Season 26–27 4 flights

04 Flights. One crew.
Done before exams.

A season of online hackathons. One team, a shipped demo at every stop, hard stop in February before exams get a vote.

Cost
Free
Format
Online
Window
Sep–Feb
Hard stop
Feb 2027

The deal

Four online hackathon weekends between September and February. Forced deadlines, shipped projects, all-nighters with friends. Then we stop, because IB exams are in May and we like passing.

You do not need to write a single line of code. The base platform gets built in August, so comp weekends are pure design, pitch and demo work. That is the part that wins, and that part is you.

The scoreboard: four shipped demos by February. Placements are a bonus.

Flight schedule

001 NASA Space Apps · Nov 14–15 Confirmed
002 Slot reserved TBD
003 Slot reserved TBD
004 Slot reserved TBD

Flights announced monthly from the Hack Club and Devpost autumn calendars. Rules: high-school eligible, EU timezone friendly, nothing with the word startup in it.

The jobs

  • Build Code, deploy, caffeine management.
  • Design Figma. Make it look expensive.
  • Pitch Three minutes of talking without dying.
  • Research Find the data. Feed the machine.

Every flight, roughly

  1. 01 · Sat morning

    Pick a challenge. Argue about it. Pick the second-best one.

  2. 02 · Sat afternoon

    Build sprint. Design and research feed the machine.

  3. 03 · Sat 02:00

    Questionable decisions. This is the part we remember.

  4. 04 · Sun afternoon

    Record the demo, submit, sleep like the dead.

Pros, cons

Pros

  • +Free and online. Worst case we lose a weekend, not money.
  • +Four shipped demos by February. Real projects, not tutorials.
  • +No coding required. The base platform is built in August, so comp weekends are design, pitch and research.
  • +Deadlines with teeth. Things actually get finished.
  • +All-nighters with friends. The fun kind of suffering.
  • +Not a school thing. No teachers were consulted.

Cons

  • −Four weekends gone between September and February.
  • −Saturday 02:00 is on the schedule. Sleep is not.
  • −We might not place at anything. The goal is shipped demos, but still.
  • −Flight 001 has a space theme, which is nerdy. It is also the biggest hackathon on the planet, and it is only stop one.
  • −Flights 002 to 004 are not picked yet. Some trust required.

That’s the plan

Four flights, one crew, done before exams. Flight 001 boards Nov 14. Questions go to the group chat.