A record you
can actually check.
GQC issues digital certificates to shortlisted teams, city winners, Global Finalists and prize-winners. Each file carries a unique ID and a QR code. Universities, employers and the students themselves verify at gqc.org/cert/verify.html.
Two kinds of certificate, named honestly.
Issued to every student on a shortlisted open-round team who completes the Learning Experience and the city showcase, and to Invitational students who complete the compressed curriculum and present at the Global Final. It records name, team, city edition, cycle year and role. It does not imply a prize.
Issued to city winners, Global Finalists and named prize-winners (Founder’s, Research, Impact, GQC Medal and any special mentions published with the results). The prize line is printed on the certificate and encoded in the verification payload, so it cannot be edited in a screenshot without failing the checksum.
URL, ID, or the QR on the page.
Open the public verifier at /cert/verify.html. Paste the full verification URL (everything after verify.html? must be kept, including the v= checksum) or the certificate ID printed on the document. You can also scan the QR code with a phone camera; it should open the same page with the result already loaded.
A pass means the payload matches a certificate the Foundation issued, the name and prize line have not been altered, and the checksum is intact. A fail means the file should not be trusted: it may be truncated, edited, or never issued. We do not publish a public list of all IDs — verification is lookup, not a downloadable register — because student names are personal data.
Staff use a separate issuing tool. That page is not indexed and is disallowed in robots.txt. If someone sends you a link to an “issue” URL and asks you to generate your own certificate, it is not a legitimate GQC process. Write to certs@gqc.org.
Useful on an application. Not a licence.
Admissions officers and hiring managers sometimes ask what a GQC certificate means. In one sentence: the named student completed the stated GQC 2026 activity in the stated city, and if a prize is printed, that prize was awarded under the published rubric. It is comparable in spirit to a verified record from a selective extra-curricular programme, not to a degree transcript and not to Regeneron ISEF affiliation.
We recommend students attach the verification URL rather than only a PNG. Screenshots can be cropped. The URL cannot, without breaking the checksum. If you are an institution writing a reference policy, you may treat a passing verification as sufficient evidence of participation; you do not need to email us unless the name on the document does not match the applicant’s legal name (we issue in the name supplied at registration; legal-name corrections go through certs@gqc.org).