Minecraft Education Build League Finals Day

The most wonderful day of the year has arrived, no not the first day of the summer holidays… The Minecraft Education Build League Finals Day! Monday 16th of June 2025 saw twenty-eight young people from seven CEC schools descend on the National Museum of Scotland for an in-person Minecraft challenge like no other.

The day began in the Museum Auditorium, where teams received their design brief and timings for the day. These were the best-of-the-best builders from our build league challenges throughout the year – now tasked with creating a Minecraft Education build inspired by the museum itself.

With twelve million objects in their collections, pupils didn’t quite have time to explore them all — but they got a good look! After their exploration phase, teams returned to the build space, buzzing with ideas. From dinosaur fossils to floating sci-fi museums, imagination took flight quickly as whispers of collaboration could be heard from all the tables that the schools worked away on.

The Design Brief

The young people built intensely and immensely as the clock ticked down towards deadline. In the quickest three hours of their Minecraft lives, they explored the museum, planned their build to align with the design brief, ate their snacks and lunch, collaboratively built, then recorded, narrated and uploaded their work. All before the 13:45 deadline… Exhausting? Maybe. Impressive? Absolutely.

It was now time for the judges to set to work… The team from Edinburgh Learns Digital were blown away by the storytelling and detail on display – one build even had its own tour guides.

In the end, there could only be one winner per category:

🏆 Primary Winners: Trinity Primary School

🏆 Secondary Winners: St Thomas of Aquin’s RC High School

Beyond all of the impressive builds (ones most adults would be hard pressed to replicate), the event showcased teamwork, creativity, and the power of play-based learning. For many pupils, this was their first time using their 1:1 device in a learning space outside of home and school. This continues to show the power that the iPad brings to extend learning beyond the classroom and that which we perceive as what learning looks like!

A huge thank you to all the schools who took part, the National Museum of Scotland for hosting us, and all the members of Edinburgh Learns Digital helping it all run smoothly.

As for the future of the Minecraft Build League? Let’s just say… the cogs are already turning, and the next one is shaping up to be even bigger and better – watch this space!

Well done to all the schools — and thank you to all the adults who helped get the pupils there to make the day possible! The schools who took part: