Welcome to the Web Summit Vancouver micro hackathon! Web Summit Vancouver takes place in the Vancouver Convention Centre from May 11 - 14, 2026.

Web Summit is where the future goes to be born. From Lisbon to Qatar, Vancouver and Rio de Janeiro, Web Summit has grown into the world's largest technology and innovation event series. Over one million attendees have joined across four continents, dubbed "Glastonbury for geeks" by The Guardian and "the tech world's glitterati" by Sky News.

About the challenge

This is a micro hackathon taking place onsite from 10am - 1pm on Thursday, May 14. The hackathon is open to all Web Summit Vancouver attendees, regardless of technical background. We now see a reality where individuals can build billion-dollar companies from their own bedrooms. What one person – or a small team – can achieve has changed dramatically, whether they are developers or creatives.

What’s the theme? Well, we’re in the events business so we’d love you to build something that changes how you experience live events. Whether that’s an online medical conference, a local charity walk or a multi-day music festival. You can build from the point of view of the organiser or the attendee.

Get started

Register on Devpost to confirm your place
Join or form a team at our pre-hackathon meetup
In your teams, pick an idea and get those creative juices flowing
Show up in-person on May 14 and get building…

A pre-hackathon meetup is being held onsite at Web Summit Vancouver. Search the schedule in the Web Summit mobile app to find the time and location.

Stuck for inspo? Here are a few prompts to help whittle down your ideas:

What’s the one thing that always ruins a live event for you personally?
What's one superpower you'd give every attendee?
What part of organizing an event feels like it’s still stuck in the year 2006?
What aspect of online events should be brought to in-person events?

Requirements

What to Build

This is a micro hackathon so focus on a single feature rather than a full working product. By the end of the hackathon, you must have a live and interactive URL or a functional demo ready to share with the judges. You can use any tool or service you like and build to any scale.

What to Submit

You must submit your project on the official Web Summit Vancouver Devpost and include:

A brief description of your project
A list of the tools and services you used to help you build your project
The public URL or repo link and if necessary, any running instructions
A short 1 -2 min video demo of your project

There is no live demo in this hackathon. Judging takes place on Devpost by a panel of remote and in-person judges.

There is a strict submission deadline of 1pm on May 14, 2026. All submissions must be uploaded before this time in order to be eligible for the prize.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

1 non-cash prize

Chairperson tickets to Web Summit Vancouver 2027

1 winner

The winning team will receive Chairperson tickets, valued at CA$38,095 each, to Web Summit Vancouver 2027. Chairperson tickets offer full general attendee access to Web Summit Vancouver plus additional access to all exhibition floor lounges and the Speaker lounge. Web Summit Vancouver 2027 takes place from May 25 - 28, 2027.

Judges

Barry McCullagh
SVP of Marketing at Web Summit

Brian Flanagan
Chief Product Officer at Web Summit

Carolyn Quinlan
VP of Community at Web Summit

Gabriela Freitas
Head of Product at Web Summit

Inês de Matos
Engineering Manager at Web Summit

Wale Lawal
Engineering Manager at Web Summit

Judging Criteria

Originality (25%)
Is this a generic tool that already exists? Or something brand new and never before seen?
Impact (25%)
Does this solve a real, painful problem for the attendee or the event organiser?
Technical and execution (25%)
A general assessment of the tools and prompts used. Is it working? How does it handle data? If used, how did you steer prompts?
Wildcard (25%)
The judges will award top marks here to fun or random interpretations of the theme, beautiful design or to teams that showed an ability to save the day when things went wrong etc.