Developers who fancy building for Meta’s newest headset have a fresh incentive: a competition with a seven-figure pot. The VR Start contest is meant to seed software for the Meta VR Glasses unveiled at Connect 2026.

Entries close on November 18, 2026, having opened September 24. Single awards run between $20,000 and $100,000, and Meta expects to name winners around December 11, 2026.

Submissions can be brand new or ports of something already shipped, spanning entertainment, gaming and productivity. Games are nudged toward seated, controller-free play: puzzle, strategy, casual, social and narrative titles. Meta’s bar is that an entry be “fully usable with hands, end-to-end,” and while Touch controllers may be supported, they cannot be required.

That fits the hardware. Meta VR Glasses ship in Spring 2027 at $1,300 and support Touch Plus controllers, but do not include them, leaning instead on onboard hand and eye tracking as the preferred input.

Prototyping is cheap because the headset shares Quest’s operating system. Teams can build against Quest 3 hardware or lean on Meta’s XR Simulator, Spatial Simulator and Immersive Web Emulator instead.

For a tiny studio, Meta pitches the exposure as the actual reward, handing a store listing a concrete credential to wave at collaborators or publishers.

Source: Road to VR