Student Hackathons and Competitions Open Right Now

Six student hackathons and competitions were confirmed open this week, and two of them close within days. Every entry below was checked on the organiser’s own site rather than an aggregator, which matters here more than usual: four of them advertise prize totals that are mostly sponsor credits rather than cash, and a few third-party posts are still carrying dates the official sites do not show.

The two urgent ones are ForgeHacks and Hackyard Build, both closing 10 October. If you are only going to act on one thing from this page, make it those. Everything else has at least three weeks of runway.

Event	Closes	Who	Cash reality
ForgeHacks Online	10 Oct	Students, solo or 1–4	$100 first place; rest is credits
Hackyard Build	10 Oct	Everyone, solo allowed	Small cash, larger support pool
Bridge The Gap Hacks	12 Nov registration	Students aged 13–21	$0 cash
NEW2AN	31 Oct	Undergraduates, teams of 3–5	Not published
DSH Hacks V2	14 Nov	Students 13+	$0 cash despite a $100k title
Since AI Hackathon	Not published	Students and professionals	Free entry

Deadlines as published by each organiser, checked 5 October 2026. Regional detail for each is below.

Table of Contents

Closing 10 October

ForgeHacks Online is a fully online, student-only AI hackathon running 3–10 October, with six tracks: healthcare, education, climate, business, cybersecurity and creativity. Solo entry is allowed or teams of one to four. Open to all countries. Judged on real-world impact, technical depth and execution.

It advertises $672,570 in prizes, and Devpost’s own breakdown shows most of that is sponsor credits, memberships and gift cards, with $100 cash for first place. That does not make it a bad event — it is one of the few globally open, student-only AI events still taking registrations, but budget accordingly. Deadline is 10 October, 12:00pm EDT.

Hackyard Build 2026 is a two-stage event with a free online Stage 1 application — an idea, a problem or a skill, no finished product needed, then a 24-hour physical build on 24–25 October at IIT Guwahati. Solo entrants are explicitly allowed and it is open to non-students, which widens the field. Judging is 40% on what you built. Applications close 10 October. Travel is not covered. India-focused, but Stage 1 is online and global; details in the India round-up.

NEW2AN — closes 31 October, undergraduates only

NEW2AN 2026 is restricted to currently registered undergraduates, with teams of three to five. Cross-institution and cross-country teams are allowed, which is rare and worth exploiting if you are a small cohort at a lesser-known institution. English required, one submission per student.

The structure is concept submission, then a shortlist of roughly ten to fifteen teams who get mentoring and build working prototypes, then an online or hybrid final on 8 December, with awards at the NEW2AN conference in Colombo on 15 December. Shortlisted teams are notified on 9 November. The judging rubric is published and weighted: technical quality 25%, innovation 20%, problem relevance 20%. Prize amounts are not published.

DSH Hacks V2 — closes 14 November, and there is no cash

DSH Hacks V2 is a global student-only competition on AI in healthcare, 13 November submissions, individuals or teams. It requires a working prototype, a demo video, a one-page description and code.

Two reasons it is still worth a look despite the prize situation. It explicitly welcomes AI-assisted building and low or no-code projects, which is unusual candour for a student competition. And the listed prizes are non-cash (sponsor credits, memberships, gift cards) plus a scholarship for a research fellowship. Despite the “$100k+” in the event title, there is no cash prize pool. Enter for the portfolio value and the fellowship, not for money.

Bridge The Gap — for under-21s only

Bridge The Gap Hacks runs 15–20 November, registration stated as 12 November, and is open to all countries. Its distinguishing constraint is the age band: 13 to 21. If you are older, most of the AI hackathons above will accept you and this one will not.

It has $0 in cash prizes and its judging criteria were still marked as forthcoming when we checked. We are listing it for the age eligibility rather than the rewards.

Since AI Hackathon — 6–8 November, Turku

Since AI is a 72-hour, execution-focused event at EduCity, Turku AMK in Finland. Teams form on day one and pick either a partner challenge(from Google for Developers, Bayer, Sandvik, Kongsberg and Valmet) or an open track. Compute and GPU access come from Google and LUMI. Free to enter, open to students and professionals alike, held in English, and an official MLH 2026 Season Member Event with over a thousand builders expected.

No registration deadline is published on the official site, though registration is open. Apply promptly. The stated format is working demos only, no slide decks.

One that is not student-only

Amazon’s Build, Ship, Shape hackathon closes 23 October and is not restricted to students. It needs only the age of majority, so individual students are welcome. It is the largest of these with over 31,000 registered participants. We cover it separately because of one track worth your attention, in what the Alexa+ MCP track actually asks you to build.

What we could not confirm

ETHGlobal Mumbai, 5–7 November: listed on ETHGlobal’s own index, but the event detail page is erroring, so eligibility and cost are unconfirmed. No registration instructions until it loads.
TCS CodeVita Season 14: registration is open but no deadline is published. Widely reported as November; not on the official portal. See the India round-up.
Google Summer of Code 2027, Google STEP 2027, MLH Fellowship, Smart India Hackathon 2026: all closed or unpublished. Do not plan around third-party posts on these.

What to do this week

By 10 October: ForgeHacks if you want a fully online, student-only AI event with six tracks. Hackyard Build if you would rather submit a Stage 1 idea that costs nothing and travel later.
Before choosing, read how to read a hackathon prize figure. Two of the entries above have no cash at all.
Check your age band first. Under 21 changes which events are open to you, and over 21 changes it the other way.
Solo is possible at ForgeHacks, Hackyard and Bridge The Gap. You do not need a team to start.

Keep checking back

This page is a snapshot. Organisers confirm dates on their own schedules and we add entries as they do, rather than republishing what aggregators claim. Regional breakdowns are worth bookmarking if you are outside the US or Europe: India, Europe, and Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Hemisphere, which has genuinely the least to offer and is worth knowing about in advance.