India has the deepest student tech-event calendar of any region and the thinnest published deadline information, which is why third-party posts here are so often wrong. The programmes below were each confirmed on the organiser’s own site. Two have hard, imminent deadlines. One important one has already closed, and pretending otherwise would be the most useful thing for you to know this month.
Two events are open and worth acting on now: Hackyard Build 2026 closes 10 October and takes solo entrants, and TCS CodeVita Season 14 has registration open but, notably, no published deadline. Smart India Hackathon 2026 has already closed its registrations. If you were planning on SIH this year, that plan needs to change.
Hackyard Build 2026 — closes 10 October
| Deadline | 10 October 2026 — five days from this post |
|---|---|
| Applications | 14 September to 10 October 2026 |
| Build event | 24–25 October 2026, IIT Guwahati |
| Format | Two stages. Stage 1 is an online application. Selected builders go to a 24-hour physical build |
| Eligibility | Open to everyone — developers, designers, students, founders, researchers. No student-status requirement |
| Team size | Solo explicitly allowed, or teams of 2–4 |
| Stage 1 needs | An idea, a problem, or a skill. No finished product required |
| Cost | Application and event entry free. Travel is not covered; food and accommodation at a nominal participant fee. 16+ for the Render credit programme |
| Official site | hackyard.org/build2026 |
Two details make this unusual and worth knowing before you apply. First, the judging is weighted 40% on what you actually built, with 20% each for the problem, ingenuity and potential. That is an unusually build-weighted rubric for a hackathon and it favours people who arrive with something working.
Second, it accepts solo entrants and non-students, which widens the field considerably. Expect a mixed applicant pool rather than a student-only one. If you are a student without a team, this is the rare Indian event where that is not a disadvantage.
The honest caveat: Stage 1 is a free online application, so you can enter from anywhere. Stage 2 is in person at IIT Guwahati and travel is not funded. Treat the application as low-cost and the trip as a separate decision.
TCS CodeVita Season 14 — open, but no deadline published
| Deadline | Not stated on the official site. Registration is open now |
|---|---|
| Official site | codevita.tcsapps.com |
| Who can enter | Students pursuing graduation or post-graduation in any science or engineering stream, expecting to complete their course in 2027, 2028, 2029 or 2030 |
| Languages | C, C++, Java and Python only |
| Format | Multiple elimination rounds, then a grand finale in India. 3 hours per round this season |
| Prize | Top 3 share USD 20,000 |
| Scale | 669,000+ contestants from 109 countries in Season 13, per the organisers |
This is the largest individual-entry programming competition in the world by participation, and it is the one to enter if you want algorithmic depth rather than a weekend project. Two things to plan around.
- The four-language restriction is real. If you work in Rust, Go, JavaScript or C#, this is not your event.
- No deadline is published. Third-party posts have circulated a November date for Season 14, and we could not find it on the official portal. Treat that date as unverified and check the portal yourself. Register now rather than trusting a date you cannot confirm — registration being open is the fact; the closing date is not.
Already closed — and one that is not really open
- Smart India Hackathon 2026: registrations closed. The official portal shows a closed registration state. The December grand finale is real, but it is not enterable. Several third-party posts still carry a September submission deadline, which is wrong.
- Google STEP and Google SWE Intern (summer 2027): closed. The official postings give an anticipated close of 25 September 2026. Claims circulating on LinkedIn and aggregator blogs that “STEP 2027 opens in November” could not be traced to any Google Careers posting. Do not plan around them.
- ETHGlobal Mumbai, 5–7 November: listed on ETHGlobal’s own events index, but the event detail page is currently returning an error, so eligibility and cost cannot be confirmed. We are not publishing registration instructions for it. Watch the events index until the detail page loads.
- MNITJ Student Hackathon (MIIC, Jaipur): the institute’s page states a 25 October 2026 deadline, but does not publish the event dates, fee or rules. The page currently has injected spam link text appended to its footer, so treat it as unverified and confirm by email to the institute before registering.
The honest gap
There is currently no verified open Indian government-run student competition. Smart India Hackathon has closed for 2026, and the private and institute-level events are carrying the load instead. That is a real gap rather than a reporting failure, and it is worth knowing before you build a plan around one.
If you are in India and want the two things most likely to help you — an individual-entry programming contest and a build-heavy weekend — then TCS CodeVita and Hackyard Build are the two to act on, in that order, and the first of those five days is the binding deadline.
Keep checking
DevStackIO publishes verified student event deadlines with the official link for each, and we add entries as organisers confirm dates rather than as aggregators report them. Two useful comparisons: the global round-up of student events open right now, and how to read a hackathon prize figure, because four of the events in this round-up advertise totals that are mostly not cash.
Related Tools
Try these companion tools on DevStackIO Tools:
- days between dates calculator — track India student tech event deadlines in October 2026.
