Gemma 4 Developer Agent Competition

The Gemma 4 Developer Agent Competition is an online Kaggle competition sponsored by Google LLC. Teams build developer agents, meaning software-engineering assistants, on Google's open Gemma models and are ranked on a leaderboard. The prize pool is US$110,000 (about ₹1.05 crore), first place wins US$37,000 (about ₹35.2 lakh), and the rules must be accepted by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM UTC, which is 5:29 AM IST on 26 November.

It is open worldwide to Kaggle users, and India is not on the list of excluded places. This is a skill competition, not a grant or an accelerator: you win by ranking well, not by pitching a business plan.

What the program offers

The main competition pays US$65,000: US$37,000 (about ₹35.2 lakh) for first place, US$18,000 for second and US$10,000 for third. A Small Model Development bonus of US$10,000 goes to the highest-ranking submission built on Gemma E2B or Gemma E4B, which gives smaller-model builders a separate target.

A separate paper track is worth US$35,000 and is entered separately: Overall Best Paper US$15,000, Best New Resource US$10,000 and Best New Application US$10,000. It is for original, unpublished research on topics such as fine-tuning for coding agents, code comprehension, benchmarks and graph reasoning. The row we hold gives 12 November 2026 as the paper date, so check the competition page for the exact paper rules.

These are competition prizes, not loans and not investments. Winning code is licensed under Apache 2.0, so do not enter work you need to keep proprietary.

Who can apply

Anyone with a registered Kaggle account can take part, as long as they are at least 18 (or the age of majority where they live, if that is higher) and do not live in an excluded place. Residents of Crimea, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and anyone under US export controls or sanctions, are excluded. You may enter alone or in a team of up to five people, and each person may hold only one Kaggle account.

For an Indian founder or team this means you can enter from India. Employees, interns, contractors, officers and directors of Google, Kaggle and their affiliates can take part but cannot win prizes. Prizes cannot go to residents of a country where they cannot be awarded.

This suits AI engineers, developer-tools founders and research teams who already build coding agents or fine-tune open models. It is a poor fit if you need funding to run a company, since the reward is a prize for ranking well, not support for a business.

How to apply

There is no application form or business plan. You join through the competition page on Kaggle, accept the rules, and submit solutions that are scored automatically. The competition started on 23 September 2026. The entry deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM UTC (5:29 AM IST on 26 November), which is also the team merger deadline. Final submissions close on 2 December 2026 at 11:59 PM UTC (5:29 AM IST on 3 December).

You can submit one entry a day and select up to two final submissions. If you want the small-model bonus, use Gemma E2B or E4B as your base model. A practical tip: read the full rules tab before you start, because it is the binding document and this page is only a summary of it.

How applications are judged and what happens next

Each submission is scored automatically on the competition's evaluation metric, and prizes go to the best-ranked teams on the final leaderboard. Potential winners must hand over their code and documentation, license the winning solution as the rules require, and return prize acceptance documents within two weeks of being asked. Prizes are paid about 30 days after those documents are received; team prizes are split evenly unless the team agrees otherwise.

About the sponsor

The sponsor of this competition is Google LLC, and the competition is hosted on Kaggle, an online platform where teams compete on data and machine-learning problems. The source does not give further background on the sponsor.

Things to check before you apply

• The deadlines are close together: the entry date is 25 November 2026 and final submissions close one week later, on 2 December 2026, so plan your work back from that.
• Prize-eligible winners must deliver code and documentation and return prize acceptance documents within two weeks of being asked.
• Prizes are paid in US dollars. An Indian winner should check tax and foreign-exchange treatment with an adviser; the source does not give those rules.
• A practical tip: if you are a startup founder, treat this as a way to build credibility and test your technical team, and do not budget the prize money as funding, since only the top places are paid.