ClimateLaunchpad 2025

Turn your green idea into a successful start-up – get the knowledge & skills you need.

ClimateLaunchpad: The Green Business Ideas Competition

Our competition is your ticket to global success. Provided you have a green business idea and have what it takes to become an entrepreneur.

Your idea can be an innovation in renewable energy, a sustainable transition in the food chain, a mind shift in urban mobility or any other way to tackle climate change.

How it works

To enter the competition submit your idea or innovation with environmental impact. We’ll help you fast track that idea into a business and bypass all possible pitfalls along the way. You’ll learn how to get your idea funded and launched.

Once you are selected to join ClimateLaunchpad, the Boot Camp and coaching sessions will help you develop your idea to a rock-solid plan. You will pitch this during your National Final and the Regional Finals.

All entries will be reviewed and ideas that fit the bill of our competition get invited to join.

ClimateLaunchpad countries

The countries participating this year are listed on this page.

The programme

Once you’re accepted to join the competition, the games begin:

Step 0: Mini-course
After your application teams are automatically invited first for participation in a CLP Mini-course to help National Leads to make a better selection or to prepare you for the Boot Camp.

Step 1: Boot Camp
The top teams chosen by our National Leads take part in the ClimateLaunchpad National programme which kicks off with a multi-day digital Boot Camp. Our trainers will teach you all you need to know about jump-starting your business.

Step 2: Intensive coaching and National Finals
The Boot Camp is followed by a period of intensive coaching. You’ll perfect your pitch, value proposition and business model. After that, you’re ready to rock your National Final where you’ll pitch digitally for a National Jury.

Step 3: Regional Finals (online)
The top teams of each country go to the Regional Finals where they pitch in front of the region’s best and brightest.

The big prize? A bunch of new acquired skills & knowledge and networking opportunities to get your business thriving.

Step 4: Global Grand Final in Vienna, Austria (physical)
The top teams from each region process to the Global Grand Final to pitch it out in front of an expert panel.

In 2025, we are proud to announce that for the first time since 2019, we are bringing back a physical Global Grand Final, to take place in Vienna Austria. .

Themes

We work with eight competition themes, representing a selection of the most pressing and relevant focus areas of our time in our fight against climate change.

This ensures that ideas are judged equally against their peers by industry experts, ensuring that the best of the best rise to the top.

The selected themes for this year:

• Adaptation & Resilience
• Blue Economy
• Circular Economies
• Clean Energy
• Food Systems
• Sustainable Mobility
• Urban Solutions
• The Next Big Thing

The Fineprint

Let us challenge you, join the competition. But before you do, we just want to make sure that you:

• have not yet started a business or you started it less than two years ago;
• have no substantial revenue;
• you have attracted no more than € 200,000 in investment