40 hackathons and builder programs running this october.
文章目录
a practical list of remote hackathons, buildathons, competitions, and developer grants worth looking at this october.
there are a lot of hackathon lists that look impressive until you actually open the links.
a "$100k prize pool" turns out to be mostly saas credits. half the prizes are locked behind one winning team. the event requires capital to participate. submissions already closed. or the headline number includes funding that is not actually prize money.
i tried to filter around that.
this list prioritizes opportunities with real cash, usdc, meaningful prizes, multiple winning slots, active build windows, and clear ways to actually enter and submit.
where a prize includes credits, hardware, tokens, travel, seed investment, or something other than cash, i have called that out separately.
if you are trying to ship something this month, start with the deadlines immediately below.
deadlines coming up first
october 4
- arbitrum open house: online buildathon $115,000 across major prizes, promising build awards, and follow-on grants. https://openhouse.arbitrum.io
october 5
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wearedevelopers x band: dark factory $10,000 across the top 3. https://lablab.ai/ai-hackathons/wearedevelopers-hackathon
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road to colosseum: build your mvp 8,000 usdg. https://superteam.fun/earn/listing/road-to-colosseum-hackathon-build-your-mvp
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veles hack 2026 registration closes october 5. €3,000 prize pool. https://taikai.network/eclipsefoundation/hackathons/veleshack2026
october 6
- qollab x ionq global quantum hackathon registration closes october 6. $10,000 cash plus $20,000 compute. https://qollab.xyz/programs/hackathon
october 8
- solana mobile: clock in $135,000 total. https://solanamobile.radiant.nexus
october 9
- hackcanton season 3 $50,000 across multiple tracks. https://appsfactory.cc/hackathons
october 10 to 11
- #neathack $10,000 plus engineering roles and internships. https://x.com/neatlogs/status/2105295042726219808
october 11
- bnb hack: tokenized stocks edition $20,000 track allocation. https://bnbchain.org/en/hackathons/tokenized-stocks
october 12
- colosseum: crypto world's fair $465,000+ in cash prizes, plus accelerator seed checks and superteam sidetracks. https://arena.colosseum.org/
october 13
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open agent hackathon 2026 registration closes october 13. up to $20,000 across 4 tracks plus a tinkerer track. https://hackathon.genai.works/
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monad metropolis hackathon $250,000+ across 4 tracks. https://hackathon.monad.xyz
october 14
- arc microgrants mainnet challenge $10,000 usdc split into twenty $500 builder checks. https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/arc-microgrants/detail
the big pools
these are the larger competitions running through october, generally with more tracks, more prize slots, or significantly larger pools.
colosseum: crypto world's fair
prizes: $465,000+ in liquid cash prizes.
that includes a $30k grand prize, twenty $15k awards, a $100k solana track, a $25k base track, and additional superteam sidetracks.
there are also $250k seed checks tied to accelerator admission.
winning slots: 30+ core prize places, with additional regional and track sidetracks.
deadline: october 12, 2026
meta vr start developer competition 2026
prizes: $1,000,000 cash.
1st place receives $300k, 2nd $200k, 3rd $100k, with multiple category prizes ranging from $20k to $100k.
build around: hands-first horizon os and quest 3 spatial applications and games.
important: you need to be accepted into the free meta vr start developer program before submitting.
deadline: november 18, 2026
the competition is active throughout october.
https://start-developer-competition-26.devpost.com/
arc prize 2026
prizes: roughly $700,000 to $850,000 across milestone awards, top-score awards, and the grand prize.
build around: solving novel visual reasoning grids through few-shot programmatic abstraction rather than memorization.
entry / merger deadline: october 26, 2026
final submission: november 2, 2026
monad metropolis hackathon
prizes: $250,000+ across 4 tracks.
tracks: onchain finance, consumer/payments, social/culture, and trust/identity/ai infrastructure.
the technical angle is parallel evm applications, low-latency dex infrastructure, and consumer dapps.
deadline: october 13, 2026
build, ship, shape: amazon developer hackathon
prizes: $138,000 cash plus aws credits.
the grand prize is $40k, with track first-place prizes ranging from $15k to $25k.
winning slots: 8+ major cash prizes.
build around: fire tv, alexa+, bee wearable ai, and ring developer integrations.
deadline: october 23, 2026
https://amazonappdev2026.devpost.com/
solana mobile: clock in hackathon
prizes: $135,000 total.
$125,000 usdc is distributed across the top 10 teams, with an additional $10,000 skr award for solana mobile stack integration.
winning slots: 11.
build around: mobile-first android dapps for the solana seeker device.
deadline: october 8, 2026
https://solanamobile.radiant.nexus
arbitrum open house: online buildathon
prizes: $115,000.
