See the Winning Projects from the Minecraft Education Global Build Championship
This October, we launched the first-ever Minecraft Education Global Build Championship. This worldwide challenge invited students to imagine places where humans and animals could safely and happily coexist. Learners could design a school, home, workplace, or public space and select one of five biomes. In the end, we received more than 1,250 entries!
After their creations were reviewed by an international panel of educators and the Minecraft: Education Edition team, we arrived at three winners from students aged 8–13, three from the 14–17 age group. Each of these winning teams will get a shipment of cool Minecraft gear and 8,000 Minecoins for each team member. We also selected one grand prize winner, who’ll receive the same loot along with a special call with the Mojang Studios team, including our Chief Creative Officer Jens Bergensten and Chief Storyteller Lydia Winters.
Take a look at the winning entries and experience these incredible builds!
Winners: Age 8–13 Category
Be with the Bees comes from a team of homeschool students in Canada and addresses the effect of pesticides on bee health and populations. They designed a series of pesticide-free public and private spaces for humans to enjoy alongside pollinators, including integrated agriculture, green walls, and places for humans to gather amid the everyday business of bees.
The next winner from this group was Spooky Season, created by a team from Seminole Middle School in the US. This team focused on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. Their approach was to combine human living space with wildlife preservation by integrating a sea turtle habitat into a human home on the shoreline. They offered their reflections on the needs of both humans and animals as well as the outsized effects that human habitation causes.
Gamča Team from Gymnazium Grosslingova in Slovakia also addressed the need for bee protection. They built the Bee-Friendly School in Nature, designed to fit into the landscape and allow students to learn alongside pollinators as they do their work. Their build features greenhouses, an elevated platform for observation, and even a self-contained power-plant fueled by methane from livestock!
Winners: Age 14–17 Category
Kraquesia team at Australia’s Duncraig Senior High School called their project Future Perfect. This build featured safe and sustainable electricity generation, including solar power and windmills. They also made sure that human agricultural efforts didn’t overshadow the needs of their world’s animal inhabitants by ensuring that natural spaces were respected and even enhanced by elements like artificial reefs.
Terrapod and Aquapod was created by Cubic Force, a team from Shadow Creek High School in the US. They looked at two modular possibilities for integrated human habitation, one on land and one in the water. And they didn’t just consider the design and location of these structures. The team was also deliberate about construction strategies and materials that wouldn’t require wasteful building practices.
Finally, the Nature Guards from Kamla Nehru Public School in India developed the Eco-friendly Beach. Their build features non-player characters who demonstrate responsible beach use and respect for the environment by using biodegradable and recyclable materials. Where fishing takes place, their characters make use of traditional techniques that leave a smaller ecological footprint than more industrialized methods.
Our Grand Prize Winner!
Drumroll, please… our grand prize winners were the ecological all-stars from the Turtle Society at Canada’s Heritage Woods Secondary School! 
Their Turtle Research Campus is a sprawling compound embedded into the landscape. Canals provide turtles with the ability to travel easily from building to building and back to the ocean at their leisure. The work of this facility takes place in a hospital, examination bays, and a research station. The main facility is even shaped like a giant turtle! Watch their video to see this epic build in its entirety.
We want to congratulate everyone who participated in the Global Build Championship. Knowing that students around the world are engaged with creating solutions for a more ecologically and technologically bright future fills us with hope. We can’t wait to see the effect these learners have on the planet! Keep an eye out for future competitions to get your students involved.
If you’re looking for more build challenges to bring out your students’ creativity and competition, we release a new one almost every month. You can explore past challenges here. If you’re new to Minecraft: Education Edition, download the game and get started here.
