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Hacktoberfest 2026: AI belongs to everyone

Partnership tackles low-effort AI spam

We have some news we're excited to share today: Major League Hacking (MLH) and DEV are partnering with DigitalOcean to run Hacktoberfest 2026. This October, we’ll host over 300 in-person events (“Fests”) plus a global online event, all about building with open source and open-weight AI.

DEV and MLH have supported Hacktoberfest for years under DigitalOcean’s ownership. DEV provided a space to share maintainer and contributor learnings, while MLH has powered both in-person and online events. This year will be the first time MLH, DEV, and DigitalOcean are full partners in bringing Hacktoberfest to life.

From four PRs to a global tradition

Hacktoberfest started back in 2014 with a simple idea from DigitalOcean: open four pull requests in October, earn a t-shirt. It worked. Thousands of developers made their first open-source contribution during the month-long celebration. For many people reading this, Hacktoberfest was the door that opened open source to them in the first place. It certainly was for a lot of us at MLH.

But a good thing can require a refresh. Over the years, that same PR-counting format started to work against the community. Maintainers began to burn out under the volume of low-effort, box-checking pull requests they were receiving. That problem only got worse as AI tools made it trivially easy to generate a PR without generating any real value. The event meant to make maintainers' lives easier started doing the opposite.

We didn't want to keep running that version of Hacktoberfest. So we're trying something new.

Hacktoberfest 2026

This year, we’re not counting PRs. Hacktoberfest is focused on giving everyone the tools and knowledge to learn, experiment, and build with open artificial intelligence: write your first open-source skills.md, build your own open-source agent, fine-tune an open-weight model, or just follow your curiosity wherever it takes you.

We believe open innovation deserves the same priority as proprietary tools for a healthy ecosystem, especially now that AI is part of how most of us build software every day. We're seeing changes to access, pricing, and policy occur overnight, completely out of individual control. Open source AI doesn't eliminate these risks, but it offers transparency and resilience. That's the kind of foundation we want to help you build on.

Hacktoberfest 2026 is about meeting you wherever you are in your open-source AI journey, because we believe AI belongs to everyone.

To make this a reality, we're working with organizers to host over 300 in-person Fests worldwide. We'll provide the swag, while you get to build with your community.

We’re looking for hosts!

Here's the thing about Fests: every single one starts with someone deciding to organize it.

You don't need a big team or a big budget to bring Hacktoberfest to your city. If you're part of a meetup group, a university club, or you and a couple of coworkers can book a conference room for a day, you have what it takes. Organizers will receive:

  • T-shirts and stickers for participants
  • Programming support to help shape the day
  • Promotion through a searchable gallery on hacktoberfest.com, plus MLH and DEV's marketing and social channels

We're confirming applications on a rolling basis. We're aiming to confirm within a week of receiving a completed application. The best way to be first in line is to raise your hand now.

Host a Fest

 

👉 Bonus: if you host a Hacktoberfest Hack Day, we’ll provide funding to help cover food and drink, as well as additional prizes for your Fest!

Get involved

If organizing isn't for you right now, there's still a place for you in this:

  • Join a Fest. Sign up to be notified about local Fests near you, and keep an eye out for the global online event running throughout October.
  • Sponsor Hacktoberfest. Sponsors make Hacktoberfest possible. If your company wants its brand in front of a massive global community of software creators, tell your Marketing and DevRel teams. This is the year to be part of the new chapter.

We look forward to sharing more updates in the coming weeks!

Top comments (17)

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francistrdev profile image
FrancisTRᴅᴇᴠ (っ◔◡◔)っ

CAN'T WAIT! MY FIRST TIME JOINING TOO!

Everyone is going to be like this when it starts:

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jacklyn profile image
Jacklyn Biggin Major League Hacking (MLH)

HAPPY HACKTOBERFEST (SOON)!!!

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codedpool profile image
Romanch Roshan Singh

So hyped for this! Hacktoberfest 2026 is going to be huge.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern Major League Hacking (MLH)

Absolutely

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thisisryanswift profile image
Ryan Swift Major League Hacking (MLH)

Woooooooooooooooo! So excited for this year's refocus

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rishukrsingh profile image
Rishu Kumar Singh

Yupsss, super duper excited! 🤩

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erinosher profile image
Erin Osher Major League Hacking (MLH)

It's been awesome to see just how much work has been going on behind the scenes to make this year possible. Very excited!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern Major League Hacking (MLH)

Let's goo!

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jonmarkgo profile image
Jonathan Gottfried Major League Hacking (MLH)

So excited to get to bring this new version of Hacktoberfest to the community this year!

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noahbrinker profile image
Noah Brinker Major League Hacking (MLH)

Woohoo! Can't wait

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aniruddhaadak profile image
ANIRUDDHA ADAK

Yes, this is exactly right. We really want something new in this new era of AI, because everything is changing.

So, we need new ways to learn and experiment with open source. Open source isn't just behind closed models anymore; it is neck-and-neck, competing with and even outperforming some frontier proprietary models.

It is really worth learning and experimenting with these tools, and even creating some fully functional agents. With open source, this will be a great year of Hacktoberfest, and I'm fully excited for this.

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heckno profile image
heckno

Should be great

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern Major League Hacking (MLH)

Will be