A total of 123 participants have registered for the 2nd IAHR Young Professionals Hydro-Environment Challenge. Applicants represent a wide variety of regions, including 57 from the Asia Pacific region, 14 from Latin America, 23 from Europe, 6 from North America, 20 from Africa and 3 from the Middle East region. The distribution by themes is quite unbalanced, as 26 applicants have registered for the Experimental Data challenge, 36 for the Ecohydraulics challenge and 61 for the Fluvial Hydraulics challenge. In terms of gender distribution of the participants also nicely mirrors the gender distribution within the association: around 70% of registrants are men while 30% are women. By sector, research-based institutions are preponderant, with around 74% of the applicants coming from the academia, while 26% are non-academics.

The kick-off meetings of the different challenges will take place between March 7 and March 11, while the challenges will last till May 21. The participants will be grouped, and each group will be accompanied by technical mentors and coaches throughout the whole process. The composition of the teams and the main steps will be announced during the kick-off meeting.

Each of the winning teams will receive support to attend the 39th IAHR World Congress in Granada, Spain, where there will be a "Meet and Greet your teams and coaches” session.