CSTA Washington CSEd Week Poster Challenge 2026

Celebrate Computer Science Education Week, December 7–13, by showing us what computer science means to your students!

CSTA Washington invites K–12 students and schools across Washington to participate in our 2026 CSEd Week Poster Challenge.

Students can create a poster exploring computer science through one or more of three themes:

• Open House: CS Belongs in Every Classroom
• My CS Hero
• CS for Good

Whether students draw by hand, design digitally, or combine different media, we want to see their ideas about where computer science belongs, who inspires them, and how computing can make a difference.

And you don’t have to be an artist to participate. This challenge is about students’ ideas and how they communicate them—not artistic skill.

Three Poster Themes

Who Can Participate?

The challenge is open to K–12 students attending schools in Washington state.

Entries will be grouped into three grade-level divisions:

• K–5
• 6–8
• 9–12

Students may create their posters as part of a classroom activity or independently.

What Can Students Create?

Posters may be hand-drawn or digitally created.

Submitted posters should:

• Address one of the three challenge themes.
• Be the student’s original work.
• Be at least 600 px by 800 px or a comparable digital size.
• Be submitted as a JPG, PNG, or PDF.
• Be readable when displayed online.
• Avoid including personal student contact information.

Students are also asked to provide a short description—50 words or fewer—answering: What do you want people to understand after seeing your poster?

For hand-created posters, simply take a clear photograph or scan of the finished work.

What Can Schools Win?

Every eligible entry will be entered into a drawing for the student’s school or classroom to receive a Micro:bit 10-pack. There will be one winning school/classroom from each division: K-5, 6-8, 9-12

CSTA Washington will also select at least 10 Featured Posters from the entries we receive to be published on CSTAWA.org. Before any selected poster is published, CSTA Washington will coordinate with the submitting educator to obtain the necessary parental/guardian or eligible student permission. If permission cannot be obtained, another poster may be selected. Every Featured Poster that is published on CSTAWA.org will win a $20 Amazon gift card for the student’s school or classroom.

Featured posters will be selected based primarily on the idea, message, connection to computer science, and creativity of the entry—not on advanced artistic or graphic-design skills.

Our goal is to highlight a variety of student ideas, grade levels, themes, and communities from across Washington.

Can Students Use AI?

Students may use generative AI tools as part of their creative process, but the ideas, message, and substantial creative decisions should be the student’s own.

If generative AI is used, students will be asked to identify the tool and briefly explain how it contributed to the poster.

Using AI is not required and will not make a poster more likely to be selected as a Featured Poster.

A terrific hand-drawn poster with a thoughtful CS idea has just as much place in this challenge as a digitally created one.

Important Dates

Computer Science Education Week: December 7–13, 2026

Poster submission deadline: December 18, 2026

The deadline comes after CSEd Week intentionally. We hope teachers will use the challenge as a classroom activity during CSEd Week and still have plenty of time afterward to photograph, scan, and submit student work.

Featured posters and prize recipients will be announced after the submission period closes.

How to Submit

An educator or school staff member must submit the entries for the students in their school/classroom.

The submission form will ask for:

• Educator name, School/Educational organization, Educator e-mail
• Student(s) grade level
• Poster files (either individual or packaged in *.zip)
• Excel file with poster file names, brief description provided by student, description of generative AI use. The template for the Excel file is here.
• Acknowledgement of contest rules

A CSEd Week Activity for Your Classroom

Teachers don’t need to turn this into a major project.

The Poster Challenge can work as a short CSEd Week activity:

1. Introduce one or all three themes.
2. Give students time to brainstorm how computer science connects with their interests or communities.
3. Have students sketch or create their posters.
4. Ask students to write a sentence or two explaining their idea.
5. Select—or submit—all eligible posters from your class.

Students can work on the challenge during computer science class, but they don’t have to be in a computer science class to participate.

In fact, that’s part of the point of this year’s theme:

CS belongs in every classroom

Computer science intersects with what students learn throughout school and with the world they experience outside it. CSEd Week is a great opportunity to help students discover those connections.

We can’t wait to see what Washington students create.

Questions? Contact CSTA Washington at washington@csteachers.org.