The “Hong Kong/Shanghai Co-operation Open Data Challenge 2026” is jointly advised by the Digital Policy Office (DPO) of the HKSAR Government and the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Data, and curated by B4B (Hong Kong Big Data for Business Challenge), International Data Port (Shanghai Lin-Gang Special Area International Data Port Co., Ltd.) and SODA (Shanghai Open Data Applications Competition). Building on the momentum of the “Three-Year Action Plan (2024-2026) For “Data Elements X””, the competition continues to promote the “use of data through competition”, unleashing the multiplier effect of data elements and deepening exchanges between the two cities in smart city development, digital economy applications and cross-border data flow.
Under the slogan “Co-creating a Data Industry Platform for the Two Cities”, this year's competition focuses on four themes — Smart Environment, Smart Economy, Smart Mobility and Smart Living — divided into 17 sub-tracks. Participants were invited to harness open data resources from both cities, including Hong Kong's DATA.GOV.HK and the Common Spatial Data Infrastructure Portal as well as Shanghai's data.sh.gov.cn, together with industry datasets contributed by the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Public Data Collecting, Monitoring and Research Center and Shanghai Topease Information Technology Co., Ltd., to build innovative projects and advanced applications.
The competition received an enthusiastic response from enterprises, academic institutions and technology teams across Hong Kong and Shanghai. Following the judging, 17 teams advanced to the Final Judging. Their proposals span a wide range of application scenarios — including underground utility management, electricity-carbon analytics, low-altitude airspace management, smart construction, healthcare, cultural intelligence and talent recruitment — demonstrating the enormous potential of open data in enhancing urban governance efficiency and the quality of public services.
Following the Final Judging, the team formed by the Lands Department, AECOM Asia Company Limited and China Energy Engineering Group Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute Co., LTD won both the “Grand Award” and the “Best Smart Environment Award” with its “Underground Utilities Information System”. FAITH (Frankie & Apple Intelligence Technology HK) claimed the “Best Smart Mobility Award” for its “Cross-border Self-drive Transportation Trusted Data Service Platform (HK Drive Safe)”, LINSHU AI received the “Best Smart Economy Award” for its “Civilization Spatiotemporal Intelligence Platform”, and Intellijourney took the “Best Smart Living Award” for “JinMiGe: A IIIF-Powered Multimodal Agent Platform for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy”. The full list of winners and finalists is set out below.