Top Upcoming Hackathons & Coding Competitions Students Can Join in Late 2025

A focused blockchain sprint for protocol hackers and students interested in scaling solutions for Bitcoin. Expect lightning talks, mentor sessions, and judged demos. Prize pool ≈ $5,550, with awards for protocol innovation and tooling.

Hosted by Cosmos Labs, this offsite blends workshops with hands-on builds: think interoperable DeFi primitives, cross-chain tooling, and app-specific chains. Prizes are largely non-monetary (grants, mentorship, ecosystem support).

A one-day, high-intensity sprint on Lightning-based payment flows, payment channels and UX for micropayments. Excellent learning environment for students wanting practical LN integrations into apps and wallets.

While AI-centric, this event welcomes hybrid projects merging machine learning with decentralized systems — e.g., on-chain model provenance, verifiable compute or privacy-preserving inference on blockchain. Great for students at the intersection of ML & Web3.

A 36-hour AI hackathon hosted at IIT Delhi—popular with student teams across India. Expect industry mentorship, hands-on AI tasks and campus finals. Ideal for students who want to showcase ML prototypes and productized demos.

The largest global civic hackathon using NASA’s open datasets. Projects range from satellite imagery tools to climate monitoring, planetary science visualizers and citizen-science apps. Local hubs run simultaneous events worldwide.

Devpost hosts many fall blockchain contests — notable ones include Dream² Bigger 2025 (deadline Oct 10), Starknet Re{Solve} (Sept 15–Oct 16) and Build Resilient Apps with Polkadot Cloud (deadline Nov 17). Prize pools and themes vary — check each event page.

A one-day on-site blockchain hackathon focused on privacy, sovereignty and resilient Bitcoin tooling. Great for teams that want to demo real-world peer-to-peer apps.

A week-long virtual festival of coding challenges, workshops, and judged tracks for students 16+. Often run through platforms like Airmeet — ideal for teams wanting mentor feedback and portfolio work.

Designed for younger builders (13–18), ImpactX focuses on social impact and domain-specific prototypes. Great for school teams and novice coders who want structure, mentorship and judged categories.

Community-driven event combining workshops, mentorship, and team challenges — excellent for students seeking hands-on guidance and local networking. Often low cost or free for youth participants.

Token2049 hosts hackathon tracks alongside a major crypto conference — high visibility for teams wanting investor and press exposure. Great if you can travel or secure sponsor support for attendance.

Accelerator-backed AI hackathon featuring mentorship, pitch coaching and a $10,000 prize pool. Teams present prototypes to accelerator partners — a good springboard for founders and student startup ideas.

One of the largest fall blockchain hackathons — heavy prize pools and ecosystem grants for winners. Strong technical focus on Cairo, rollups and Starknet tooling.