Everything you need to know

Melbourne-based tertiary students. You need to be currently enrolled at a Victorian university or TAFE, aged 18 or over, and living in Victoria. You can enter one or both briefs, and submit as many designs as you like. Full detail lives in the conditions of entry.

Anyone enrolled in a post-secondary course — bachelor, honours, masters, PhD, diploma, certificate or a TAFE qualification — full-time or part-time, domestic or international. Your course does not have to be design. We ask for your university/TAFE email so we can confirm you're enrolled.

Entries are open now. The competition and judging close at midnight on Wednesday 7th October 2026. Public showcase and voting open 21st September 2026, winners are announced 10th October 2026, and the merch is made and sent to you before 20th October.

Register your entry here, choose your brief, and upload your artwork directly with the entry form.

To be eligible for a prize, you must create an Alumable account using the same personal email address before voting closes.

After you submit, your design will be reviewed by the Alumable team. Please allow up to 24 hours for approval. Once approved, your design will appear on the Showcase & Vote page for public voting.

If anything needs clarification, we'll contact you using the details provided in your entry.

Prize eligibility will be checked after voting closes. To be eligible, you must have created an Alumable account using the same personal email address you used for your competition entry.

Winners are announced on 10th October 2026. The two winners are contacted directly through Alumable in-app messaging first, then announced publicly on this site and our social channels.

Download our design system — it has the logo files, colour codes (orange #FFA33C, purple #9A76BE, white #FFFFFF) and usage rules.Alumable design system (PDF)

You do. You keep the copyright in everything you submit. If you win, you grant Alumable a licence to produce, sell and promote merch featuring your winning design, and we credit you as the designer wherever practical. Non-winning entries stay yours, apart from the limited permission to display them in the public showcase. Alumable's logo and brand assets remain ours. The exact wording is in section 6 of the terms.

Each winner gets tickets to True Blue Blazing 2026, a Salesforce community event at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on 20th October (Tue). It's 300+ tech industry professionals in one room — you showcase your design skills, meet potential employers and see where a creative skillset can take you.

Two things decide it: public voting (so get your friends to vote!) plus Alumable's own judging panel, made up of our staff and student ambassadors. We're looking for original designs that represent our brand, the new “Earn While You Learn” model we're promoting, and the way we help students looking for work and companies looking for talent. Importantly, it needs to be something Gen Zs will be proud to wear — not something that makes them feel like a walking billboard!

You can still win without appearing on camera. That said, we have a strong preference for students willing to tell their design story and showcase the human behind the creativity — a big part of this competition is encouraging students to learn and build confidence in promoting themselves, and to grow their career networks. If being on camera isn't for you, we can shoot it voice-only, over-the-shoulder, or as artwork-and-captions in your words. Nothing gets published without your sign-off.

It's a condition of entry, and it does three jobs. It's how we pay your $500 cash prize straight to your bank. It's how you submit — your artwork sits in your Alumable portfolio, so it stays yours and timestamped to you. And it's how we reach you, via in-app messaging, without emails getting lost. You also end up with a portfolio and profile that keeps working for you after the comp.

Alumable exists to help students earn while they learn and graduate with real skills, networks and confidence. This comp is that in miniature: paid, credited, real work that gets manufactured and worn, plus a showcase to industry. We also get merch we actually love, made by the students we build for. More about us.

Email designcomp2026@alumable.com, message us in the Alumable app, or DM us on Instagram or LinkedIn. We answer every question — no question is too basic.