Impact Forge: Summer 2026 Hackathon

Impact Forge is a virtual code sprint for student developers. You get a weekend, a team, free compute, and a blank repo. What you do with it is up to you.

Free to enter. Open to any student 13+, anywhere in the world. No travel, no application, no cost.

Free AI compute. Our partner Featherless.ai gives every participant 25 inference credits — 300 for the winning team — with access to 30,000+ open-source models including Kimi k3 and GLM 5.2. Most student projects get stubbed out because API bills are real. Yours won't have to be.

A team, if you want one. Teams are 1–4 people. Solo is completely fine. If you don't have a group, our Discord has a team-matching channel where you post what you want to build and find people who want to build it with you.

Something to show for it. Every submission is a public repo, a demo video, and a technical writeup. Win or lose, you finish Sunday night with a real project you can put in front of a college admissions officer or an internship recruiter.

Pick either one. There's no advantage to one over the other.

General Innovation
Full-stack web or mobile apps, developer tooling, productivity platforms, automation workflows. Anything you'd actually want to use.

Computational Research
Software applied to scientific computing, mathematical modeling, or biological/neuroscience data analysis. Good fit if you're interested in research and want to build toward it.

1st place — YRI Fellowship research placement
Every member of the winning team (up to 4) gets a full research placement through the YRI Fellowship, including direct mentorship from Ivy League faculty. Valued at $1,500 per person, $6,000 for a full team. Plus 300 Featherless credits.

2nd place — cash prize
3rd place — cash prize

All times Central Standard Time.

Every submission is scored out of 60 points across six items. Each item is scored 0–10 by our judging panel.

Technical Execution & Code Architecture — 20 pts

• Code Structure & Quality (10) — clean, modular architecture, real error handling, original logic rather than templates
• API & Compute Integration (10) — functional integration of Featherless.ai or third-party APIs; advanced inference pipelines score highest

Originality & Problem Solving — 10 pts

• Innovation & Approach (10) — solves a real problem with a fresh approach or a clever combination of tools

Utility, Functionality & Real-World Impact — 10 pts

• Functional Execution (10) — a working prototype that solves the problem for clear target users

Pitch, Demo & Documentation — 20 pts

• 3-Minute Video Demo (10) — concise, shows live execution and architecture
• Documentation & Setup (10) — complete README with setup steps, architecture diagram, and citations

Note that presentation and documentation are worth 20 of 60 points — the same as your code architecture. A working project with a confusing demo loses to a simpler project that explains itself well. Budget time on Sunday for the video and README; most teams don't.

By Sunday 6:00 PM CST:

1. Public repo — GitHub or GitLab, with a README that explains how to run it
2. Demo video — under 3 minutes, Loom/YouTube/Vimeo, showing the thing working
3. Technical writeup — short. What problem, what stack, what was hard.

• All core development happens during the 48-hour window. Open-source libraries, APIs, and frameworks are fully allowed — you just can't show up with the project already built.
• Max 4 people per team. Everyone claiming a prize must be on the Devpost roster.
• Broken links, empty repos, and private videos can't be judged. Check them before you submit.

Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/n9xUjhWhPs — it's where team matching, announcements, and organizer Q&A all happen.

Or email ayaan.rustagi2010@gmail.com