Building on the resounding success of the FCE Build a Smart City Competition held last year, this flagship event returned in 2026 to engage secondary students with Smart City concepts and inspire them to develop innovative solutions that will transform Hong Kong into a smarter, more sustainable city.
The 2026 competition attracted more than 160 students from over 30 secondary schools. The participating teams chose one of five distinct projects, each carefully designed by an FCE department to showcase their unique academic strengths and research expertise:
| Project Name | Department |
| Designing a Smart Architecture with Innovative Building Technology and Materials | Dept of Architecture |
| Build a Smart & Sustainable North | Dept of Building Environment and Energy Engineering |
| Smart Sustainable Campus Hackathon - Unlocking Innovation through Carbon-Neutral Vision | Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| Surveying the Future: A Smart Solution for "Double Ageing" | Dept of Construction Management and Intelligence |
| Spatial Data Challenge in Smart City | Dept of Land Surveying and Geospatial Science |
The competition kicked off with an opening ceremony and a two-day workshop held on 26 June and 3 July 2026. During the opening ceremony, contestants were walked through the competition guidelines and introduced to FCE’s diverse undergraduate programmes.
The subsequent workshop, tailored by each department to match their specific project themes, offered contestants a glimpse of FCE’s pedagogy—complex concepts and technologies were illustrated through a rich mix of academic theory with practical application. The contestants explored the project concepts through talks, hands-on workshops, laboratory sessions, group discussions, and site visits to relevant government, public, and commercial institutions.
With the workshop successfully wrapped up, the contestants have six weeks to innovate and develop their projects. We look forward to seeing their creative ideas and project outcomes on the presentation day on 14 August 2026.
