Cal Poly Student-Built Float Wins Sweepstakes Award at 2026 Rose Parade

Cal Poly universities’ student-built rainforest float won the Sweepstakes Award at the 137th Rose Parade on Thursday in Pasadena, marking the schools’ first top honor for overall beauty in nearly eight decades and a historic Cal Poly float win.

First Sweepstakes Win Caps Historic Rose Parade Showing

The Cal Poly universities’ float, titled “Jungle Jumpstart,” received the Sweepstakes Award on a rainy New Year’s Day, the highest honor given to the most beautiful float in the parade.

The award is typically claimed by large commercial builders or major organizations. This Cal Poly float win is notable because the float was designed and constructed entirely by students from California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Pomona.

Parade officials said the honor recognizes excellence in design, animation and overall presentation. This year’s Rose Parade theme was “The Magic in Teamwork.”

“It’s really remarkable to win this award, especially on this year’s theme,” said Aubrey Goings, president of the Cal Poly Rose Float team. “This is truly a celebration of how we come together and build everything from scratch.”

Students Build Award-Winning Float From Scratch

Measuring fifty-three feet long, twenty-five feet high and eighteen feet wide, “Jungle Jumpstart” tells the story of rainforest animals restoring a broken robot using nature and cooperation, a concept that helped secure the Cal Poly float win.

The float is the only Rose Parade entry fully designed and built by students. It represents a joint effort between the two Cal Poly campuses, a partnership that dates back nearly eighty years.

About thirty student leaders from each campus began developing concepts in early 2025. The winning design was submitted by Zander DeRenard, a mechanical engineering senior at Cal Poly Pomona.

“What sets us apart is that we are telling our own story,” Goings said. “Students from two universities and many disciplines work together, just like the animals on the float.”

Tournament of Roses President Mark Leavens said the Cal Poly entry reflected the spirit of the parade, noting that the Cal Poly float win demonstrated how working together creates outcomes much richer than anything we can achieve alone.

Innovation, Detail and Tradition Drive the Design

The float featured animated rainforest animals repairing a forty-foot robot, with moving limbs, blinking eyes and electronic lighting designed to show energy flowing through the machine.

To lift a macaw into the air, multiple hydraulic cylinders moved in sync to support a combined weight of about one thousand six hundred pounds, including decorations and mechanical systems.

Students used LED lighting, concealed motion systems and layered natural materials to create smooth animation and visual continuity.

“A lot of what we’re doing builds on lessons from previous years,” Goings said. “We are pushing our designs further each time.”

Decorations included blue corn grits, onion seeds and rice on the robot, with roses highlighting areas meant to resemble rust. Animal fur and feathers were crafted from chrysanthemums, cattails, citrus peels and other natural materials sourced from both campuses.

The float also included tributes to Cal Poly history, including a reference to the schools’ seventy-seventh Rose Parade entry and a memorial honoring longtime supporter Tim Okuma, a 1974 Cal Poly Pomona alumnus who died in May.

A four-student operations crew guided and animated the float along the five-and-a-half-mile parade route.

Since 1949, Cal Poly floats have earned sixty-four awards, but organizers said this year marked the program’s most successful appearance, highlighted by the historic Cal Poly float win.

“To our knowledge, a self-built float has never won this award,” Goings said. “It proves what students can accomplish when they challenge themselves.”

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