The final rankings will be determined at 'Try Everything 2026,' held at DDP in September, following the preliminary and main rounds.
[Korea Economic Daily] The Seoul Metropolitan Government is expanding its efforts to attract promising overseas startups, leveraging Korea's elevated global standing resulting from the spread of K-culture.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it will host the '2026 Seoul Unicorn Challenge,' a global startup competition that discovers innovative startups from Korea and abroad and provides linked support for investment, collaboration, and overseas expansion.
Leveraging the elevated national brand status resulting from the recent expansion of K-culture influence—including K-pop, K-beauty, and K-content—in the global market, we are seeking to attract innovative overseas startups and promote the strengthening of Seoul's startup ecosystem's global competitiveness through collaboration and investment linkages with domestic startups.
The 'Seoul Unicorn Challenge' is Seoul's representative global startup competition that first started in 2020 under the name 'Korea Challenge'. It has been reorganized and operated as the 'Seoul Unicorn Challenge' since 2023 to allow overseas startups to participate.
Bering Lab, the winner of the 2025 Seoul Unicorn Challenge (an AI translation solution company specializing in professional fields such as law, patents, and clinical practice), attracted 3 billion won in Pre-Series A investment led by SBVA (formerly SoftBank Ventures), and Portlogics, the winner of the Excellence Award (a digital transformation solution company for import/export logistics), attracted a cumulative investment of 8.79 billion won, demonstrating that companies discovered through the Unicorn Challenge are continuing to achieve meaningful results even after the competition.
The '2026 Seoul Unicorn Challenge' is open to domestic and international startups that have been in business for less than 10 years, and applications will be accepted from May 19 to June 30 through the Seoul startup platform 'Startup Plus'. Overseas companies are eligible to apply if they are startups operated by a representative of foreign nationality, and applications can be submitted via Google Forms.
This year, we plan to select a total of seven companies, including three domestic and four overseas. A key feature is the expansion of the proportion of overseas companies selected from three in 2025 to four in 2026, in order to strengthen its status as a global startup competition.
In addition, moving away from existing online-centric promotion, we plan to focus on discovering promising overseas companies by collaborating with the Global Startup Center (GSC) to host on-site presentations for international startups and strengthening promotion within local global communities in startup powerhouses such as the United States, India, and Singapore.
The '2026 Seoul Unicorn Challenge' proceeds in three stages: preliminary, main, and final rounds. The preliminary round involves document evaluation, while the main and final rounds are conducted via presentation evaluation. In the main round, domestic and international companies are evaluated separately by track, and the final rankings are determined through integrated competition in the final round. The final round will take place on September 10 at the 'Try Everything 2026' event held at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP).
The winning companies will be awarded a certificate in the name of the Mayor of Seoul and a total of 120 million won in prize money, and will be provided with various support benefits to help them grow into global unicorn companies together with the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
In addition to the Seoul Mayor's Award and prize money, the winning companies will be provided with individual exhibition booths at the 'Try Everything 2026' event and opportunities for 1:1 meetups with investors. Furthermore, this year, technical support for infrastructure and security consulting will be provided in collaboration with Naver Cloud.
In addition, follow-up support will be strengthened, including the discovery of domestic and international partners, support for participation in open innovation and global expansion programs, linkage with residency at the Seoul Startup Hub, participation in the 'Try Everything 2026' networking program for overseas companies, and linkage with support projects for settling in Korea.
In particular, we plan to expand support for overseas companies, including supporting participation in Try Everything 2026 to attract promising overseas companies to Seoul as well as foreign entrepreneurs residing in Korea, operating 'SEOUL Business Crawl,' a new type of networking program that combines Korean culture experiences with business, and discovering domestic partners and investor meetups.
Lee Soo-yeon, Director General of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Economic Affairs Office, stated, “Amid intensifying competition among global startup cities, the importance of global startup competitions is growing as they move beyond simple event and exhibition-centered support to link follow-up growth assistance, such as discovering promising domestic and international startups, attracting investment, and facilitating overseas expansion.” She added, “We will expand Seoul’s startup ecosystem to a global level by attracting outstanding overseas startups, while simultaneously expanding opportunities for domestic startups to enter overseas markets.”
