About the Competition

SEA-CICSIC 2026 is the Southeast Asia regional contest of the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (CICSIC), providing a regional platform for students to participate in this prestigious global competition. It aims to foster cross-cultural collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship among university and college students from Southeast Asian countries, while encouraging participants to apply their innovative solutions to regional and global challenges.

The China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (CICSIC) is a premier global event that unites university and college students worldwide to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship. It provides a platform for participants to showcase their ideas, collaborate with peers, and explore innovative solutions addressing global challenges and advancing sustainable development. Since its inception in 2015, CICSIC has successfully held consecutive annual competitions. In 2025, it attracted 24.43 million participants from 5,673 universities, with 6.19 million projects submitted and 4,729 projects awarded.

All projects submitted to SEA-CICSIC 2026 will be eligible for recommendation to the CICSIC 2026 global competition. Students passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship are invited to participate.

Project Entry Requirements

1.Projects should address social needs, create new products and business models, and promote the transformation of key industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, health, energy, and environmental protection. They should also facilitate the integration of digital technology with education, medical care, transport, finance, and cultural exchange.

2.Projects must be ethical, legal, and free of any content that violates Chinese and any other Southeast Asia countries’ laws or regulations. All inventions, patented technologies, and resources involved must have the attendant legal intellectual property rights and proprietary rights. Entrants who submit plagiarized or pirated entries will be disqualified from the competition, forfeit any awards received, and shall bear all legal liabilities.

3.Entrants must choose the proper category for submitting their projects. The participating teams must truthfully fill out and submit entry materials in the registration system in a timely manner. Projects that have won the Gold or Silver Awards in previous sessions of the CICSIC and Gold Awards in the MCYIC are not eligible for submission.

4.Entrants must be under 35 years old (born in/after 1991).

How to Participate

The Competition only accepts team entries. All entrants shall participate as teams of 2 to 15 members (team leader included). A team may be formed by members from more than one college. All entrants shall be core members of the team.

All entrants must be students who are currently enrolled at a university/college or those who have graduated within the past 5 years (graduated in/after 2021). The application should be submitted by the team leader. A team shall represent only one foreign institution in which the team leader is currently enrolled or has graduated from. In this case, a foreign institution refers to a higher education institution that is located in Southeast Asia countries (outside Mainland China as well as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China) and is qualified to provide tertiary education and award degrees. Participants from different universities are allowed to form a team.

All submissions will be classified into one of the following two categories depending on the entrants' academic status: Undergraduate or Postgraduate. The submissions will be further classified into two sub-categories based on the projects’ business stage: Idea Stage and Startup Stage Projects. All participating colleges shall instruct entrants to correctly fill out the application and register in the appropriate category.

Requirements for Undergraduate & Postgraduate

Idea Stage

• are creative;

• have mature product prototypes or service models;

• have not completed business registration or other types of registration on or before 1 April 2026.

• The applicant must be the team leader, and the team leader and members must currently be undergraduates or junior college students.

Startup Stage

• Projects are projects that have completed business registration or other types of registration (before 1 April 2026).

• The applicant must be the team leader, the legal representative of the start-up and a current undergraduate or an undergraduate/junior college student who has graduated with an undergraduate degree within the past 5 years.

Timeline:

• Registration Opens: April 11, 2026, 12:00 noon 
• Registration Closes: April 27, 2026, 12:00 noon 
• Eligibility Review: April – May 2026 
• Finalists Announcement: May 2026 (tentative) 
• Final Competition & Award Ceremony: June 2026

Learn more:

• Event Website: https://events.xmu.edu.my/seacicsic26/

• Registration Website: https://mys.pilcchina.org/home

• Xiamen University Malaysia – Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center: innocompetition@xmu.edu.my

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