1st place receives $40k, 2nd $20k, 3rd $10k, with another $15k in promising build awards and $30k allocated to follow-on grants.
winning slots: 7+.
build around: stylus rust/c++ contracts, arbitrum orbit l3 chains, and account abstraction.
deadline: october 4, 2026
rsna knee abnormality detection challenge
prizes: $77,000 cash across the top 5 teams.
build around: multimodal mri analysis and multilingual radiology report models for detecting 12 knee abnormalities.
entry / merger deadline: october 15, 2026
final submission: october 22, 2026
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/rsna-knee-abnormality-detection
google gemma 4 developer agent competition
prizes: $65,000 cash.
$50,000 is allocated to the main competition and $15,000 to a research paper track.
build around: fine-tuning open gemma models to navigate real codebases and resolve software issues autonomously.
deadline: november 12, 2026
active throughout october.
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/gemma-4-developer-agent
build what's next with paypal and ai
prizes: $60,000+ cash across the main competition, honorable mentions, and sponsor bounties from render, ag grid, and postman.
build around: paypal payment apis combined with autonomous ai agents and automation.
opened: october 1
deadline: november 12, 2026
nebius x nvidia global ai hackathon
prizes: $50,000+ total.
$20k for 1st, $10k for 2nd, $6k for 3rd, a $3k tavily prize, nvidia jetson orin nano hardware, and $500 city awards.
winning slots: 23+.
build around: agentic engineering and open-weight models deployed on nebius cloud gpu infrastructure.
deadline: october 30, 2026
https://nebiusglobalaihackathon.devpost.com/
hackcanton season 3
prizes: $50,000 across multiple tracks.
build around: enterprise privacy applications and daml smart contracts on canton network.
deadline: october 9, 2026
https://appsfactory.cc/hackathons
bitget ai hackathon s2
prizes: $50,000 usdt across prizes and bounties.
build around: autonomous ai trading agents and market intelligence, with alibaba cloud qwen, chainbase, and kaito involved.
status: october 8, 2026
https://x.com/bitget_ai/status/2097230641452785752?s=20
enveda casmi 2026
prizes: $50,000 cash across the top 5 teams.
build around: predicting small-molecule 2d chemical structures from mass spectrometry data.
entry deadline: december 7, 2026
final submission: december 14, 2026
the competition runs throughout october.
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/enveda-casmi26-molecule-id-mass-spectra
smaller and more focused builder sprints
these are the ones i would look through if you do not necessarily want to compete inside the largest pools.
some have narrower technical requirements, shorter build windows, or more prize slots relative to their size.
qloo agentic hackathon
prizes: $25,000 cash across placements and bounties.
build around: ai agents using qloo's taste and cultural intelligence graph api.
deadline: october 30, 2026
bnb hack: tokenized stocks edition
prizes: $20,000 track allocation.
build around: tokenized real-world assets, stock trading tooling, and binance web3 wallet integrations on bsc.
deadline: october 11, 2026
https://bnbchain.org/en/hackathons/tokenized-stocks
tapeout genesis transistor hackathon
prizes: $14,000.
build around: designing and deploying a circuit or processor on x layer through tapeout factory.
the winning design becomes the ignix genesis transistor.
status: active during october 2026.
graph hacks: context for ai agents
prizes: $20,000 in hardware and cash bounties, including an iphone 18 pro and ps5.
build around: falkordb graph databases as persistent context and memory for ai agents.
dates: october 15 to 18, 2026
https://www.wemakedevs.org/hackathons/falkordb
qollab x ionq global quantum hackathon
prizes: $10,000 cash plus $20,000 compute.
1st place receives $10k, with additional $500 theme awards.
build around: quantum algorithms using qiskit and ionq hardware.
registration closes: october 6, 2026
sprint: october 9 to 11, 2026
https://qollab.xyz/programs/hackathon
bli legal tech hackathon 2
prizes: $20,000.
build around: smart contract compliance, legal automation, dispute ledgers, and regtech.
deadline: october 31, 2026
https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/legal-hack-2026
run october jam
prizes: $30,000 cash across 15 prize slots, including $22,000 across five editor-selected game prizes.
build around: games, interactive stories, videos, and adventures built on run using its browser studios or rundot cli.
build window: october 08 – november 02, 2026
https://events.run.world/events/octoberjam/
ryo-chan virtual hackathon 2026
prizes: $15,000 in tokens plus an all-expenses-paid trip to tokyo.
winning slots: 15 distinct awards across agents, dashboards, skills, social awards, and judges' picks.
deadline: november 11, 2026
the deadline was officially extended from october 3.
arc microgrants mainnet challenge
prizes: $10,000 usdc.
twenty builders receive $500 usdc each.
build around: working mvps and experiments on arc mainnet using circle programmable wallets.
submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.
deadline: october 14, 2026
https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/arc-microgrants/detail
#neathack
prizes: $10,000 plus engineering roles and internships.
build around: developer tools, logs, and observability.
it is a 48-hour online sprint hosted by neatlogs and vibefounder.
