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XPRIZE Healthspan is revolutionizing healthy aging, challenging teams to create innovative therapies that restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function by a minimum of 10 years (with a goal of 20), to make healthy aging possible for everyone.
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Sponsors fund the prize journey from bold idea to breakthrough—shaping each competition, supporting global teams, and accelerating solutions that scale. Their backing powers impact that lasts well beyond the prize.
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Partners play a hands-on role in our prizes—co-designing competitions, supporting operations, and helping scale solutions with their expertise, resources, and global reach.
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Barrier
Traditional medicine focuses on treating symptoms of illness, injury, or disease only after they develop. This reactive system extends life but fails to proactively improve health, leaving millions grappling with declining quality of life and related economic challenges in their later years.
Breakthrough
Proactive, accessible therapeutics that target the biology of aging to reduce the risk of chronic age-related diseases, restore function, and increase human healthspan. By using reliable biomarkers, defined by this prize, to measure biological aging, teams can validate progress and extend quality of life well into our later years, creating the potential for more active, fulfilling decades as we age.
About the Prize
XPRIZE Healthspan is a 7-year, $101 million global competition to revolutionize the way we approach human aging.
People around the world are living longer, but spend more of their lives in poorer health. To tackle this problem, competing teams will develop and test therapeutics that restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function by a minimum of 10 years, with an ambitious goal of 20 years, to extend healthy life.
This means more time with loved ones, more energy for learning and purpose, and fewer years lost to disability or dependence. These solutions could help ease economic burdens on individuals, families, and healthcare systems around the world.
This radically collaborative effort will bring together top scientists, clinicians, policymakers, industry experts, and nonprofits to drive new science and create a future where healthy aging is made possible for everyone.
Prize Schedule
The competition launched in 2023. Teams are currently advancing through development and testing phases. Finalist judging will occur in 2026, with safe and accessible winning solutions that restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function in older persons.
Tracks
The $101M XPRIZE Healthspan and $10M FSHD Bonus Prize run in parallel, with teams able to compete in either or both tracks.
XPRIZE Healthspan
The $101M XPRIZE Healthspan competition challenges teams to develop safe and accessible therapeutics that restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function by a minimum of 10 years, with a goal of 20 years in persons aged 50-80 years.
FSHD Bonus Prize
The $10M FSHD Bonus Prize incentivizes therapeutics that substantially improve muscle function based on fat infiltration, biomarkers, and function in people aging with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).
Competition Materials
XPRIZE competitions are driven by teams of innovative groups and individuals, comprising subject matter experts, enthusiasts, start-ups, student teams, amateurs, and all problem-solvers in between. A winning idea can come from anyone, anywhere.
The winning team of the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan must demonstrate that their therapeutic treatment restores muscle, cognitive, and immune function by a minimum of 10 years, with a goal of 20 years, in persons aged 50-80 years. The therapeutic treatment must take 1 year or less.
The winning team of the $10M FSHD Bonus Purse must demonstrate that their therapeutic solution substantially improves FSHD-relevant muscle outcomes based on: 1) fat infiltration in muscle via any imaging modality or change in a relevant FSHD biomarker, and 2) corresponding improvement of muscle function, compared with controls. The therapeutic treatment must take less than 1 year.
Primary Registration closed in December 2024 but teams may still request to apply to join the competition through Discretionary Late Registration. The following are introductory resources that provide important information for all teams interested in competing.
All teams must sign the Competitor Agreement via their legal entity’s authorized signatory in order to be fully registered in the competition. Teams competing for Milestone 2 Awards must have a completed Agreement by March 13, 2026.
PLEASE NOTE: Signatures are required via Docusign. Competing teams must access the POP competition portal to first confirm acknowledgement of the Agreement. A Read-Only copy of the Competitor Agreement is linked above in PDF for review purposes only.
Registration for the FSHD Bonus Prize:
Teams interested in registration for the XPRIZE FSHD Bonus Prize competition should consult Section 5 of the Competition Guidelines. FSHD Finals are ongoing, but interested teams may still join this competition by completing the above registration tasks and submitting a Qualifying Submission specific to this prize track (see the FSHD Bonus Qualifying Submission Guidelines document here) to be reviewed by the FSHD Bonus Prize Judging Panel). Current Qualified Teams in the Healthspan track can also transfer to the FSHD track at no additional registration fee, but must submit a letter of intent to transfer to XPRIZE for approval.
