AI hackathons
32 open AI hackathons, each checked against the organizer's official page. 5 close in the next 7 days.
A hackathon gives you a deadline, a theme and a prize pool. Many run online for several weeks and accept solo builders, so you can enter from anywhere and work in your own time.
Money for people who build or study AI systems: research grants, compute credits, AI safety funding, fellowships and hackathons built around new models.
ML Empowerment Build Challenge 3.0
ML Empowerment Build Challenge 3.0 is an online student challenge with a free curriculum, mentorship and $34,200 in prizes. Projects are due on October 5, 2026.
Dark Factory hackathon 2026
WeAreDevelopers and BAND run an online hackathon from September 26 to October 5, 2026. You build a software factory of coding agents in BAND Desktop.
Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge 2026: Build for a Friend
DEV pays $250 for a new project that uses open source AI to help a real person. Submit on DEV by 5 October 2026.
Databricks AI Social Impact (DAISI) Challenge Singapore 2026
Databricks runs a student AI challenge in Singapore with US$24,500 in credits, training and certification. Idea submissions close on October 6, 2026.
National AI Innovation Challenge 2026
NCAIR invites Nigerian teams to ship a working tool on N-ATLAS by 12 October 2026. Winners are listed for a cash prize. The page does not state the amount.
MLAI Hackathon 2026
MLAI Hackathon 2026 is a student AI contest in southern Vietnam with 24,000,000 VND in prizes and OpenAI credits. Submissions close on October 16, 2026.
Hack Apertus Online 2026
Online hackathon to test and build on Apertus, the open Swiss LLM. Four track winners get CHF 2,500 each. Submit by 16 October 2026.
ARC White-Box Estimation Challenge 2026: Phase 2
Phase 2 of the ARC White-Box Estimation Challenge pays $100,000 for code that estimates neural network activations from weights. Closes October 17, 2026.
Bittensor Global Subnet Hackathon
10,000 USD in prizes for teams that design and build a Bittensor subnet on testnet. Registration and submissions run until October 19, 2026.
TechEx Amsterdam Hackathon 2026
TechEx Events and lablab.ai are running a hybrid AI hackathon with an online build October 16 to 19, 2026, and an on site day at RAI Amsterdam.
Open Agent Hackathon 2026
Open Agent Hackathon 2026 is a free online event with a prize pool up to $20,000. Registration closes October 13, 2026. Submissions close October 20, 2026.
Build, Ship, Shape: Amazon Developer Hackathon 2026
Amazon offers $138,000 in cash prizes for demo ready apps built for Fire TV, Alexa+, Bee and Ring. Open worldwide, submissions close October 23, 2026.
IEEE ClimateChain Global Hackathon 2026
Online IEEE hackathon for blockchain and AI tools on climate problems. $3,000 in cash prizes, submissions October 5 to 25, 2026.
OpenCV AI Competition 2026, powered by AWS
The OpenCV AI Competition 2026, sponsored by AWS, pays $20,250 in prizes and compute grants for computer vision projects. Entries close on October 26, 2026.
Build With AI: Basics
Build With AI: Basics pays a $2,500 prize pool for a new app built with AI skills. Submissions close on 26 October 2026.
AWS Communication Developer Services Agentic AI Partner Hackathon 2026
AWS pays a $40,000 prize pool for agentic AI built on its communication services. Open to AWS Partners until October 28, 2026.
Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon
Nebius and NVIDIA offer $50,000 in cash for working AI systems built on Nebius with NVIDIA open models. Submissions close October 30, 2026.
HackFW MADE Challenge 2026
HackFW MADE Challenge is a North Texas hackathon on AI, hardware and software for manufacturing, with $1,900 in prizes. Submissions close on 30 October 2026.
Qloo Agentic Hackathon 2026
An online hackathon for apps that put the Qloo API into AI agents, with $25,000 in prizes. Submit by 30 October 2026.
Galuxium Nexus V2 hackathon
Galuxium Nexus V2 is an online hackathon for building paid software products, with $14,944 in prizes and a submission deadline of October 31, 2026.
ARC Prize 2026
ARC Prize 2026 offers $2M in prizes across three tracks for open source progress on the ARC-AGI benchmarks. Submissions on Kaggle are due November 2, 2026.
YouCam API Skin AI & eCommerce VTO Hackathon 2026
Perfect Corp. offers $6,000 in prizes for web or mobile apps built on its YouCam APIs for beauty, fashion and online shopping. Submissions close 2 November 2026.
Since AI Hackathon 2026
Since AI Hackathon 2026 is a free 72 hour event in Turku, Finland, with €50,000 in cash prizes. It runs November 6 to 8, 2026.
DSH Hacks V2: student hackathon on AI and healthcare
DSH Hacks V2 is an online student hackathon on AI and healthcare with $42,234 in prizes. Projects are due on November 7, 2026.
Vultr: Agent Rush Hackathon
Vultr and lablab.ai offer a $9,000 cash prize pool plus $5,000 in credits for sandboxed AI agents that do real work. Online build November 3 to 8, 2026.
PayPal AI Hackathon 2026
PayPal offers $67,500 in cash for projects that use PayPal and AI. Submissions close 12 November 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026
NASA runs its yearly global hackathon on November 14 and 15, 2026. Registration is open and teams of up to six people work on 14 space challenges.
Lablab x AMD AI Academy Challenge
lablab.ai and AMD run a three month online challenge for individual AI builders with a $5,000 prize pool. It runs from September 1 to December 1, 2026.
GEMS Prize Challenge 2026
The U.S. Department of Energy offers $300,000 in prizes for algorithms that find hidden geologic faults in geophysical data. U.S. only, closes December 3, 2026.
Decentralize AI Hackathon by HackerNoon
A $51,750+ prize pool and $35,000 in compute credits for developers building open AI infrastructure. The second round of entries ends on February 27, 2027.
AMD Developer Hackathon: ACT III
A hybrid AI hackathon from October 12 to 18, 2026, for building agents and AI apps on AMD GPUs in the cloud, with a $5,000+ prize pool.
Infineon Boss Battle in the AI Arena 2026
Infineon is running a hardware contest on the PSOC Edge E84 AI kit with a $2,000 prize pool. Submissions open 13 October 2026 and close 3 January 2027.
Questions
How many AI hackathons are open right now?
32 as of 5 October 2026. 5 close in the next 7 days.
Which AI hackathons close soonest?
ML Empowerment Build Challenge 3.0 from ML Empowerment Foundation closes on 5 October 2026. Dark Factory hackathon 2026 from WeAreDevelopers and BAND closes on 5 October 2026. Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge 2026: Build for a Friend from DEV closes on 5 October 2026.
Can I apply from any country?
27 of the 32 accept applicants worldwide. The others are limited to a region or a country, and each entry says which.
How is this list checked?
Every entry is written from the organizer's official page and links to it. Programs with a rolling deadline are checked again for closure, and an entry moves to the archive on the day it closes.