Competition rules

1. Who runs the competition

The competition runs under the Innov8 Global Labs brand. The party to the prize and investment terms is OOO Innoveyt Global Edvayzori, a Russian legal entity. "Innov8 Global Labs" is the name of the programme and is not a party to any contract.

The organiser’s registration details are at the end of this document. Payments and investments are made through the Russian entity, in roubles.

2. Who can apply

An applicant may be an individual or a team attached to a university, institute or laboratory in Russia or the CIS: students, doctoral researchers, research staff or faculty.

You do not need to be affiliated with a university named on our site. That list sets the order of the organiser’s outreach and is not a list of eligible institutions. An application from an institution not named on it is considered on the same terms as any other.

Taking part is free at every stage.

Military, dual-use and repressive applications are not eligible. Borderline cases are decided by the organiser, in writing, with the reason given.

3. What you submit

An online form and a deck of up to 10 slides. Video is optional. No budget is required at the application stage.

An application has two parts:

• the public summary - what judges see, and what may be quoted in competition material;
• confidential material - seen only by admitted reviewers, who are bound by an NDA.

The applicant determines which material belongs to which part. Disclosure of unpublished results, raw data, samples or source code is not a condition of entry.

4. Stages and dates

Cycle I runs in four stages:

• Applications: from the publication of these regulations until 15 February 2027.
• Regional rounds: March to April 2027. Seven rounds - six cities and one online.
• Semi-final and mentoring: April to May 2027. 24 teams, six weeks with a mentor, 12 go through to the finale.
• National finale: 26 to 28 May 2027, Moscow.

The pitch format is the same at every stage: 4 minutes, then 2 minutes of questions.

Round dates: Moscow 12.03, St Petersburg 17.03, Novosibirsk 19.03, Kazan 24.03, Almaty 31.03, Tashkent 04.04, online round 09.04. Host venues are still being confirmed. Any change is published here no later than 14 days before the round.

5. How semi-final places are allocated

24 teams reach the semi-final. Seven places go to the winners of the regional rounds, one per round. The remaining 17 are allocated on score across every application received, whether or not the team pitched at a round.

Taking part in a regional round is not a condition of admission to the semi-final. An application from a city where no round is held is considered for the 17 at-large places on the same terms as any other.

The winner of the online round advances on exactly the same terms as a city round winner.

6. The prize fund

The prize fund is secured as of the opening of applications.

• Grand prize - ₽50,000,000, an investment.
• Track prizes - ₽5,000,000, eight of them, an investment.
• Finalists - ₽500,000, twelve non-dilutive grants towards a pilot and mentoring.
• Round winners - ₽150,000, seven grants towards travel and preparing for the finale.

The grand prize and the track prizes are an investment, not a grant. The money goes into the project’s legal entity on the terms of its latest round, or as a convertible note. Terms are disclosed before anything is signed, and signing is voluntary: turning the investment down does not cost you the win and does not claw back a grant.

Investment is made into an entity registered in the project’s own country.

7. Intellectual property

Authors keep their intellectual property rights. The competition acquires no rights in the applicant’s work, whether by assignment, licence or security.

Taking part requires no transfer of intellectual property, data or samples.

Taking part gives the organiser no right of first refusal over your future funding rounds, no right to participate in them, and no preference over any other investor.

You grant the organiser the right to use your public summary, team name and logo, and nothing else, to report on the competition: on the site, in the end-of-cycle report, and in material for the press. That right is non-exclusive, unpaid, and ends when you ask for it to end in writing, except for material already published.

Confidential material is never published, in any form.

8. Confidentiality, judges and recusal

Judges, reviewers and mentors sign an NDA and a non-solicitation undertaking. The NDA text and the conflict-of-interest procedure are published separately.

You may bar up to five people or organisations from seeing your application, without giving a reason. The restriction is applied by access control in the system.

No mentor may hold equity in a team competing in the programme. The team cannot waive that.

An applicant passing material to a mentor directly, outside the competition system, does not breach these rules.

9. Withdrawing, and deleting your material

You can withdraw at any stage. On a written request we delete the material you uploaded and confirm the deletion by email.

What survives deletion is only what we are required by law to keep, plus one anonymised row in the cycle statistics. Exactly what, and for how long, is in the data handling document.

Withdrawal carries no consequence for the applicant and does not restrict entry to a later cycle.

10. Written feedback

Every eligible application gets written feedback from at least three reviewers. That is an obligation rather than an intention: a reviewer cannot close a score without writing something substantive.

Feedback is sent regardless of the outcome of the application.

11. Changes to these rules

Rules may change between cycles. Within a cycle they change only in applicants’ favour, or where something outside the organiser’s control forces it; either way the change is published on this page with its date, and the previous version stays available.

Anything material that changes while applications are open is emailed to everyone who has applied.

12. Language of this document, and disputes

The Russian version of this document is the only one in force. The English version is provided as a reading aid, and where the two differ the Russian text applies.

Governing law and the procedure for disputes are those of the Russian Federation.

13. Contact

Questions on these rules should be sent to info@i8gl.com.