- CAS Project Requirements: What the IB Requires
- Which CAS Guide Applies to You: Classes of 2027, 2028 and 2029
- What Is a CAS Project, and How Is It Different From a CAS Experience?
- The 5 CAS Stages, Applied to a Project
- The 3 CAS Strands in the IB's Own Words
- CAS Project Ideas and Examples
- How to Plan a CAS Project, Step by Step
- Running the Project
- CAS Expeditions: Can a Trip Be Your CAS Project?
- Reflection and Documentation
- Common CAS Project Mistakes
Quick Answer
You must complete at least one CAS project: a collaborative, planned series of CAS experiences lasting at least one month from planning to completion. It can cover one strand or combine creativity, activity and service. You work with other students or community members, use the five CAS stages, and reflect throughout. It is not graded, but CAS completion is required for the diploma.
What You'll Learn
- You need at least one CAS project. It must be collaborative and last at least one month from planning to completion.
- A project can focus on a single strand or combine two or all three. You do not need all three.
- Plan it with the five CAS stages: investigation, preparation, action, reflection and demonstration.
- Your project does not have to show all seven learning outcomes. Choose the ones your role genuinely evidences.
- The same CAS guide applies to the classes of 2027, 2028 and 2029. The IB has delayed any new CAS curriculum until 2030.
CAS Project Requirements: What the IB Requires
The rules below come from the IB's Creativity, activity, service guide, the document your CAS coordinator works from. It defines a CAS project as a collaborative, well-considered series of sequential CAS experiences in one or more of the strands. In practice, your project needs to meet every point on this list.
- At least one project: every CAS student must be involved in at least one CAS project. The guide encourages you to do more than one if you can.
- Collaboration: you work with a group of students or with members of the wider community, and every member of the team contributes. A solo project does not qualify.
- Duration: at least one month from planning to completion. The planning weeks count. Longer projects are encouraged.
- Strands: the project can address any single strand, or combine two or all three of creativity, activity and service.
- A connected series: a sequence of planned experiences that build on each other, not one isolated event.
- Purpose and goals: the project has a clear purpose, and you identify one or more learning outcomes that guide your own role.
- Challenge: it should require initiative, perseverance and skills such as cooperation, problem-solving and decision-making.
- CAS stages: all CAS projects should use the five CAS stages as the framework.
- Separate from coursework: nothing that is part of your Diploma course requirements, such as an internal assessment, the extended essay or TOK work, can count.
Pro Tip
Your school can add its own rules on top, for example more than one project, a proposal form or internal deadlines. Your coordinator applies those rules, so read your school's CAS handbook alongside this list.
Which CAS Guide Applies to You: Classes of 2027, 2028 and 2029
There is no new CAS guide for students currently in the Diploma Programme. The guide in use was published in 2015 for students graduating in 2017 and after, and it applies to everyone graduating in 2027, 2028 and 2029, including students who start the Diploma Programme in August 2027. In its March 2025 Diploma Programme update, the IB said the release of a new CAS curriculum has been delayed until 2030, so that it lines up with the wider redesign coming out of its review of programmes for 16 to 19 year olds. Until then, the current guide only receives small edits and new support materials. The IB's own CAS page, updated in February 2026, still describes three strands, seven learning outcomes and the CAS project.
- Unchanged for all current cohorts: three strands, seven learning outcomes, five CAS stages, at least one CAS project, at least 18 months of CAS, three interviews and a CAS portfolio.
- Out of date: any rule based on hours, such as the old 150-hour total. The current guide has no hours requirement.
- Not an IB term: 'CAS expeditions' does not appear in the guide. Schools and travel companies use it for trips, and a trip can count if it meets the normal rules (see the expeditions section below).
Watch Out
If you read about a 'new CAS' with different rules for your year group, check with your CAS coordinator before changing your plans. As of October 2026 the IB has not published a replacement guide.
What Is a CAS Project, and How Is It Different From a CAS Experience?
A CAS experience is any specific event in one or more strands. It can be a single event, such as a mountain hike, or an ongoing series, such as weekly visits to a care home. A CAS project is a step up: a collaborative series of CAS experiences that runs for at least a month and has a defined purpose. The IB says its main purpose is to make sure you take part in sustained collaboration. You do not have to invent the project yourself. You can start one, or join one and take responsibility for a clear part of it, such as the budget, the training schedule or contact with a partner organisation.
Pro Tip
Choose a project that matters to you. Projects you care about are easier to sustain for a month or more, and they give you far more to reflect on.
The 5 CAS Stages, Applied to a Project
The CAS stages are adapted from a five-stage model of service learning. Investigation, preparation and action form the core of the process, reflection runs through all of it, and demonstration comes at the end. Use the stages to plan your project and to organise your evidence.
- 1Investigation: identify your interests and skills and, for service, a real need. Confirm the need with the people affected. Evidence to keep: notes from meeting your community partner, a short survey, research into the issue.
- 2Preparation: agree roles and responsibilities, set a timeline, list the resources you need and learn any skills the project requires. Evidence: your project plan, a role list, a risk assessment, messages confirming permissions.
- 3Action: carry out the plan. Expect to make decisions and solve problems as you go. Evidence: session logs, photos, materials you produced, notes on changes to the plan.
- 4Reflection: describe what happened, how you felt, what ideas it generated and what questions it raised. Do this at the start, during and at the end, and at least once as a group.
- 5Demonstration: make what you learned and achieved explicit, for example through your CAS portfolio, a short presentation, an exhibition or a handover guide for the next group.
The 3 CAS Strands in the IB's Own Words
Your project can sit in one strand or several. The guide defines each strand in one line, and the detail matters when you decide what counts.
