Bay Hacks

Bay Hacks 2026 — Tampa Bay's Innovation Hackathon

Bay Hacks is a 24-hour collegiate hackathon bringing students from across Florida to the University of South Florida to build, compete for prizes, and pitch to a panel of judges. Form a team, pick a track, and turn an idea into something real in a single weekend.

Bay Hacks is open to currently enrolled undergraduate students. Bring your student ID to check in.

Mentors and technical workshops run throughout the event. Whether you're writing your first line of code or you've shipped before, every skill level is welcome.

Hosted by Tampa Bay Innovation. Free to attend.

Tracks

• Med Tech — medical devices, diagnostics, health data, and accessibility
• Hardware — embedded systems, robotics, IoT, and wearables
• AI — applied AI and machine-learning projects

• UX University Challenge: Silver Spring Community Intelligence — bring scattered public census and community data together into a queryable map. Full brief below. (Sponsored by UX University.)

• Best Use of ElevenLabs — build with ElevenLabs' AI audio & voice APIs. Projects must use ElevenLabs to qualify.
• Best Use of Render — build using Render Workflows. Track winners must use Workflows to qualify.

Sponsored tracks (ElevenLabs, Render, UX University) have their own qualification requirements, judging criteria, and prize terms, listed in each track's description above and in the Prizes section below. Check them before you build.

UX University Challenge: Silver Spring Community Intelligence

Public data about a community exists, but it's scattered across census records, county datasets, GIS layers, planning documents, and surveys, and it's hard to actually use. Your challenge: bring that fragmented public data together and make it understandable and queryable.

Map Silver Spring, Maryland, and let a user explore who lives in and around the community, then use Fenton Village (a diverse district of 240+ local businesses) as your first real-world application. Teams are free to pull from Census/ACS, Montgomery County and Montgomery Planning data, GIS, surveys, mobility and business data, and any other public sources.

You won't map all of Silver Spring in 24 hours, but you do need a working MVP by the end, however basic. That's what wins, and the winning team gets to keep building it with UX University. What we're looking for is a strong approach, a sound architecture, and a working proof of concept we could keep building on, one that shows the evidence behind its answers.

The winning team receives $500 and a paid continuation opportunity to keep developing the platform with UX University.

Schedule

Friday, September 18

• 6:00 PM — Check-in & networking
• 6:30 PM — Opening ceremony (dinner served)
• 7:00 PM — Hacking begins + sponsor keynote
• 8:00 PM & 10:00 PM — Technical workshops
• 12:00 AM — Midnight snack

Saturday, September 19

• 8:30 AM — Breakfast
• 10:00 AM — Workshop
• 1:00 PM — Workshop
• 7:00 PM — Hacking ends & submissions close

Sunday, September 20

• 9:00 AM — Breakfast
• 10:00 AM — Closing ceremony & awards