Hacktoberfest 2026 Is Not What You Remember (And That's Actually Good News)
Last updated: October 1, 2026
If you've done Hacktoberfest before, you probably remember the drill: open four pull requests, wait for the merge notifications, and wear your free T-shirt with quiet pride.
Forget all of that. Pull requests no longer count toward Hacktoberfest rewards. The whole event has been rebuilt from the ground up, and this year it's about learning and building with open-source AI.
Don't close the tab yet. The new version is free, open to beginners, and has more ways to earn swag than the old one did. This guide walks through what changed, why, and exactly how to take part, online or in person.
The 60-second version
- Pull requests are out. Neither PRs nor merge requests count toward rewards anymore.
- The theme is open-source AI. The tagline is "AI belongs to everyone," and the focus is open-weight models, agents, and the tools around them.
- There are two ways to join: 300+ one-day in-person events called Fests, and an online program with livestreams, challenges, and a week-long event.
- Rewards run on stickers. You earn virtual stickers for activities, and real stickers get mailed to you once you collect enough.
- It's free, and you need to be 13 or older.
- MLH and DEV run it now, with DigitalOcean (the original creator) as presenting partner.
Old vs. new: what actually changed
| The old Hacktoberfest (2014-2025) | Hacktoberfest 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Core task | Open 4 pull requests on participating repos | Learn and build with open-source AI |
| How progress is measured | PR count | Virtual stickers from activities |
| Main format | Online, solo, on GitHub | 300+ in-person Fests plus an online program |
| Reward | T-shirt (or a tree planted, in some years) | Sticker pack by mail, with extra tiers up to a raffle |
| Who runs it | DigitalOcean | MLH and DEV, with DigitalOcean presenting |
| Open-source contributions | The entire point | Still welcome, just not rewarded |
| Community element | Mostly social media and Discord | Real events in real cities |
| T-shirt | The headline prize | Only at Fests, while supplies last, not guaranteed |
A small correction to a common memory: older editions let you contribute to any public repo that opted in, not just a short curated list. The 2026 change is bigger than swapping the list. The counter itself is gone.
Why they changed it
Short answer: the spam got out of hand.
The organizers say it's now easier than ever to churn out low-effort pull requests, and maintainers kept paying the price in review time and burnout. Their own history page describes the 2015-2025 era as one where thousands of people made a first contribution, but the flood of low-quality PRs eventually became too much for the people on the receiving end.
So rather than patching the rules again, they dropped the incentive. The mission page puts it simply: open source was never defined by a PR counter, and this year they'd rather help people learn to build with open models and tools.
You can agree or disagree with the call. But the reasoning is easy to follow, and anyone who has ever maintained a popular repo in October will probably nod along.
Meet the new cast: MLH, DEV, and DigitalOcean
- Major League Hacking (MLH) runs the Fests and the sign-in system (MyMLH).
- DEV runs the online challenges and hands out badges.
- DigitalOcean started Hacktoberfest in 2014 and is still on board as presenting partner.
- A long sponsor list backs the swag and events, including GitHub, MongoDB, Snowflake, Google Cloud, IBM, Qualcomm, Arduino, and many others.
Two ways to take part
You can do either one, or both. They stack.
Path 1: Go to a Fest (in person)
A Fest is a free, one-day, locally organized event. Almost all of them are free, though a few pop-ups happen inside ticketed conferences. There are two flavors:
| Hack Day | Meetup | |
|---|---|---|
| Vibe | Mini hackathon | Community hangout |
| What you do | Build a project with open-weight models or open-source AI tools, then demo it | Talks, workshops, panels, and meeting people |
| Team? | Solo or any team size (prizes cover up to four members) | No team needed |
| Prizes | Yes, usually a swag bag | No |
| Bring | Laptop and charger | Curiosity, plus a laptop only if the host asks |
A few things worth knowing:
- Beginners are welcome. You don't need to build an AI project to attend a Meetup.
- Everyone on a team must register and check in. One person submits the project.
- Projects must be finished and submitted on the day, before the host's deadline.
- Every in-person attendee gets an official participation certificate, available in your My Hacktoberfest dashboard.
- Swag varies by Fest. T-shirts and other goodies are limited and not guaranteed. The local host decides how to hand them out. Select Hack Days also have Arduino boards available while supplies last.
How to join a Fest:
- Open Find a Fest and search by city, country, or name (or use your location).
- Open the Fest's page and read the details: date, venue, food, accessibility, and what to install or bring.
- Register on that Fest's own page with a free MyMLH account. Every Fest has a separate registration.
