Blog
Hackathon data, guides and community
Data-driven essays, practical guides and stories from the global hackathon database.
Jul 21, 2026 · 4 min read
What We Learned Adding Friction to Our Onboarding
The obvious way to onboard someone is to get out of their way. We did the opposite — we added a few deliberate steps before the payoff — and it made the first session far better. Here is what worked and why.
Read the essayJun 26, 2026
Who Is Actually in the Room? Why We Built Estimated Audience Profiles
Sponsors do not pick events by headcount. They pick by who shows up. So we built a way to estimate that for every hackathon.
Jun 12, 2026
The Most Active Hackathon Cities in the World
The most active hackathon cities are not just the places with the most developers. They are the places where universities, sponsors, venues, and organiser networks compound.
Jun 1, 2026
The State of Hackathons 2026
Our annual data essay on where hackathons are heading: AI as the default frame, the return of in-person events, sponsor selectivity, and the cities and organisers shaping the year.
May 30, 2026
Why Most Hackathon Projects Die After Demo Day
The demo works, the crowd claps, and then nothing happens. Most hackathon projects fade because they were built for judging, not for continuation.
May 21, 2026
Why Most Developer Sponsorship Budgets Are Flying Blind
Developer teams need a better way to choose, compare, and learn from hackathon sponsorships.
May 8, 2026
What 10,000 Hackathons Taught Me About Developer Communities
After indexing more than 10,000 hackathons, a few patterns keep showing up: discovery is broken, local scenes compound, prize money is noisy, and the best events are community infrastructure.
Apr 29, 2026
What Makes a Great Hackathon?
Great hackathons are not the ones with the biggest prizes. They are the ones where the promise is clear, the room feels safe, the scope is realistic, and the demo day actually means something.
Apr 22, 2026
The Beginner's Guide to Your First Hackathon
Nervous about your first hackathon? You do not need to be a great coder, arrive with a team, or know exactly what you are building. You just need to know how the weekend actually works.
Apr 3, 2026
How We Grew HuddleHive to 1,000+ Members
The unglamorous playbook behind growing a developer community past a thousand members: consistent events, beginner-safe rooms, visible values, and real reasons to come back.
Mar 18, 2026
How Developer Tools Companies Find Sponsorship Opportunities at Scale
Most developer tools teams find hackathon partnerships through inbox luck. The stronger motion is to treat them like pipeline: sourced, scored, prioritised, and measured.