will receive funding ranging from 200,000 yuan to 1 million yuan according to level.
Huang Lihong, director of the Municipal Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Center, said that in order to serve early hard technology projects throughout the chain and process, this year, the original Entrepreneurship School, Dream Salon, Future Star Acceleration Camp and other brands will be integrated with the "Westart Venture Capital Conference" and "International Top Incubator Conference" and other matrices, and integrated and upgraded into the "Incubation Academy" as an enabling platform to create "future partners" from technology to industry, so as to gather more service institutions and give more support and rewards to start-up teams.
