Microsoft Imagine, formerly known as DreamSpark, is a Microsoft program to provide students with software design and development tools at no charge. The program was originally available for university/college students in Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, the U.K. and the U.S., but has now been expanded to more than 80 countries and is offered to many high school students. To register, students must visit the Imagine website and verify their identity. If an institution is not listed on the available list, the user may manually verify their student status by uploading a proof such as an ID card.
The Imagine program was announced by Bill Gates as DreamSpark on February 20, 2008 during a speech at Stanford University. It is estimated that up to 35 million students access these software titles free of charge through this program. The service was renamed to Imagine on September 7, 2016, to go with the annual Imagine Cup competition hosted by Microsoft.