HackFRee 2026

About the challenge

HackFRee follows a traditional hackathon format designed to support all experience levels. This year’s theme, Innovating for Life, Community, and Beyond, invites participants to create meaningful solutions that improve everyday life, strengthen communities, or push the boundaries of emerging technologies.

Students will work in teams of up to four to identify a problem and build a creative, impactful, and functional solution using programming, hardware, or any other technology they choose. Projects may fall under any of our three challenge categories:

• Hobby & Lifestyle: Tools that enhance passions, solve daily pain points, or make hobbies more accessible.
• Social Good & Community: Solutions that address community needs, improve collaboration, connect people to resources, and improve society.
• Emerging Technologies: Innovative applications of AI/ML, AR/VR, IoT, automation, etc.

Throughout the day, you’ll find HackFRee Leadership Team members and teachers in HackFRee shirts who can help with every step of the hackathon process. Whether you’re new to coding or building your project, support is always available, so don’t hesitate to ask for help!

How to Get Started

1. Form your team: Find up to three other participants to work with and choose a team name. You can also work alone if you choose to. If you don’t already have a group, you can meet new teammates during the team-formation period at the start of the event.
2. Identify a problem: Think about an issue that affects a specific group, such as your age group, your school, your community, a hobby group, or even a global challenge. Choose a problem with meaningful impact and clear long-term effects, and be sure it relates to our themes this year.
3. Use the design thinking framework: Brainstorm, prototype, test, and refine as you build your project. Whatever you’re working on to build, such as a website, app, game, AI tool, or hardware prototype, follow the design thinking steps to create a thoughtful and user-focused solution.