What is a hackathon?

the short definition

A hackathon is a competition with a deadline. Organisers set a theme and a time limit, participants form teams, and every team spends that time turning an idea into something that runs. At the end each team demonstrates what it built, judges score the entries against published criteria, and prizes go to the strongest.

Four things make an event a hackathon rather than a workshop or a conference: it is time-boxed, work happens in teams, the output is something built during the event, and it is judged. An event missing any of the four is usually called something else on its own listing — a workshop, a bootcamp, a meetup — and this directory follows whatever the organiser called it.

what the word means, and how it is spelled here

“Hackathon” joins hack and marathon. “Hack” is used in its older engineering sense — solving a problem quickly and inventively — and not in the sense of breaking into systems. “Marathon” describes the format: one continuous, fixed block of time rather than a series of sessions. So the word literally describes a long, uninterrupted stretch of inventive building, which is what the event is.

Swedish uses the English word and two spellings of it circulate, both meaning the same thing: hackathon, the original form and the one nearly every organiser puts on their own listing, and hackaton, which drops the second h. Swedish keeps the noun lower case mid-sentence and, like German, builds compounds — a studenthackathon is one word — which is why this site matches the term on whole words rather than fragments. Nothing here is filed differently because of the spelling: an event is listed under the name its organiser gave it.

how a hackathon runs

The order is close to the same everywhere:

• Kickoff — the organiser sets out the theme, the rules, the judging criteria and the deadline.
• Team formation — people either arrive as a team or form one on the spot.
• Building — the bulk of the time, usually with mentors on hand.
• Submission — work stops at a hard deadline and teams submit whatever state their project is in.
• Demos — each team presents, typically in a few minutes.
• Judging and prizes — judges score against the criteria set at kickoff and announce winners.

the kinds of hackathon run in Sweden

The one word covers several quite different events here, and working out which kind you are looking at tells you most of what you need to know before registering — who else will be in the room, how long you will be there, and whether anything is at stake beyond the prize.

• University hackathons — run by a faculty, a student union section or a campus entrepreneurship centre, normally over a weekend and normally the largest by headcount. KTH and Stockholm University carry most of the Stockholm calendar; Chalmers in Göteborg, Lund and Uppsala run their own, and campus events are where the beginner-friendly listings cluster.
• Corporate challenges — a company sets a challenge tied to its own business and runs it over a day or two, sometimes with a cash prize and a recruitment pipeline attached. The telecom cluster in Kista, the banks and fintechs, the games studios and the industrial groups all run them, and the brief is almost always in English.
• Public-sector and civic events — government agencies, regions and municipalities run open-data and civic-technology hackathons, often with a policy brief rather than a commercial one; Sweden's open-data tradition makes this a real share of the calendar.
• Community and startup hackathons — organised by a meetup group, a coworking space, an accelerator or a technology vendor. Usually shorter, usually free, and usually announced only a few weeks ahead, which is why a calendar is worth checking more than once.
• Game jams — the same format applied to making a game rather than an application, most visibly around Global Game Jam each January. Sweden's games industry is large for the size of the country, which is why the term has a page of its own here.

The name shifts with the subject matter. A hackathon over datasets is usually a datathon; one that stops at the idea and the pitch, with nothing built, is an ideathon; one aimed at physical or hardware builds is a makeathon; and a weekend of building a game is a game jam. They are all the same shape — a brief, a clock, teams, a demo — and this site lists each under the name its organiser used.

// the formats named above are examples of the KINDS of hackathon run in Sweden, described by what the format is rather than by any organisation's record. Nothing there is a claim about a specific edition, its dates, its size or its outcome — every event this directory lists has its own page, with the organiser's own description and a link to their listing.

how long they last

There is no standard length — the organiser sets it. Of the 12 hackathons listed on this site right now, 10 run inside a single day and 2 run across two or more. The longest currently listed is The Rice University Urban Sustainability Hackathon, which runs 88 days (23 Jun – 18 Sep 2026).

