Sixty-five Southland students will head into tertiary study next year with $2000 a year behind them for three years after the Invercargill Licensing Trust announced its 2026 tertiary scholarship recipients.

The awards were presented at Ascot Park Hotel on Monday 2 November. Each is worth $6000 over three years and is open to both school leavers and adults returning to study, the trust said.

ILT president Paddy O'Brien said the group was heading into fields ranging from engineering and the arts to healthcare and teaching, and that the trust was pleased to be part of their journey and wished them well.

Every applicant sits an interview with three adjudicators, who weigh academic results alongside involvement outside the classroom, contribution to the community and what the applicant hopes to do. O'Brien said the panel had been struck by how much this year's applicants had already given to their schools and communities.

Since the scheme began in 2007 the trust has backed more than 1000 local students with over $5 million in scholarship funding. O'Brien placed the scholarships alongside the trust's other youth programmes, including its Learn to Swim scheme, the Youth Mark awards, Southland secondary school sport and the Young Enterprise Scheme, whose regional title was won last month by a St Peter's College eel pâté venture.

James Hargest College had the largest contingent with 30 recipients, followed by Southland Girls' High School with 16, Southland Boys' High School with eight and Verdon College with seven. The remaining four came from St Margaret's College in Christchurch, Te Wharekura o Arowhenua and the correspondence school Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu.

The Hargest group includes Kyra Savory and Jack Jia; among the Southland Girls' recipients are Blessing Peseta and Aknara Premathilaka; the Southland Boys' list includes TJ Mokoroa and Aurora Levi Te Amo; and Verdon's includes Joel Minani and Jasmine Rivera. The full list is published on the trust's website.

The ILT is a community-owned licensing trust that holds the rights to sell alcohol in most of Invercargill and returns its profits to the city through grants and sponsorship. Its 2026 annual report, released in September, said it had maintained its community spending through a difficult trading year.

For students, the timing matters: scholarship money lands as they confirm enrolments for 2027, with many heading to Otago and Canterbury universities as well as the Southern Institute of Technology at home. Details of the scholarship programme and the full list of recipients are on ilt.co.nz.