EWC Qualifier Rounds: Celebrating Student-Led Impact Across the UK & Ireland
EWC Qualifiers at the BDO HQs, Leeds
Our World Cup Qualifiers are a series of of regional sessions where Enactus teams pitch their youth-led social enterprises to judges from our corporate partner and alumni network, receiving high-quality feedback designed to help them refine their ideas, strengthen their impact, and scale their reach. This milestone represents a significant step in the student journey on the Road to the Enactus World Cup 2026, which takes place in São Paulo, Brazil later this year.
This year, our Regional Qualifier Rounds brought the Enactus UK & Ireland community together across five locations and six sessions: Dublin, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, and London, marking the official start of the road to the Enactus World Cup in Brazil. Over the course of two weeks, our team travelled across the UK and Ireland alongside corporate partners including Amazon, BDO, IBM, and Enterprise Mobility, creating a great celebration of student-led social impact.
Across all locations, our qualifier rounds brought together 200 students and over 30 university teams, with all teams taking to the stage to pitch projects to a panel of 100 expert judges drawn from our corporate partner network. Collectively, the social enterprises pitched across all qualifying rounds are already driving community impact for over 500 beneficiaries across the UK and Ireland, a powerful demonstration of the scale and quality of our student community. This time around we saw innovative projects including potatoes being transformed into bio-plastic to sport being used as a vehicle for grief, we have seen 80 youth-led projects driving sustainable, positive impact for people, planet, and prosperity. Throughout our Qualifier rounds, students have shown a fantastic ability to turn ideas into action, and action into impact. They have mastered essential responsible ideas into action, and action into impact. They have mastered essential responsible leadership skills, creativity, communication, and collaboration, all while creating projects that create meaningful lasting impact in their local communities.
Our qualifier rounds are a meaningful development opportunity, where students gain access to industry insight and professional expertise that directly accelerates the quality and ambition of their projects. Our judges and corporate volunteers played a central role in shaping the experience, providing high-quality expert feedback designed to help teams refine their ideas, strengthen their impact, and scale their reach. The competition creates meaningful engagement for both students and volunteers, with coaches contributing their expertise to help the next generation of responsible leaders drive real impact to their communities.
“It was a genuine pleasure to be part of the Regional Qualifiers. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was impressed by the quality of ideas, clarity of thought, and depth of impact demonstrated by the teams. Seeing how the students approach real-world challenges […] it was inspiring to see innovation anchored in measurable outcomes from the students that came for the competition today; I believe that they have the potential to go all the way.”
Judge at our Qualifier Rounds
Enactus Cardiff at The Enactus UK & Ireland Expo 2025
The strength of our qualifying rounds is best reflected in the projects that have emerged from them over the years. Past qualifiers have produced some truly outstanding social enterprises. For example from TU Dublin’s REfridge: a food redistribution initiative that has saved over 2,000kg of food and supported more than 1,000 students facing food insecurity, also being awarded the Green Gown Awards for Social Impact. And of course, Spiruflow, Cardiff University's innovative photobioreactor that went on to win the National Competition and is now in the process of being implemented locally. These projects are a testament to what students can achieve when ambition meets the right support and opportunity.
The Qualifier Rounds mark just the beginning of what promises to be an exciting journey. Next up, our top 20 qualifying teams will go on to pitch at NextGenTakeover at ExCeL London this April, where the wider Enactus community, students, partners, and supporters, will come together to celebrate impact, innovation, and the next generation of changemakers.