The two shapes you will meet most often in Sweden are the weekend build of 24 or 48 hours, which starts on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and finishes with demos on the Sunday, and the single working day, which is what most corporate challenges and community events run. Shorter events are built around a narrow brief you can finish in one sitting. Longer ones leave room for a bigger build and normally put food, sleep and mentor sessions in the schedule.

what it costs to enter

Nothing currently listed here charges to enter. 11 of the 12 hackathons listed on this site publish a free ticket, and 1 has not announced one yet. Where an organiser has published a figure it is on the listing, so you can check before registering.What a ticket price does not tell you is capacity: free events at universities and coworking spaces routinely cap places and close registration early.

do you need a team

Almost always, and the organiser sets the size rather than leaving it open — it is one of the first things stated on a listing, because it decides how you show up. The limits vary more than people expect, from a pair to a room, so read the one on the event you are entering rather than assuming. If you arrive alone, most events run a team-forming session at kickoff.

in person or online

Worth checking before you plan around one. Of the 12 hackathons listed here, 9 are in-person and 2 are hybrid, which still means a session you attend in the host city, and 1 runs entirely online.The practical question here is rarely which city — the calendar is Stockholm's — but whether you have to be there at all, which is what the format filter answers.

where they happen in Sweden

Almost entirely in Stockholm. Right now 8 of the 12 hackathons listed here are in Stockholm, and the other 3 are split between Helsingborg, Sweden and Varberg; one more runs entirely online. The Stockholm county calendar — the city, Kista, Solna, Sundbyberg and the campuses at KTH and Stockholm University — is nearly the whole Swedish calendar, so this directory does not split listings across city pages: everything in the county browses under Stockholm, and each event page carries the exact venue. Göteborg, Malmö, Uppsala, Linköping and Lund keep their own name on the card. The one split that does carry information is in-person against online, and that is a filter on the homepage rather than a separate page.

In practice the venues repeat. 10 of the 12 hackathons listed here name one — Angel House; Antler, Västra Trädgårdsgatan 2; Epicenter Stockholm; Footway Oaas AB; Grev Turegatan 1; Mindpark; Sting – Stockholm Innovation & Growth AB; Techarena Varberg; Valfritt Kvadratkontor and Velory — and the other 2 give Sweden without a venue. The addresses behind them sit in a handful of places: the KTH campus and Nymble, the Kista science cluster, the coworking floors around Sergels torg and Regeringsgatan, and Karolinska in Solna. Each event page carries the exact venue and address; nothing in the county is more than about forty minutes away by tunnelbana or pendeltåg, which is why they all browse under one label. You can see every listing in one place.

the types you'll see listed

Hackathons are usually named for their subject or their audience. These are the filters this directory keeps, with what is on each right now:

ai hackathons

A listing appears here when the organiser describes the event around AI or machine learning — the theme it is judged on, the tools teams build with, or the problem set it hands out. (12 listed)

game jams

A listing appears here when teams build a game inside a fixed time limit — video games or tabletop, solo or team, from a theme or a constraint handed out at the start. (0 listed)

Events are also split by format — in person, online or hybrid. You can filter every listing by format from the browse section on the homepage.

who can enter

Hackathons are open to more than programmers: teams that win are usually a mix of engineering, design and someone who can present the idea clearly. Plenty of events are aimed squarely at people who don't write code, and say so in their own description. 1 of the 12 listed here is built around vibe-coding, no-code or agentic tooling by the organiser's own description, which is a fair part of why the format has stopped being a programmers-only event.

what you can win

Prizes are set per event and published on the listing. They are not always cash — mentoring, cloud credits, hardware, an incubator place and introductions are all common — and the amount varies enormously between a community jam and a sponsored event.

faq

find one to enter

This site lists every upcoming hackathon it can find in Sweden, updated weekly. Browse all 12 upcoming events, narrow to ai hackathons or game jams, or browse every upcoming listing.

Running one? Submit your hackathon — free to list.