- Creativity: exploring and extending ideas leading to an original or interpretive product or performance. Watching a concert or visiting an exhibition does not count, because you need to make or perform something yourself.
- Activity: physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle. Team sports, dance, outdoor recreation and training plans all fit, at a level that genuinely challenges you.
- Service: collaborative and reciprocal engagement with the community in response to an authentic need. Service is unpaid, and the community should benefit as well as you.
CAS Project Ideas and Examples
The IB guide gives example projects for each strand and for combinations of strands. The list below builds on those examples. Each one is collaborative, runs for more than a month and has a clear purpose.
- Creativity: a group designs and paints a mural for a local primary school, working from a brief agreed with the school.
- Activity: you and friends set up a team in a sport your school does not offer, run training and arrange matches against other schools.
- Service: a team sets up regular tutoring for pupils who need support, agreed with the teachers who identified the need.
- Creativity and activity: a dance group choreographs and rehearses an original routine for a school or community event.
- Service and activity: students plan, plant and maintain a garden with members of the local community.
- Service and creativity: a group finds that pupils at a local school need bags, then designs and makes them from recycled materials.
- All three strands: students rehearse and perform a dance production for a care home, then run follow-up sessions with residents.
- Environment: a team surveys litter or energy use at school, presents the findings to the leadership team and runs a campaign to change one habit.
- Digital: a group builds a website for a small local charity and trains staff so the charity can keep it updated.
- Expedition: a group plans a multi-day trek, including training, route planning and a risk assessment, and links it to a fundraising or awareness goal.
Watch Out
A project is more than your usual activity with a new label. Weekly football training is a CAS experience. Organising a holiday football camp for younger children with three teammates, with a plan, a budget and a review, can be a CAS project.
How to Plan a CAS Project, Step by Step
Strong planning makes the project easier to run, and it gives you evidence for learning outcome 3 (initiate and plan a CAS experience) without extra work. Write the plan down and keep it in your portfolio.
- 1Define the goal: what specific change or product do you want by the end?
- 2Check the need: for service, agree the need with the community partner before you design anything.
- 3Build the team: decide who does what. Every member should have a real role.
- 4Set the timeline: map the steps over at least a month, including planning time and a review at the end.
- 5Sort resources and permissions: materials, money, venues, safeguarding and approval from your school.
- 6Assess the risks: what could go wrong for the people involved, and how will you reduce it?
- 7Choose your learning outcomes: pick one to three that your role will genuinely evidence, and note how.
- 8Agree the plan with your CAS coordinator or adviser before you start.
Pro Tip
Involve your collaborators in the planning. Shared planning builds ownership, and it gives everyone evidence for learning outcome 5 (working collaboratively).
Running the Project
This is where the plan meets reality. Plans change, and a record of how you adapted is often the most useful evidence you will produce.
- Stick to the timeline but adjust when something is not working, and note why.
- Communicate regularly with your team and any partners.
- Collect evidence as you go: photos, attendance notes, messages, drafts.
- Write short notes after key sessions so you have material for later reflections.
- Solve problems together and record the decisions you made.
- Judge success by impact and learning, not by time logged.
CAS Expeditions: Can a Trip Be Your CAS Project?
Many students search for 'CAS expeditions', but the term is not used in the IB's CAS guide. Schools and travel companies use it for trips such as treks, sailing voyages, conservation work or international service. An expedition is judged by the same rules as anything else in CAS, so what matters is what you actually do, who plans it and how long the work lasts.
- A one-day hike is a single CAS experience in the activity strand. The guide uses this exact example.
- A multi-day expedition with weeks of training is a series of activity experiences, which helps with learning outcome 4 (commitment and perseverance).
- It can become your CAS project when your group shares the planning over at least a month, such as route planning, training, budgeting, fundraising, risk assessment and contact with any host partner, and then reflects together afterwards.
- Joining a trip that a company or teacher has fully organised still counts as CAS experiences, but it gives you less evidence for learning outcome 3 (initiate and plan).
- It only counts as service if it responds to an authentic need agreed with the community, and the work is unpaid. Paying for a trip does not make it service.
- For international service, the guide asks you to understand the background of an identified, verified need, and it encourages you to serve locally first.
- Schools must check that any commercial provider acts in line with the IB mission and CAS requirements, and they must carry out a risk assessment.
- After a service trip abroad, the guide recommends some form of continuation, such as researching the issue further, advocating for the community or starting related action at home.
Pro Tip
Plan your reflections before you travel. Keep a short daily note and a few photos, then write a fuller reflection with your group within a week of getting back, while the details are fresh.
Reflection and Documentation
Reflection turns the project into learning, and your reflections are the main evidence your coordinator uses. The guide suggests reflecting at the beginning, during and at the end of a series of experiences, and notes that reflecting with others is especially useful in a collaborative project.
- Reflect at each stage: when you plan, in the middle and after you finish.
- Hold at least one group reflection and record what the team agreed.
- Be honest about setbacks and what you changed.
- Connect key moments to the learning outcomes you chose, without forcing all seven.
- Use any format: writing, photos with captions, video, audio or creative pieces.
- Finish with demonstration: show what you achieved and what you would do differently.
Common CAS Project Mistakes
These problems make a project harder for your coordinator to accept.
- Doing it alone, or in a team where only one person does the work.
- Running it for less than a month, or calling a one-off event a project.
- Using work that is part of a Diploma course, such as an IA or the extended essay.
- Skipping investigation, so the service does not meet a real need.
- Leaving all reflection until the end.
- Claiming all seven learning outcomes without evidence for each.