Happening Now: DEV Weekend Challenge!! Submissions due March 2 at 7:59am UTC.

Good morning! Good afternoon! Good Evening!

Welcome to our first DEV Weekend Challenge, a short focused challenge designed to fit into your weekend. Since submission window is tight, we've set the timing to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, you'll have the majority of your Saturday and Sunday to participate.

Let's get started!

Our Prompt

Think about the communities that are part of your life: your neighborhood, a book club, a local sports league, an open source project, or any other group that’s meaningful to you. This weekend, we want you to build something for them.

Your mandate is to build an app that serves a community you're a part of or care about. It can solve a real problem, spark a smile, or both. The best submissions will demonstrate a clear understanding of the community's needs and deliver something that genuinely makes their lives a little easier, more connected, or more fun.

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Judging Criteria and Prizes

All submissions will be judged on the following:

• Value Proposition: Does the app meaningfully serve the community it was built for?
• Creativity: Is the concept original or is it an interesting take on a familiar problem?
• Technical Execution: Is the app functional, well-built, and easy to use?
• Writing Quality: Is the submission post clear and does it tell a compelling story about the project?

Three winners will each take home $300 USD, an exclusive DEV badge, and a DEV++ Membership. All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.

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How To Participate

Publish a post on DEV using the submission template below. Your post should give us an overview of the community you built for, what you made, and a demo of your project.

Weekend Challenge Submission Template

Please review our judging criteria, rules, guidelines, and FAQ page before submitting so you understand our participation guidelines and official contest rules such as eligibility requirements.

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Important Dates

• Launch Time: Friday, Feb 27 3:00 AM UTC
• Submissions Due: Monday, Mar 2 7:59 AM UTC

Here's what that looks like across a few timezones:

Timezone	Launch Time (Local)	Submissions Due (Local)
PST	Thursday, Feb 26 at 7:00 PM	Sunday, Mar 1 at 11:59 PM
EST	Thursday, Feb 26 at 10:00 PM	Monday, Mar 2 at 2:59 AM
GMT	Friday, Feb 27 at 3:00 AM	Monday, Mar 2 at 7:59 AM
CET	Friday, Feb 27 at 4:00 AM	Monday, Mar 2 at 8:59 AM
IST	Friday, Feb 27 at 8:30 AM	Monday, Mar 2 at 1:29 PM
JST	Friday, Feb 27 at 12:00 PM	Monday, Mar 2 at 4:59 PM
AEDT	Friday, Feb 27 at 2:00 PM	Monday, Mar 2 at 6:59 PM

Winners will be announced on Thursday, March 12.

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Questions about the challenge? Drop them in the comments below.

Good luck!!

Comments

[Aren Solomon]

Great challenge! I will give this a try. It will be my first challenge here.

[Kyle Y. Parsotan]

I like these challenges. Great way to practice my skills and build projects.

[Elyse West]

I love this idea!! Going to give it some thought and try to vibe code something over the weekend.

[Jess Lee The DEV Team]

YES ELYSE!!

[Sergio Barrera]

Let's go!

[Harsh]

This is such a cool idea! 🚀 I love that the prompt is community-focused—it makes the challenge feel meaningful. Already brainstorming something for my local open-source meetup. Can't wait to see what everyone builds!

[Veronika Kashtanova]

Hey everyone! 👋 I built something for this challenge — ForkToPost 🔱 Paste your GitHub URL → get a ready-to-publish DEV post draft, generated by Gemini AI. Built for every dev here who codes until 2AM and has nothing left for the write-up 😅 Connects directly to your DEV.to profile.
Hope it helps someone submit before the deadline!

[Somadina]

But can any one build such an app, that helps solve a problem for a community they are in, although it just depends on how huge the problem is, and you did not mention where they will submit it how you will view it, will they build it and host it on GitHub, and later send you the link to view and judge?

Based on deadline you gave, I believe that where it is more realistic is if you have a tools you want developers to test their ability with that can generate the website based on prompt and that you can monitor

These are my humble opinion.

[Ryan Swift]

You'll submit right here on DEV. There's a link to a Challenge Submission Template in the post, but I think this link should work too!

I'd definitely recommend including a GitHub repo + a live demo if possible (or a recorded video).

[Prahlad Yeri]

Building an app is quite a comprehensive process, it involves gathering detailed requirements, creating rapport with the stakeholders, designing and coding the solution, perform testing and then deploy to production. A mere 3 day window is too short for this challenge I think.

[Juan Isidoro García Cifuentes]

Wow, this is awesome! Sadly I won't be able to jump in this weekend, but I'm really looking forward to the next one — definitely counting me in for that!
Best of luck to everyone participating, I can't wait to see what you all come up with. Go crush it! 🙌

[Guilherme Zaia]

Weekend hackathons reveal who actually ships vs. who just talks architecture. Real constraint: Can you scope ruthlessly enough to deliver value in 48 hours without cutting corners on data validation or auth? Most 'community apps' die because devs build for imaginary scale instead of solving one painful workflow for 10 real users.