2026 Youth Bizcool Festival Brings Startup Ideas to Cheongju

By Daniel Okafor

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) will hold the 2026 Youth Bizcool Festival from the 3rd to the 5th at the first-floor exhibition hall of Osco in Cheongju, North Chungcheong. The ministry said the three-day youth event will combine student performances, lectures, networking, startup policy promotion, corporate displays and hands-on technology experiences.

Bizcool is a youth entrepreneurship education program launched in 2002. The ministry describes its purpose as nurturing future convergence-type talent with creativity and a spirit of challenge. The festival extends that educational role. The ministry says it will give youths nationwide a venue to share startup ideas and the results of entrepreneurship education.

Why is the ministry running the festival?

Mok Seung-hwan is head of the Entrepreneurship and Venture Innovation Office at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. He said: “The Youth Bizcool Festival is a festival where youths consolidate each other's ideas, discover new possibilities, and grow.” He added: “We will support them so they can imagine freely and take on challenges without fear of failure.”

The first sentence puts consolidation in participants' hands. They bring ideas and use the festival to find new possibilities. The second makes MSS the supporting institution while preserving risk-taking as the stated standard. The announced mechanism pairs participant-led ideas with a shared venue, meetings with senior entrepreneurs and institutional backing.

What happens on each day of the festival?

The opening ceremony on the first day will include a student musical performance by the team that won the Grand Prize in Bizcool Show-Off the previous year. The ceremony will also honor meritorious contributors and Bizcool camp finalists with 50 awards in total.

The second day will include youth networking. The ministry says Kwon Do-gyun, head of Primer, and Son Ju-eun, chair of MegaStudy, will give lectures. A talk concert by young entrepreneurs will also take place.

On the final day, students will perform and present their talents in the Bizcool Show-Off program. It is the final day's featured student program, while the exhibition venues remain open throughout.

What do visitors see throughout the event?

The ministry says the listed venues will operate continuously, not only during scheduled ceremonies:

• A school hall showcasing the educational achievements of 88 Bizcool schools nationwide.
• A startup policy promotion hall.
• An innovation corporations hall.
• An “Exciting Zone” for hands-on experiences with new technologies such as AI.
• A networking lounge.

The ministry's continuous schedule keeps the exhibition active between headline sessions. Its five settings place educational display, policy promotion, corporate engagement and peer networking within one program rather than along a single conference track.

How does the program widen exchanges?

The event's theme is “consolidation, discovery, growth.” The ministry says it will expand exchanges among schools, regions and corporations, with meetings with senior entrepreneurs among the programs. The theme also describes a sequence: participants consolidate ideas, discover new possibilities and then grow through exchange.

This sequence gives the theme a practical form. Students encounter educational results, then compare them with startup policy, corporations and technologies. The program shifts from classroom outcomes to a shared setting where schools, regions and corporations can exchange ideas.

The format resembles a compact trade fair for young enterprise: displays, talks, awards and hands-on experiences share one exhibition hall.

The 2026 event carries the slogan “Everyone's Dreaming! (a festival where all youths unfold their dreams in diverse ways).” It puts individual aspiration at the center. The ministry's theme turns that aspiration into an operating sequence: consolidate ideas, discover possibilities, then grow. The slogan addresses participants personally. The theme tells organizers how to structure the event.

What could happen after the fifth day?

For MSS, the practical measure comes after the fifth day: sustained exchanges among schools, regions and corporations. The ministry has arranged a sequence from 88 schools' educational results through lectures and awards to the Bizcool Show-Off. Follow-through beyond those three days will determine the festival's practical value.