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OBJECTIVES. A balance between schoolwork difficulty and student skill level is an important predictor of student motivation. However, high ability students have been found before to be at risk of being underchallenged. In this paper, we examined whether the motivational benefits of adequately challenging schoolwork apply equally to all students or whether there are students for whom this is even more important than for others. In particular, we investigated whether students’ cognitive ability (IQ) and need for cognition (NFC) (i.e., their tendency to seek, engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity) affected their motivational responses to adequately challenging schoolwork. METHOD. We build on data from a large-scale representative survey among 3,002 Flemish 7th graders. Multilevel models were used to predict student intrinsic motivation and schoolwork engagement as a result of perceived classroom challenge, NFC, IQ, and their interactions. RESULTS. Sufficiently challenging schoolwork was positively related to student intrinsic motivation and engagement. Moreover, adequately challenging schoolwork had a more favorable effect on motivational outcomes for students high in NFC than for students low in NFC. Student IQ did not moderate the association between adequate challenge and motivational outcomes. CONCLUSIONS. Providing challenging learning environments to highly intelligent students is an important objective of gifted education. This study shows that adequate challenge is indeed important to maintain student motivation, and that this is particularly important for students with a high level of NFC. Hence, identifying such students and providing them with appropriate learning environments would be key to support their learning motivation.