Apple Announces 2025 Swift Student Winners

From left to right: Marina Lee, Taiki Hamamoto, Luciana Ortiz Nolasco, and Nahom Worku

Apple has announced its four winners of the 2025 Swift Student Challenge.

They built playful Swift playgrounds to preserve culture, aid evacuation, explore space and support offline learning.

The four Distinguished winners from 350 global submissions in the 2025 Swift Student Challenge are Taiki Hamamoto, Marina Lee, Luciana Ortiz Nolasco and Nahom Worku.

Each crafted an original Swift playground: Hanafuda Tactics brings a Japanese card game to life; EvacuMate supports wildfire evacuation; BreakDownCosmic guides amateur astronomers; AccessEd offers offline learning tools.

Susan Prescott, Apple's vice-president of Worldwide Developer Relations, praised their creative use of Swift and SwiftUI in these projects.

All four will join 50 Distinguished Winners at WWDC on 9 June at Apple Park.

These playgrounds exemplify Swift's approach: intuitive yet powerful tools that lower entry barriers.

By blending SwiftUI gestures, Core ML and real-world data, the winners delivered solutions spanning cultural preservation, disaster resilience, astronomy outreach and educational equity.

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Source: Apple