2019 to 2026: My Hacktoberfest Journey from Participant to Host

Sakil Hasan Saikat — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:16:55 +0000

In 2019, I signed up for Hacktoberfest as a school kid and contributed nothing.

In 2026, I hosted Hacktoberfest in my city and appeared in the official launch video.

This is the story of how I got from one to the other.

2019: The Year I Couldn't

I was still in school when I first heard about Hacktoberfest. I joined, full of excitement, but I didn't know how open source worked. Git, forks, pull requests: it all felt like a club for "real developers."

October ended, and I had no pull requests to show for it.

But I never forgot it.

2020: The Year I Finally Did It

A year later, I came back, and this time I was determined to finish.

My first pull requests were messy. I made mistakes, got stuck on Git, and had to figure things out one error at a time. But I kept going, and when the pull requests were done, I had completed Hacktoberfest 2020.

The rewards were nice. I earned my Hacktoberfest T-shirt, and a tree was planted in my name through the Treenation project. But the real prize was bigger: I now knew that a kid from Bangladesh could belong in open source too.

That small win changed how I saw myself.

The Years in Between

Every October after that, Hacktoberfest stayed part of my life. In the meantime, I grew into cybersecurity, bug bounty hunting, and building HackZar, a bug triage platform that started as a university project.

But one thought kept coming back: Who is doing this for the students in my city?

When I was in school, nobody around me told me Hacktoberfest was something I could do. I wanted to be that person for someone else.

2026: Becoming the Host

This year, I created Hacktoberfest Hack Day Khulna x HackZar through MLH. It was my first time hosting Hacktoberfest for my local community.

The theme was open-source AI and open-weight models, with talks, workshops, project submissions, and judging.

Hosting taught me things contributing never did:

Plans change. We first planned the event for October 1, but university final exams were running at the same time. We moved it to October 31. It was a hard call, but forcing it into an exam week would have been worse.
Partners matter. I reached out to people who believed in the idea, and 169Pi joined as our Open-Source AI Partner. Jagoron News supported us as a local media partner.
Logistics are real. Waiting for the swag box to clear customs had me refreshing tracking pages more than I'd like to admit. When it finally arrived, the stickers and T-shirts made everything feel real.

A Surprise from the Hacktoberfest Team

While I was planning the event, the Hacktoberfest team reached out with an invitation I never expected: they wanted me to be featured in the official Hacktoberfest 2026 launch video.

I recorded my short clip, sent it in, and waited. The video went live on October 1, 2026, when MLH and DEV kicked off Hacktoberfest for the whole world.

Seeing my story as part of that launch felt unreal. I shared my journey as a local organizer, hoping it would remind someone out there that you don't have to be in a big city to start something.

Think about it for a second. In 2019, I was a school kid who couldn't make a single contribution. In 2026, I was in the video that welcomed the world's largest open-source celebration.

You can find me in the video at 8:30:

▶ Watch my part directly (starts at 8:30)

Hack Day

On October 31, 2026, at Northern University of Business & Technology Khulna, we ran the event.

The room filled with laptops, stickers, snacks and students building projects together. Seeing people share ideas, ask questions and help each other made all the planning worth it.

33 people registered and 12 showed up. It wasn't a huge crowd, but it was exactly the kind of room I wished existed when I was a school kid.

Our winner was Bounty Triage AI by Mahmudur L., who took home the Best Open-Source AI Project award. Watching a local student build something like that in a few hours was my favorite moment of the day.

📸 See the fest pictures in my LinkedIn post: Hacktoberfest Hack Day Khulna x HackZar

Event page: hackzar.com/hf2026.html

Thank You

MLH and Jacklyn Biggin for the support and for making this possible
The Hacktoberfest team at MLH and DEV for inviting me to be part of the launch video
Hacktoberfest sponsors for keeping this program alive for everyone
169Pi and Jagoron News, our local partners
Everyone who came, built, and asked questions

What I Learned

The 2019 version of me thought open source was not for him. The 2020 version proved him wrong. The 2026 version realized something more important:

Contributing makes you a developer. Making space for others makes you a community.

If you're a student somewhere thinking "I'm not ready yet," you probably are. And if you've already contributed, consider hosting next year. You don't need a big venue or a big crowd. You need one room, one idea, and the will to show up.

Did you take part in Hacktoberfest this year, as a contributor or a host? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.

DEV Community: Sakil Hasan Saikat