- Show up, check in with the host, and say hi to a stranger.
- Use the Contact Host button on the page for anything about logistics, accommodations, or late arrival.
Path 2: Join online (from anywhere)
The online program runs all month and has three main pieces:
- Livestreams. Sessions on open-weight models, agents, and tools. You check in with a code shown on screen to collect a sticker.
- DEV Challenges. A weekend kickoff challenge plus four weekly open-source AI rounds, all labeled as cash-prize challenges.
- Global Hack Week: Hacktoberfest. A week-long virtual festival of livestreams and challenges, run by MLH.
Here are the dates as listed on DEV's challenge hub and in community guides. Always double-check the deadline printed on each official challenge page, because that's the one that counts.
| Activity | Dates (UTC, as reported) |
|---|---|
| Weekend Challenge | Oct 2 (02:00) to Oct 5 (06:59) |
| Open-Source AI Challenge, Week 1 | Oct 5 to Oct 11 |
| Global Hack Week | Oct 9 to Oct 15 |
| Open-Source AI Challenge, Week 2 | Oct 12 to Oct 18 |
| Open-Source AI Challenge, Week 3 | Oct 19 to Oct 25 |
| Open-Source AI Challenge, Week 4 | Oct 26 to Oct 31 |
The full online calendar lives on the official schedule page and shows times in your own time zone.
Heads up: the exact prize amounts and the actual challenge prompts weren't public when I researched this. The prompts are revealed when each challenge launches, so don't start building a "winning entry" before you've read the real brief. Challenge announcements go out under DEV's
#hf26challengetag.
The sticker system, explained
This is the new reward engine, and it's friendlier than it sounds.
There are 24 virtual stickers in total: 22 you can earn online, plus 2 you earn in person (attend a Fest, or host one). Each one is tied to an activity.
The reward tiers
| Stickers collected | What you get |
|---|---|
| 3 | A real, mailed Hacktoberfest 2026 sticker pack |
| 10 | A bonus holographic sticker added to your pack |
| 17 | Completionist status, plus automatic entry into a raffle for a Hacktoberfest 2026 T-shirt or an Arduino Uno Q board |
Two stickers are required before anything ships: signing in to Hacktoberfest.com, and adding your mailing address to your MyMLH account. Do those first. They also count toward your total, so you're already two-thirds of the way to the first reward after five minutes.
Where the rest come from
| Category | Examples of what earns a sticker |
|---|---|
| Livestreams | Check into 1, 3, or 5 livestreams, or the launch livestream |
| DEV Challenges | Connect your DEV account, then submit to the Launch Weekend and Weeks 1 to 4 challenges |
| Global Hack Week | Complete registration challenges, check into a session, and hit 15, 30, or 75 points |
| Tools | Install and log in to DevRelay, join the MLH Community Discord, connect your DigitalOcean account |
| Surveys | Fill out the pre-event and post-event surveys |
| In person | Attend a Fest, or host one |
The full, up-to-date list is on the Activities page, and your personal progress lives in My Hacktoberfest.
Good to know about swag
- Online participants don't get T-shirts. Those are a Fest thing, and even there they aren't guaranteed. Completionists can still win one in the raffle.
- Mailing takes a while. The main site says stickers and prizes go out 8 to 12 weeks after Hacktoberfest ends, while the FAQ says packs should arrive at most destinations within 30 to 60 days of shipping starting. Plan for a wait either way.
- Activity done early still counts. The FAQ says eligible activity completed before milestones were announced is credited.
- Signing in alone won't earn you a pack. You need to do at least a few activities.
Your quick-start checklist
If you only do one section of this article, make it this one.
Today (5 to 10 minutes):
- Sign in at My Hacktoberfest with a free MyMLH account.
- Add your mailing address to MyMLH.
- Connect your DEV account (optional, but it earns a sticker and a DEV badge, and it's needed for DEV Challenges credit).
- Join the MLH Community Discord.
This week:
- Register for Global Hack Week: Hacktoberfest, which is free.
- Follow each DEV Hacktoberfest challenge so you get launch notifications.
- Check the schedule and mark a few livestreams.
- Look up Fests near you and register if one fits.
All month:
- Check into livestreams and submit to challenges as they open.
- Fill out the pre-event survey early and the post-event survey at the end.
What should you build? Ideas to get started
The official line is that instead of counting PRs, you'll write your first skills.md, build an open-source agent, fine-tune an open-weight model, or follow your curiosity. Here are some starter ideas by difficulty.
