Every four years, the FIFA World Cup becomes more than just a football tournament. Whether your national team is competing or not, it's almost impossible to escape the excitement. This year, we saw it as the perfect opportunity to bring our global community together.

Football has a unique way of connecting people across countries, cultures and teams, creating conversations that go far beyond the game itself. While many companies rely on external platforms to run prediction games, we asked ourselves:

That simple idea became the starting point for one of our most exciting internal initiatives: the Avenga World Cup Challenge. Built by our own teams, it gave colleagues from around the world the chance to predict match results, compete with one another, and connect through a shared passion for football.

Turning an Idea Into Reality

What started as a conversation quickly became a global collaboration. Teams that had never worked together before joined forces to make the challenge possible. Stanislav Botev (aka Stako), our Java Competency Director, took the first step by exploring how such a platform could be built internally. After that, Goran Matenicharski, Senior IT System Engineer, helped set up the infrastructure. Just a few days later, we already had the first working prototype.

To make it happen, the application was built entirely in-house using:

Every part of the project—from the first line of code to the final deployment—was designed, developed, and maintained by Avenga teams.

Building It Right

Of course, no product is complete without testing.

That's where Rodrigo Virgolini joined the project. As one of our QA specialists—and an enthusiastic football fan—he helped uncover hidden bugs, validate different scenarios, and make sure the experience was ready before kick-off.

The result was a smooth and engaging prediction game that brought together 450 employees from 25 countries, creating friendly competition throughout the tournament.

The standings changed constantly as the matches delivered plenty of unexpected results, making the competition just as exciting as the World Cup itself. At the end, the top 10 participants in each region received a special prize.

More Than a Game

Beyond the technology, this project became an example of what can happen when people with different expertise come together around a shared idea.

It connected colleagues across countries, combined technical excellence with teamwork, and demonstrated that innovation doesn't always start with a client project. Sometimes, it starts with a simple question and a team willing to build the answer themselves.

A huge thank you to everyone who made this initiative possible, especially our colleagues from Engineering, QA, Employer Branding, InfoSec, Legal & Compliance, and everyone else who contributed along the way.

The real value of this initiative went beyond the game itself. At its core, it was about people coming together, sharing knowledge, and proving that innovation can start with a simple idea and grow through collaboration.