Apply for Invisible College 2026
After two years of success, our residential seminar for 18–22 year olds is returning this year
This August, Works in Progress is hosting the third Invisible College, a week-long residential seminar in Cambridge for students aged 18–22.
Last year, we received over 350 applications, from which we accepted 30 students for the program.
Stripe Press’s Tammy Winter said our previous attendees were some of the sharpest students she had ever met. This is true: two of last year’s attendees are currently employed within our network, several have won Emergent Ventures grants, and one led his company to a $180 million Series A raise, among many other impressive achievements.
Attendees said Invisible College was ‘energizing’, ‘added considerable human capital’, and that they ‘cannot emphasize enough the power of being around supportive, high-agency people’. One student said he gained ‘new mental models for thinking about the world, a network of progress-oriented peers [and a] reinvigorated passion for documenting graph crimes’. Others have described it as the most important week of their lives so far.
We intend that this year is even better than the previous iterations. During the week, we will aim to give attendees a thorough grounding in three of the topics most important to us: how the world got rich; what is going wrong with science today; and the political economy of housing, urbanism, and cities.
Doing so will involve lectures, discussions, and other classes led by the people that we think are making the biggest impacts on these subjects today, including Works in Progress authors such as Stuart Ritchie, Samuel Hughes, Anton Howes, and Aria Babu.
The program’s name comes from the supposed group of seventeenth-century thinkers known as the Invisible College, led by the Irish chemist Robert Boyle and the English economist Sir William Petty.
Attendance is open to anyone around the world who will be aged 18–22 in August 2026. You don’t have to be at university to apply, but you must be within the age range. The main requirement is that you are thirsty for knowledge, curious about new ideas, and excited about shaping the world of the future. Please forward this invitation on to anyone you think might fit the bill.
The exact dates are 17th-22nd August: students will arrive on the Monday afternoon and leave on the Saturday morning. It is free to attend, and we will provide accommodation and meals for the week. Sadly, we cannot cover travel expenses.
To apply, simply fill out this (very lightweight) application form. Please submit your application as soon as you can, as we will assess applications on a rolling basis, and by Friday 8th May at the latest. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me (Ben Southwood) at bswud@stripe.com.
Would you consider a Southern hemisphere times edition? Perhaps January?