We know there are lots of different types of hackathons. If you'd like to have your hackathon promoted by GitHub, you can submit a request to have your hackathon featured on our GitHub Events page. If you'd like to do this however, your hackathon will need to align to specific criteria. Read on to find out more.
GitHub Hackathons are focused on technology solutions usually underpinned by code. Hackathons are focussed on identifying problems and coming up with creative solutions, presenting a proof of concept or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for that solution.
Rather than creating brand new ideas, your hackathon could also be a coding challenge, where you post a problem and developers must use code to solve that problem. The problem could be “build a GitHub Action”, or it could be “solve these issues in this example program”. Coding challenges are great to learn a new technology space while working together in teams.
To organize an event that qualifies as an official GitHub Hackathon, these are the things you will need to implement:
- The hackathon projects and ideas MUST be available in a public GitHub repository and published with a recognized open source license. When you create your code repository in GitHub, we help you pick a license or see choose a license for more information.
- The hackathon MUST enforce a code of conduct to help ensure the event is inclusive and welcoming to all. The type of code of conduct varies depending on if your hackathon is in-person or online. For an in-person event, something like the GitHub Event Code of Conduct is a great start. For any open source repo, you’ll need a Code of Conduct, which can be found on the Contributor Covenant.
If you have questions about the GitHub Hackathon Criteria, please open an issue and we'll try and respond as soon as possible.
