The AWS AI League has been running in-person qualifiers at Summits all season - London, Sydney, NYC, and beyond. Now it’s going virtual, and the door is open to everyone.
Three tracks. Five regions. One season of builders competing live.
Register for the AWS AI League Virtual Edition
The Format
Each track runs as a week-long competition window (Monday to Friday) that rolls region by region across APJ, EMEA, GCR, LATAM, and NAMER. You get a live Workshop Studio sandbox, a build window, and a real regional leaderboard.
No travel. No need to attend a summit. Just you, a browser, and your skills.
The Three Tracks
Track 1: Build Your First Agent
Kicks off August 24, rolling through September.
You’ll use Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to build an agent that connects to tools, handles multi-step reasoning, and completes complex workflows. If you’ve been following our hints and tips from the summit qualifiers, this is your chance to put those to the test without leaving your desk.
The challenge is familiar to anyone who’s competed at a Summit - you build a multi-agent system with memory, guardrails, and Lambda tools to navigate a game board, solve challenges, and maximise your score. But the virtual format gives you a full week to iterate rather than a few hours.
| Region | Dates |
|---|---|
| Asia Pacific & Japan | Aug 24 - Aug 28 |
| Europe, Middle East & Africa | Aug 31 - Sep 4 |
| Greater China | Sep 7 - Sep 11 |
| Latin America | Sep 14 - Sep 18 |
| North America | Sep 21 - Sep 25 |
What you’ll work with: Amazon Bedrock, AgentCore, Strands Agents SDK, AWS Lambda
Track 2: Customize a Foundational Model
Kicks off September 28, running through late October.
You’ll use Amazon SageMaker AI to fine-tune an Amazon Nova foundation model for a domain-specific task. You build a training dataset, configure a fine-tuning job, and submit your model for evaluation against an opponent model judged by an AI juror.
The constraints are deliberate - limited model size, limited dataset, so the skill is in crafting high-quality training data and tuning strategy, not throwing compute at the problem.
| Region | Dates |
|---|---|
| Asia Pacific & Japan | Sep 28 - Oct 2 |
| Europe, Middle East & Africa | Oct 5 - Oct 9 |
| Greater China | Oct 12 - Oct 16 |
| Latin America | Oct 19 - Oct 23 |
| North America | Oct 26 - Oct 30 |
What you’ll work with: Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Nova, Forge
Track 3: Agentic Football Cup
Kicks off September 14, same region-by-region rollout through October.
Build and deploy five autonomous AI agents using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and the Strands Agents SDK, then field them five-versus-five in live matches of Agentic Football. Your agents make decisions every two seconds - passing, shooting, pressing, defending.
If you’ve read our deep dive on the Agentic Football Cup , you’ll know this isn’t a toy demo. It’s a genuine multi-agent orchestration challenge where your reasoning architecture, prompt strategy, and coordination patterns determine whether your squad plays like prime Barcelona or Sunday league.
| Region | Dates |
|---|---|
| Asia Pacific & Japan | Sep 14 - Sep 18 |
| Europe, Middle East & Africa | Sep 21 - Sep 25 |
| Greater China | Sep 28 - Oct 2 |
| Latin America | Oct 5 - Oct 9 |
| North America | Oct 12 - Oct 16 |
What you’ll work with: Amazon Bedrock, AgentCore, Strands Agents SDK
What’s On the Line
This isn’t just for fun, and of course the biggest win for everyone is to develop and extend your AI skills. However, there are real prizes on the line: -
- Top scorers in each region advance to the regional finale
- Regional finale winners score a trip to AWS re:Invent 2026 — airfare, hotel, conference ticket, and visa assistance where applicable — plus a shot at the Grand Finale $50,000 prize pool in Las Vegas!
- Top 20 leaderboard finishers per region, per track, each pocket a $99 Amazon.com gift card
Get Prepared
The virtual edition gives you a full week per track, but preparation still matters. Here’s how to get ahead: -
Practice the Agent Challenge
The community has built an open-source practice platform so you can build and test agent architectures before the competition window opens. Check out the AWS AI Community GitHub for practice resources, sample agent templates, and architecture patterns.
We’ve also published hints and tips from the summit qualifiers that apply directly to the virtual format.
Join the Community
The best way to learn is alongside other builders. Whether you’re strategising agent architectures, sharing fine-tuning dataset approaches, or talking football tactics:
- Discord — Join us on Discord for real-time chat with the community
- AWS Builder Center — AI Community Space — Join the conversation for longer-form discussion and resources
- AWS Builder Center — Official AI League Space — The official hub for announcements, rules, and support
The Schedule at a Glance
| Track | APJ | EMEA | GCR | LATAM | NAMER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build Your First Agent | Aug 24-28 | Aug 31-Sep 4 | Sep 7-11 | Sep 14-18 | Sep 21-25 |
| Agentic Football Cup | Sep 14-18 | Sep 21-25 | Sep 28-Oct 2 | Oct 5-9 | Oct 12-16 |
| Customize a Model | Sep 28-Oct 2 | Oct 5-9 | Oct 12-16 | Oct 19-23 | Oct 26-30 |
Who’s It For?
If you know a customer, partner, or builder who’d enjoy a hands-on agent-building challenge — send them the registration link . It’s free to join and open across all five regions.
Whether you’re a seasoned competitor from the summit circuit or picking up AgentCore for the first time, the virtual format levels the playing field. A week-long window, a sandbox environment, and a leaderboard. That’s it.
Look forward to battling with you on the leaderboard, or the pitch, and sharing thoughts and getting to know you in the community!
