What is HackJPS?
** NOTICE: Due to unfortunate circumstances HackJPS 2026 will be an all-virtual competition with no in-person component. We apologize for any inconvenience! **
UPDATE: Intro Slides / Video
HackJPS is a virtual hackathon hosted by students of John P. Stevens High School in Edison, NJ from May 29-31, 2026. This is the fifth iteration of the HackJPS program following successful hybrid and virtual events in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2020.
Participation will be open to middle and high school students (aged 13+). Participants may have any level of experience, or none at all. We are welcoming to beginners and experts alike!
For more information and updates, make sure to join our Discord server and check out our website.
We are looking for judges!
Sign up to be a judge by filling out this form.
Requirements
Specific categories and related criteria will be disclosed during the opening ceremony.
Requirements for all submissions:
- Should be submitted here on Devpost
- All team members should be added to the submission in Devpost
- All team members must fill out this registration form: https://forms.gle/ei6hCNsk4a1rQbth8
- Each team member's school name should be specified on the project submission page
- The project does not need to be 100% completed nor 100% functional but there should be some demonstrable progress
- A 1-3 minute video demonstrating part or all of your project's features as well as a brief overview of how you put it together, including a description of your codebase (can be uploaded to YouTube or another public site)
- Including a screen recording of your code while you are explaining it will help us make a more accurate judgement regarding the quality of your project
- A link to your project's source code (either in an online repository or publicly accessible via a file sharing service like Google Drive)
- You can also upload it directly to your submission as a ZIP archive
Prizes
Best Overall Hack
All projects submitted to HackJPS will automatically be considered for this category. Projects that demonstrate a combination of technical talent, practicality, creativity, and presentational/explanatory skills are most likely to succeed.
Prizes:
1-year subscriptions for NordVPN, NordPass, NordProtect and Incogni (up to 6 individuals).
1 GB of free data for Saily (up to 6 individuals).
3-month access and €200 credit for nexos.ai (up to 6 individuals)
Best Youth Hack
We know there's a lot of middle school students here. That's okay! To make the playing field a bit fairer, teams where more than half the members (e.g. 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/4) are registered as middle school students will be eligible to receive this prize!
Prizes:
$25 coupon art of problem solving
Best Game Design
Game development is a fun way to expand on your programming abilities. Projects submitted to this category don't necessarily need to be games written from the ground up — they can also be modifications/plugins/extensions to existing games, provided your project adds enough original functionality.
Prizes:
$50 in Appwrite Cloud Pro credits per student
interview cake license for interview prep course ($50 each)
Best Use of AI/ML
If you indicate that your project uses any kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning technology, it will be considered for this category. This category is NOT necessarily for projects in which AI tools were used to write the code; instead, the focus is on integrating AI/ML technology into a project in a way that makes sense and is genuinely useful.
Prizes:
interview cake license for interview prep course ($50 each)
Public Choice
After submissions, all registrants on Devpost will be able to choose their favorite project, and that project will be eligible for prizes. See the schedule for timing details.
Prizes:
interview cake license for interview prep course ($50 each)
Participation Prize
Prizes:
Access to Wolfram|One for all your participants for one month. Wolfram|One includes both Desktop and Cloud access, full access to the Wolfram Language and Knowledgebase, FreeCDF Deployment, 5000 Wolfram|Alpha API calls, 5000 Cloud Credits, 2 installations per user and 2 GB of Cloud Storage.
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Aryan Mittal
Operations
Judging Criteria
-
TBD
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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