Amazon ML Challenge: format, eligibility, prizes and how to prepare
By Vikram · Updated 14 Oct 2026
The Amazon ML Challenge is Amazon's machine-learning competition for engineering students in India: teams get a real Amazon dataset and 72 hours to climb a live leaderboard. This guide uses the official 2026 rules on Amazon's Unstop page, checked on 14 October 2026.
Amazon ML Challenge 2026 at a glance
| 2026 edition | |
|---|---|
| Who could enter | Full-time B.E./B.Tech, M.E./M.Tech, M.S./MS by Research and PhD students at engineering campuses in India, graduating in 2027 or 2028 |
| Team | 2 to 4 members; cross-college teams allowed; one team per student |
| Registration | 7–20 September 2026 (an AWS Builder Center profile was required first) |
| ML round | A 72-hour hackathon, 25–27 September 2026, with a live leaderboard |
| Grand finale | Top 10 teams presented to Amazon scientists, virtually, on 7 October 2026 |
| Prizes | ₹1,00,000, ₹75,000 and ₹50,000 for the top three teams, plus certificates and goodies |
How the challenge works
- Stage 0, AWS Builder Center: create a profile and keep its ID ready; registrations with an invalid ID stay incomplete.
- Stage 1, registration: form a team of 2–4 and register with each member's details.
- Stage 2, the 72-hour ML round: every team gets the problem statement and dataset on day 1 and submits predictions (a TSV file) until day 3. A live leaderboard shows rankings throughout.
- Stage 3, grand finale: based on the leaderboard and the solution document submitted at the end of the round, the top 10 teams present to Amazon's scientists.
What you can win
- Cash: ₹1,00,000 for the winners, ₹75,000 for the first runners-up and ₹50,000 for the second runners-up, with certificates and goodies.
- Pre-placement interviews: the top 50 teams get PPIs for the Applied Scientist Intern role at Amazon. For many students this is the real prize.
- Recognition: certificates and Amazon swag for the top 10 teams and the top 10 women-only teams.
- Cloud credits: $200 in credits for every registered participant in 2026, and another $100 for the top 500 teams at the 48-hour mark.
How to prepare
- Get fast at the basics. Loading large data, a clean train/validation split, a quick baseline and a submission file in the first few hours. Teams lose most time on plumbing, not models.
- Practise on catalog-style problems. Recent editions have used real Amazon product data, with tasks built on product text and images, so practise with both tabular-and-text and image models.
- Trust your validation, not the leaderboard. A public leaderboard on part of the test data invites overfitting. Keep a local validation set that mirrors the test set and make decisions on it.
- Divide the work. One person on data and features, one or two on models, one on ensembling, submissions and the solution document.
- Write the solution document as you go. The finalists are chosen on the leaderboard and on the document, so record what you tried and why.
- Do a full rehearsal. A timed, leaderboard-based ML competition is the best practice. The Hack4Hack ML Challenge has a live leaderboard and a 24-hour first round; see more ML competitions.
Tip: The 2026 edition opened registrations on 7 September. Dates for the next edition aren't announced yet, so follow Amazon's Unstop page from late summer and keep your AWS Builder Center profile ready.
Frequently asked questions
Who can take part in the Amazon ML Challenge?
In 2026: full-time engineering students in India (B.E./B.Tech, M.E./M.Tech, M.S., PhD) graduating in 2027 or 2028, in teams of 2 to 4. Check the eligibility for each new edition.
Is the Amazon ML Challenge free?
Yes. Registration is free, and in 2026 every registered participant also received $200 in cloud credits.
Does the Amazon ML Challenge give internships?
In 2026 the top 50 teams got pre-placement interviews (PPIs) for the Applied Scientist Intern role. An interview is not a guaranteed offer.
When is the next Amazon ML Challenge?
Not announced yet. The 2026 edition registered teams in September, ran the ML round on 25–27 September and held the finale on 7 October.