Vesuvius Challenge Scroll Prizes

The Vesuvius Challenge Scroll Prizes are run by Scroll Prize, Inc. and pay anyone who helps virtually unroll and read the carbonised papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum, using CT scans, machine learning and open-source tools. The open prize pool is US$2,140,000 (about ₹20.3 crore), headlined by a US$800,000 (about ₹7.6 crore) 2027 Grand Prize. The Grand, First Letters and Title prizes close on 25 June 2027 at 11:59 PM Pacific time (12:29 PM IST on 26 June 2027), and monthly Progress Prizes are open throughout.

This is an open technical challenge rather than a startup grant. Anyone can compete, individuals and teams alike, from any country the page names no restriction on. It suits machine-learning engineers, computer-vision and imaging teams, and researchers who enjoy hard open problems. It does not suit a founder looking for working capital to run a business.

What the program offers

The open prizes are:

• 2027 Grand Prize: US$800,000 (about ₹7.6 crore) to the first team or individual to fully unroll and make readable one of 13 eligible scrolls. Second to fourth place get US$100,000, US$50,000 and US$50,000, so the Grand Prize round totals US$1,000,000.
• First Letters Prizes: US$50,000 per scroll to the first team to uncover 10 legible letters within a single 4 cm² area of an eligible scroll where nothing has been read yet. Up to 8 scrolls qualify, so up to US$400,000 in total.
• PHerc. Paris. 4 Title Prize: US$50,000 to the first team to find the title of Scroll 1, which holds a substantial Epicurean prose work whose author and title are not known.
• Progress Prizes: monthly awards for open-source contributions. The best submission each month gets a guaranteed US$20,000, and other awards typically range from US$250 to US$20,000.

These are prizes for results, not up-front funding. The source does not describe any grant paid before you deliver.

Who can apply

Any individual or team can compete. You must be registered on the Vesuvius Challenge Discord when you submit. The page does not list a country restriction, so an Indian individual or team can take part, but it also does not discuss taxes or payment rules for foreign winners, so check those yourself.

To accept a prize you must release your method as open source under a permissive licence on GitHub. For the Grand Prize the pipeline must be reproducible, and the page describes requirements on automation, with only a limited number of documented hours of human input allowed. You must not make your discovery public until the prize is officially announced.

How to apply

There is no application as such. Join the Discord, pick a prize on the prizes page and the scroll volumes eligible for it, and build your method using the public scans, tools and tutorials. For a Grand Prize entry the package includes surface meshes, programmatically generated images with a scale bar, a banner image showing ink detection, a written methodology, a Docker image with system requirements, false-positive checks and held-out validation results. First Letters and Title entries need a mesh with flattening and an image showing the letters or title legibly. Teams submit through their team leader, who also receives and shares any prize money. A practical tip: start with a Progress Prize contribution to learn the tooling before attempting a milestone prize.

How applications are judged and what happens next

A Technical Team checks your methodology and tries to reproduce your result, and may apply the method to other scrolls. An independent Papyrology Team then judges legibility of each submitted column. Submissions are acknowledged within about a week, though verification may take longer. For milestone prizes, if several teams qualify, the first to submit wins. Progress Prizes are chosen monthly and favour early open-source release, real use by the community and good documentation. Awards are at the organiser's discretion, and winners must provide payment information within 30 days of the announcement.

About Scroll Prize, Inc.

Scroll Prize, Inc. runs the Vesuvius Challenge, a project to read scrolls buried and carbonised in the Herculaneum eruption. It shares scans, tutorials and tools publicly, including software for virtual unwrapping and ink detection, and it runs a community Discord and a public wishlist of improvements.

Things to check before you apply

• Only the first qualifying submission wins a milestone prize, so being second means no prize unless the organiser decides otherwise.
• You must open-source your work to accept any prize, which rules out keeping the method as a proprietary product.
• The organiser can change prize terms, and the number of awards may differ from those listed.
• The source does not mention tax, foreign-exchange or payout currency rules. Indian winners should take advice on how foreign prize money is treated.
• A practical tip: the prizes page lists the exact scroll numbers and file formats each prize accepts, so check it before you invest compute time.