Sep 24, 2026

Enter the 2026 Meta VR Start Developer Competition

The second Meta VR Start Developer Competition kicks off today at Meta Connect⁠. Over the next eight weeks, we're inviting you to build new experiences for Meta VR or significantly update something you've already built and compete for a share of $1M in total prizes across three genre tracks: entertainment, gaming, and productivity.

Whether you build in Unity, Unreal, a native engine, or with Android and web, this is your chance to get a head start on the next generation of Meta VR with Meta VR Glasses, and to define what those experiences become.

TL;DR

What: An eight-week online build challenge for Start program members. Build a new experience or significantly update an existing one for Meta VR Glasses, Meta Quest, or both.
Dates: September 24, 2026 through November 18, 2026
Prizes: $1M in total prizes (ranging in value from $20,000 to $100,000)
Tracks: Entertainment, Gaming, and Productivity, plus special category awards
Winners: Announced on or around December 11, 2026
Eligibility: Open to Start program members. Not a member yet? Apply to join before you submit. Terms and conditions apply. Official rules are available on Devpost.

In this post

Why you should enter: the prize pool, building for the future of Meta VR, and other benefits
Pick your track: Entertainment, Gaming, or Productivity
Key dates: submission window, deadline, and the winners announcement
Build faster with agentic tooling: what ships in eight weeks now
Get started today: steps to register and start building

Why you should enter

Compete for a share of $1 million in prizes

Submit your new or updated project for a chance to win one of 20 cash prizes, including top prizes of $100,000 each for projects in each track.

Grow your audience for your app

Winning projects will be highlighted on the developer blog and at an end-of-competition livestream, along with category spotlights across Meta social channels.

For a small team without a marketing budget, that visibility drives traffic to your Store listing and gives you something concrete to point to when you pitch a new project or recruit collaborators. Take a look at last year's winners to see where a win can lead.

Get in early on a new era of VR

Meta VR Glasses ship in spring 2027, and you can start building for this new form factor today with the skills you already have. VR Glasses run the same operating system as Meta Quest, so your engine, your SDKs, and your workflow carry over. Platform simulators like Meta XR Simulator (Unity | Unreal), Meta Spatial Simulator, and Immersive Web Emulator⁠ let you design for the hardware before it ships.

Build with a community

Joining the Start program is your entry point into the competition, and membership comes with benefits you keep long after you submit:

A global developer community: Connect with thousands of VR developers through the forums and social channels for a second opinion, a playtest, or a teammate, plus invitations to exclusive Meta events.
Priority technical support: Answers from Meta staff and fellow Start members.
Development resources: Advanced technical education, community mentorship, and go-to-market guidance.

Pick your track

This year, we're inviting you to submit experiences across three tracks:

Entertainment: Lean-back media and content experiences: spatial cinema, interactive video, music visualization, immersive storytelling, spatial audio, media companion apps (e.g., commentary tracks, popup production notes, social comments). Content designed to be consumed in any environment.
Gaming: Games designed for hands-first input or eyes and hands. Puzzle, strategy, casual, social, narrative—genres that work well for seated play, without controllers.
Productivity: Apps that make you more effective anywhere or are designed around specific daily moments. These experiences may include multi-panel workspaces, task management, creative tools, or habits tied to a recurring context (morning routine, commute, wind-down).

Requirement: Your experience must be fully usable with hands, end-to-end. Controller support is welcome, but not required.

Guidelines: It is also suggested your experience be seated-optimized (designed for seated, stationary use; limit roomscale and avoid large physical movement), easy to get into/out of (fast cold start, clean pause/resume and something satisfying in 10 minutes or less), and be original, not a wrapper (core experience should be entrance built and not rely on existing platforms or services).

Browse the 2025 project gallery for inspiration and to see what last year's entries looked like at submission.

Key dates

September 24: Submission window opens
November 18: Submission deadline
December 11: Winners announced

🎯 Action item

Apply to join the Start program and register on Devpost today, even if your concept is not locked. You can always adjust and adapt your project as you iterate, because your track is selected at submission instead of registration.

Build faster with agentic tooling

Since last year's competition, we've shipped agentic tooling across every build path that helps you accelerate your workflow between setting up a new project and testing a build. The Meta VR CLI connects your coding agent to platform documentation, your device, performance tooling, and the Meta Asset Library and its 1.5 million royalty-free 3D assets. The agentic skills repo⁠ adds skills for project setup, tooling installation, and performance optimization. To learn more about AI tooling and what's available for your engine, start with our foundational AI tooling post and visit our documentation.

💡 Quick tip

Scope to one mechanic and finish it. A tight vertical slice is better than a broad prototype with gaps, because judges play what you submit. Handing the QA pass to your agent frees up your own hours for the parts of your project that need them most.

Get started today

Whether you're an indie developer or part of an established studio, you have eight weeks to get your idea in front of the judges.

If you're not already a member of the Meta VR Start Program, apply to join.
Register to participate on Devpost and check out exclusive Start member programming and resources in the Developer Forum⁠.
Build solo or as a team. Grab the latest Meta XR SDKs for your engine or run metavr init, and connect your coding agent.
Submit your project by November 18, 2026 in accordance with the official rules, terms and conditions.

Visit the competition page on Devpost for full rules, eligibility, and judging criteria.

Meta VR Glasses arrive in Spring 2027, and what you build over these next eight weeks will help define what people can do with them. We can't wait to see what you ship.

For more developer updates, follow us on X⁠, Facebook⁠, and LinkedIn⁠; subscribe to our monthly VR developer newsletter; and join the conversation in the Meta Developer Forums⁠.