XPRIZE has sole discretion to register and qualify additional teams across XPRIZE Healthspan and the FSHD Bonus Prize until the Discretionary Late Registration deadline. Teams that register during this period must meet all preceding registration and submission requirements and pay a late registration fee between USD $10,000 (Discretionary Late Registration after Milestone 1; February 2025 - April 2026 ) and $100,000 (Discretionary Late Registration after Milestone 2; Aug 2026 - July 2027). For the FSHD Bonus Prize only, the registration cost will remain at $1000 for commercial applicants, with a fee waiver applied for academic-based teams.
Please follow these instructions on how to submit a late application for teams who did not complete a Qualifying Submission for Milestone 1.
- Submit a 1-page Letter of Intent to [email protected]. Email should be titled as “[TEAM NAME] Request for Late Registration: Letter of Intent Included" or another closely similar format.
- Your Letter of Intent should include a brief overview about your team, your proposed therapeutic, your rationale for its use in XPRIZE Healthspan, and any supportive data available. You may either include the Letter of Intent as a file attached, or write it out directly in the email.
- Clearly make mention if your team is affiliated with a University, Non-Profit, or other type of academic or public research institution. You may be eligible for a waived or discounted Late Registration Fee (teams must be able to provide proof of eligibility if requested).
- The XPRIZE Healthspan staff will screen all incoming requests, and the Executive Director will approve or deny the request.
- If your late registration request is approved, we will provide further instructions to complete a Registration Form, Registration Fee, Read and Sign the Competitor Agreement, and finally upload a Qualifying Submission on the Prize Operations Platform (POP).
- Once a late-registrant team has completed all of the above activities on POP, XPRIZE Healthspan will assign these ad-hoc applications to the Judging Panel to determine if the application merits them as a Qualifying Team.
The Competition Guidelines provide high-level requirements and procedures for XPRIZE Healthspan and the FSHD Bonus Prize, including the competition timeline and testing criteria.
These guidelines are based upon extensive research and consultation with dozens of experts and researchers across a wide array of relevant fields. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].
Please refer to our most updated version of the guidelines:
XPRIZE Healthspan Competition Guidelines v.2.1 (PDF) Released November 4, 2024
OLD - Healthspan Competition Guidelines v.2.0 (PDF) Released July 31, 2024
OLD - Preliminary Competition Guidelines v.1.1 (PDF) Released January 1, 2024
OLD - Preliminary Competition Guidelines v.1.0 (PDF) Released November 28, 2023
Note: Prior versions of the Competition Guidelines are provided for reference purposes only of revisions made in subsequent versions based on feedback received during the Public Comment period (beginning November 2023; closing June 2024). The most recent release of the Competition Guidelines posted will always supersede any previous versions released.
For competing Teams, please refer to the following resources for information on how to enter a Qualifying Submission for XPRIZE Healthspan and the FSHD Bonus Prize.
XPRIZE Healthspan Qualifying Submission Guidelines (PDF)
FSHD Bonus Prize Qualifying Submission Guidelines (PDF)
Recommended application template
Example template for Qualifying Submissions (PDF)
Example template for Semi-Finals Study Timeline (.DOCX)
IMPORTANT: All Qualifying Submissions from Teams must be submitted through the XPRIZE Prize Operations Platform. We will not accept any submissions through any other form of transmission.
COMING SOON
We will be updating the contents of this page with more resources as they become available. Additional topics not covered below should be queried to [email protected].
A working draft of the Rules & Regulations to govern the FSHD Bonus Prize is now available for public comment. We invite all interested and already-competing teams of this competition track to review and send feedback for consideration before these Rules & Regulations become updated and officially established. Please send comments to [email protected] with subject line: “ FSHD Rules & Regulations Comments ” in the subject line. We will accept feedback until Friday, November 14, 2025.
Below is a compilation of frequently asked questions received from teams in the competition, updated periodically by XPRIZE Prize Operations. Questions not answered here should be queried to [email protected].
The goals of the Team Summits are to gather, discuss, and review with competing teams their questions regarding eligibility and testing/study plans within the competition, as well as an opportunity to be informed of any important technical and administrative updates.
Inaugural Team Summit at ARDD 2024: Copy of Presentation Deck (PDF)
Inaugural Team Summit at ARDD 2024: Link to Livestream footage
Milestone 1 Investor Summit Deck (May 13th 2025)
In an effort to bring awareness to information on funding opportunities that may be applicable for any of our competing teams, we will periodically post funding announcements that are open to the public and related to healthspan and healthy aging.
Please note, XPRIZE Foundation, Inc. encourages every team to diligently review every opportunity listed on this resource page and the requirements set by these third parties. XPRIZE is listing these funding opportunities on an “as-is” basis and makes NO guarantee on any decision made for an award.
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