dates: october 10 to 11, 2026
https://x.com/neatlogs/status/2105295042726219808
open agent hackathon 2026
prizes: up to $20,000 across 4 tracks plus a tinkerer track.
build around: production ai agents with persistent memory and multi-step reasoning.
registration closes: october 13, 2026
build window: october 15 to 20, 2026
https://hackathon.genai.works/
wearedevelopers x band: dark factory
prizes: $10,000 across the top 3.
build around: autonomous software factory agents and continuous code testing loops.
deadline: october 5, 2026
https://lablab.ai/ai-hackathons/wearedevelopers-hackathon
road to colosseum: build your mvp
prizes: 8,000 usdg.
build around: building a pre-colosseum mvp on solana through superteam earn.
deadline: october 5, 2026
https://superteam.fun/earn/listing/road-to-colosseum-hackathon-build-your-mvp
mezo buildathon, wave 1
prizes: $7,000 in mezo across 2 waves.
build around: bitcoin economic-layer applications, musd/mezo defi tools, and automated bots.
dates: october 16 to november 15, 2026
workshop: october 13.
https://app.akindo.io/wave-hacks/ovoo0gdrvu8379d10
anna ai app builder program
prizes: $6,000.
build around: ai-native applications and productivity workflows on anna ai.
deadline: october 31, 2026
https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/2349/detail
opencv ai competition 2026
prizes: $12,000 cash.
$5k for 1st, $3k for 2nd, $2k for 3rd, plus a $1k cool award and $1k agentic vision award.
winning slots: 5 cash winners.
build around: computer vision applications using opencv 5 and aws integrations.
deadline: october 26, 2026
portaldot hacker house 2026
prizes: $5,200.
build around: rust, ink!, and solidity smart contracts.
kickoff: october 14
check-in: october 24
final: november 6, 2026
https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/portaldot-hacker-house-2026
raspberry pi rp2350 hacking challenge 2
prize: $20,000 cash bounty.
the bounty goes to the first documented side-channel extraction of aes keys from rp2350 secure boot.
deadline: october 31, 2026
https://github.com/raspberrypi/rp2350_hacking_challenge_2
oneaquahealth ieee global hackathon
prizes: $3,500 cash across 5 winning slots.
build around: technology and ai solutions connecting water ecosystems, public health, citizen science, and environmental data.
deadline: october 4, 2026
https://oneaquahealth-ieee-hackathon.devpost.com/
3alet hackathon
prizes: $1,000 cash across the top 3 teams + mozaik cloud premium for the first five.
build around: systems of collaborating ai agents using mozaik.
deadline: october 31, 2026
https://jigjoy.ai/hackathon-2026
life after code by gitlab
prizes: not announced yet.
build around: agentic automation across the post-code devsecops lifecycle, with gitlab, google cloud, and anthropic involved.
deadline: october 27, 2026
https://gitlab-transcend.devpost.com/
gsma mena ignite open gateway hackathon
prizes: cash prizes for the top 3 teams + travel support to present at mwc doha. exact cash amounts are not currently published.
build around: camara network apis + ai for telecom and network-enabled applications.
deadline: october 30, 2026
keep an eye on @commonsmade
@commonsmade is also expected to announce another builder hackathon later this month.
if you are specifically looking for newer competitions before they get crowded, their x account is one i would keep an eye on.
where i find hackathons
a lot more will probably appear throughout october.
if you want to search yourself instead of waiting for another list, these are the places i would check first.
hacklist.io
one of the cleaner developer-focused aggregators for web3 and ai hackathons, bounties, and grants.
devpost
still one of the best places to find larger company-backed competitions from teams like meta, amazon, aws, nvidia, qloo, and opencv.
https://devpost.com/hackathons
dorahacks
probably the broadest place to search for web3 hackathons, ecosystem grants, and builder programs.
https://dorahacks.io/hackathon
lablab.ai
mostly useful for ai hackathons, agent competitions, and foundation-model challenges.
superteam earn
worth watching if you build on solana. you will find ecosystem bounties, grants, smaller competitions, and colosseum-related opportunities here.
akindo
good for smaller wave hacks and ecosystem-specific builder programs.
taikai network
useful for european developer competitions and open innovation challenges.
https://taikai.network/hackathons
kaggle competitions
not traditional hackathons, but one of the best places to find serious machine learning and research competitions with defined benchmarks and prize pools.
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions
hackerearth
mostly enterprise developer challenges, recruitment hackathons, and programming competitions.
https://www.hackerearth.com/challenges/hackathon/
devfolio
strong for developer communities, web3 ecosystems, and regional hackathons.
https://devfolio.co/hackathons
that is the october list for now.
i am deliberately not trying to include every hackathon on the internet.
a giant prize headline does not automatically make something worth spending three days building for.
check the rules, number of prize slots, eligibility, required integrations, judging criteria, existing submission count where available, and what the prize is actually paid in before committing your time.
then pick something you can genuinely ship.
goodluc
