$20k Prize Pool: Real-World Forecasting & Operational ML Challenge
Tom Penlington
Dear WiML Community,
We would love to share an exciting multi-month operational ML challenge with your network: the Benchlab Solar Wind Prediction 2026 AI Tournament, featuring a $20,000 cash prize fund.
We are actively encouraging early career researchers, data scientists, and ML engineers to participate.
It would be amazing if you could share this with your community or on any other relevant channels, please see the full announcement below,
Thanks,
Tom
Dear colleagues,
FDL is launching the Benchlab Solar Wind Prediction AI tournament, a real-world forecasting and operational-ML challenge evaluated on live, future solar-wind data.
Benchlab is a Frontier Development Lab initiative in partnership with Queen Mary University of London, CU Boulder, and NASA.
Unlike traditional ML competitions, Benchlab does not evaluate models on a static test set. Submitted workflows run live in a forward-time operational loop, forecasting ambient solar-wind speed 72 hours ahead using only information available at the time of inference.
No prior space-weather background is required. We are actively seeking students, early-career researchers, data scientists, and ML engineers with robust software engineering and operational machine learning skills to bring novel approaches to a massive, real-world data problem.
The Challenge:
The Goal: Predict ambient solar wind speed 72 hours in advance using a fully deployable template container.
Live Inference Loop: Submit models that run statelessly, fetch their own data dependencies at inference time, and handle missing data or latency without crashing. Submissions will be executed on a CPU-based hardware harness for a multi-month continuous run, with inference every 6 hours.
Prizes & Recognition: Compete for a $20,000 cash prize fund. Top teams will co-author a joint technical paper with the organizing committee and have their model integrated into a live, real-world operational suite.
We encourage interdisciplinary teams to combine your domain expertise in solar physics with data science to build robust prediction architectures.
Pre-register your team here: https://fdl.ai/benchlab-solar-wind-prediction-2026
Check out the technical requirements, baseline metrics, and full competition brief at our competition website. The official briefing drops on September 1, 2026.
Best regards,
Enrico Camporeale and Nina Bonaventura