Beginner-friendly
- A reusable agent skill: a folder with a
SKILL.md, a README, a license, and a couple of examples. - A small local chatbot running an open-weight model through a local runtime such as Ollama or llama.cpp.
- A tiny evaluation script that checks whether a model gives consistent answers to the same prompt.
Intermediate
- A small open-source agent that combines a local model, a few tools (files, APIs, MCP servers), and simple memory.
- A CPU-friendly fine-tuning experiment using Hugging Face's PEFT or TRL. Keep it small. A tiny project that works beats a giant one that doesn't.
- A tool-call correctness test suite or prompt regression tests.
Ambitious
- Improve an open-source agent harness or SDK: better error messages, safer permissions, clearer setup on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
- Build an evaluation dashboard that compares open-weight models side by side.
A good project checklist before you submit anything: what real problem does it solve, which license applies, which model and under what terms, can someone else run it without hidden steps, is there a short demo or screenshot, and are the limitations written down.
But I still want to contribute to open source!
You absolutely can, and nobody is stopping you. The organizers say outright that open source runs 365 days a year and that you can contribute anytime. They just aren't giving swag for it anymore. They point newcomers to this beginner's guide to getting started.
If you're going to send a PR this October, here's how to be the kind of contributor maintainers love:
-
Read
CONTRIBUTING.mdfirst. Some projects require you to be assigned the issue, get design approval, sign a CLA, or follow an AI-disclosure policy. - Check that the issue is still open and unclaimed, with no competing PR.
- Reproduce the problem yourself. A fix without a reproduction is a guess.
- Keep the change small and focused, and add a test that fails before your fix and passes after it.
- Be honest about AI help. Many repos now ask for disclosure. Never submit code you can't explain or test.
- Say what you're about to do before writing a lot of code. A short comment like "I reproduced this, here's my plan, anyone already on it?" saves everyone time.
Where to look
Hacktoberfest has no official participating-repo list this year. These are active projects in the open-AI orbit that have accepted outside contributions. Treat them as places to browse, not guaranteed openings, since issues get claimed quickly.
- MCP TypeScript SDK and MCP Python SDK
- Hugging Face PEFT and TRL
- Giskard (AI evaluation)
- MDN content (documentation, with low setup cost)
- Browser Use
- FastMCP
A smaller, well-scoped issue in a project with a clear guide is almost always a better bet than a big feature nobody has approved.
Want to host a Fest?
Anyone can. If your city has no Fest yet, it could be you.
| Hack Day | Meetup | |
|---|---|---|
| Attendees build projects | Yes | No |
| Workshops and speakers | Yes | Optional |
| Prizes | Yes | No |
| MLH funding | Yes | No |
- Applications are open and are confirmed on a rolling basis, within about a week of a completed application.
- Hosts get stickers, swag, and prizes for participants, a listing in the searchable directory, programming help, and (for Hack Days) funding with reimbursement for certain event expenses.
- Start here: Host a Fest, then read the host handbook.
- Hosting also earns you a sticker and a DEV badge.
FAQ
Do pull requests count at all?
No. They don't count toward rewards, and the organizers say that's deliberate.
Can I still get a T-shirt?
Maybe, but only at a Fest while supplies last (the host decides), or through the Completionist raffle if you hit 17 stickers. Online participants aren't promised one.
Who can join?
People aged 13 and over, subject to country eligibility rules. Individual Fests can have their own age limits, and if you're under 18 you should ask the host about parental permission. DEV Challenges have separate contest eligibility rules.
Is it free?
Yes, including nearly all Fests and Global Hack Week.
Do I need to build an AI project to take part?
No. You can watch livestreams, attend a Meetup, join the Discord, and do surveys. Those all count toward stickers.
Do I need a GPU?
Not for everything. Plenty of beginner-friendly work (documentation, SDK bugs, evaluation tools, small fine-tuning experiments) runs fine on a laptop CPU.
Who do I contact with problems?
Use Contact Host on a Fest's page for event questions, the relevant challenge page for DEV Challenge questions, and the support emails listed on the official FAQ for swag, prizes, or safety concerns.
Final thoughts
It's okay to feel a little nostalgic. The four-PR challenge got a lot of people into open source, and it's strange to see it retired.
But the new format has a lot going for it. Maintainers get a break from the spam. Beginners get real events and a clear, low-stakes path to a reward. And if you've been meaning to try out open-weight models or build your first agent, October now comes with a built-in excuse, a community, and stickers.
So sign in, add your address, grab those first two stickers, and see where the month takes you.
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