Hackathons

Bring an Opal hackathon to your city.

48 hours. Local operators, builders, and students. Real business challenges solved with operational AI. We're scouting host cities for the 2026 hackathon tour — nominate yours.

How it works

Four steps from nomination to a city-wide build weekend.

01
Nominate

Tell us about your city, the local builder community, and why this is the moment for an Opal hackathon there.

02
We review

Our community team reviews nominations every two weeks. We'll reach out to scope feasibility, dates, and partners.

03
We co-plan

We bring the format, judging rubric, mentors, and prizes. You bring the venue, the community, and the operators.

04
We show up

Engineers and operators from Opal are on the ground for 48 hours — mentoring teams and supporting the winners after.

What to expect

The weekend that turns your local builder scene into operators.

We bring the format

A proven 48-hour build template — challenges, judging rubric, mentors, and prizes. Adapted to your local scene.

You bring the city

A venue, a community partner, and a list of operators, builders, and students who'd actually show up.

Real workflows, not toys

Teams ship operational AI agents against real business problems sourced from local companies.

Opal team on the ground

Engineers and operators mentor live. The winning team gets ongoing platform support after the weekend.

Who we select

We pick a small number of host cities each year. Here's how we choose.

A strong fit looks like
  • An active local community of operators, builders, or students
  • A community partner — meetup, university, accelerator, or startup hub
  • A venue that can host 80–250 builders for 48 hours
  • Willingness to co-recruit local companies to sponsor real challenges
Not a fit
  • Vendor-led events with no local community anchor
  • Recruiting-only events without a build component
  • Closed corporate hackathons (we run those separately)
  • Cities where we already have a host confirmed for 2026
Nominate

Tell us about your city.

Takes about five minutes. The more specific you are about the local community, venues, and partners, the easier it is to evaluate fit and scope a real date.

We confirm host cities in batches and prioritize markets where the local builder community is already organizing. Selected hosts are notified within two weeks.