The GridFM Challenge with GENCO

A real power-system challenge you tackle with GENCO – the latest architecture for GridFM. The challenge is revealed on October 2nd, 2026, which gives you three weeks to build your best solution and to win the award. Enter as an individual or a team, put GENCO to work, and compete for the US$1,000 grand prize.

Challenge released: Friday, October 2nd, 2026

Submission deadline: Sunday October 25th, 2026, end of day anywhere on Earth (AoE)

Winners announced: 30 October 2026, 17:15 CET — in Porto, at the close of the 6th GridFM Conference

Who: Open to everyone; enter as an individual or a team

Tools: GENCO, gridfm-datakit, and gridfm-graphkit

Prize: US$1,000 grand prize

How to enter Get ready

What it is

The challenge is a power-system challenge you solve with grid foundation models, run in the weeks leading up to the 6th Conference on Foundation Models of the Electric Grid in Porto. Participants innovate with the grid foundation model GENCO, with about three weeks to develop, refine, and submit their best solution.

It is open to anyone — student or not — competing individually or in teams. Submissions are evaluated after the deadline, and the ranking and overall winner are announced live in Porto on the final day of the conference.

The challenge stays secret — for now

The problem will be disclosed on October 2nd, 2026, when the challenge opens. Check back this webpage on October 2nd to get more details then.

GENCO and OpenGridFM

GENCO is a grid foundation model. Two open-source OpenGridFM libraries support the workflow from power-system data generation to model training and use:

GENCO — the grid foundation model at the heart of the challenge. OpenGridFM on Hugging Face
gridfm-graphkit — tools to train, fine-tune, and interact with grid foundation models. GitHub repository
gridfm-datakit — tools to generate scalable, realistic training data. GitHub repository

Schedule

All times are Central European Time (CET).

Date / time	Activity
2 Oct	Challenge released The problem and rules are published, and the challenge opens to all participants.
25 Oct	Submission deadline Entries close at end of day, anywhere on Earth (AoE).
30 Oct 17:15	Ranking & winners announced The full ranking is revealed and the US$1,000 grand prize is awarded live in Porto.

How to enter

Open to everyone — student or not.
Take part on your own or in a team — each contribution is ranked, and one overall winner is selected.
No prior GENCO experience is required; the tutorial will get you started.
Work with grid foundation models on a real power-system challenge.
Solve it in your own time between 2 and 25 October, and submit before the deadline.
Compete for a US$1,000 grand prize.

Get ready

Explore GENCO and the OpenGridFM tooling before the challenge opens, and use them throughout.

Category	Resource	Link
Tutorial	Colab tutorial: optimal power flow with GENCO A hands-on starting point, runnable in the browser.	Open in Colab
GENCO	GENCO — the grid foundation model behind the challenge	Paper
GENCO	Pre-trained models and datasets	OpenGridFM on Hugging Face
OpenGridFM toolkit	`gridfm-graphkit` — train, fine-tune, and interact with grid foundation models	GitHub
	`gridfm-datakit` — generate power-flow and optimal-power-flow training data	GitHub · Paper
	All open-source libraries	OpenGridFM on GitHub

GENCO Challenge @ GridFM Porto 2026 · Challenge 2–25 October · Winners announced 30 October