The Science Contest (formerly known as Science Battle) is a fun, scientific competition designed to promote science and research while demonstrating how researchers tackle new research questions in real time, while also being creative and “thinking outside the box”.

Originally launched by the University of Turku in 2016 , this innovative concept has evolved into a competition between member universities of the EC2U Alliance.

Each year, during the EC2U Forum, a Science Contest round is organized between 3 universities:

• Three teams of five researchers from different disciplines compete against each other
• The questions, submitted by the audience, address scientific, cultural, and societal topics
• The teams are given the same question and have a few minutes to solve it before presenting their answer to the audience
• Both the audience present and those online can participate by voting for the best team based on their answers, while a jury awards points to each team for every question.

The winners of each round compete in a grand finale to claim the Science Contest title! In 2023, this is the University of Pavia which emerged victorious, winning the final of the 1st edition of the Science Contest.

The 1st round officially launched the 2nd edition of the Science Contest during the EC2U Forum at JKU Linz in October 2024. Teams from Universities of JKU Linz, Salamanca, and Iași competed in this opening round, which was won by the University of Iași.

The 2nd round took place in May 2025 in Coimbra, bringing together teams from Poitiers, Coimbra, and Pavia. After an exciting competition, the University of Pavia emerged as the winner.

The 3rd round was held in Turku in May 2026, which was a hard fought contest between teams from Jena, Umeå, and Turku. Umeå University (see photo below) was selected as the winner and will compete in the grand finale against the winners of the first two rounds, Iași and Pavia, at the EC2U Forum in April 2027.

Stay tuned and be ready to support your favourite team!