Waterloo is home to some of Canada’s most widely-known hackathons, but high school students often feel intimidated by the idea of competing against university-level hackers.
JAMHacks is one of Canada’s largest high school hackathons based out of the University of Waterloo! With 200+ high school hackers, JAMHacks 10 runs over a period of 36 hours from June 12-14, 2026 and provides hackers with an unforgettable experience filled with workshops and prizes! JAMHacks strives to be the stepping stone to make the tech space more accessible for our youth and welcome more people into the community.
JAMHacks is "jam"-packed with events! From ping pong tournaments to hacker meetups, there's something for everyone. Tired of working on your project? Channel your frustration into whaling down spicy Korean noodles in our spicy noodle challenge! Want to learn something new? Whether you're learning a new topic from scratch or seeking to build on existing knowledge, JAMHacks is sure to have a workshop for you.
It's our tenth anniversary, and we're planning on making JAMHacks 10 the BEST ITERATION EVER!!! This year, all workshops and activities will be hosted in-person from the PSE building at UW. Our vision is for all hackers, experienced or inexperienced, to leave JAMHacks 10 with something new—a new idea, a new skill, a new connection, or anything in between.
Requirements
- Teams must be groups of 1-4.
- Teams should be made up exclusively of high school students who are not organizers, mentors, judges, sponsors, or in any other privileged position at the event; however, teams are allowed to gain advice and support from these people if needed.
- For timing and logistics reasons, all hackers must live in Canada or the USA. Similarly, the shipping of prizes will be restricted to Canada and USA only.
- Cross submission is strictly prohibited, additionally, hacking must be within the designated time frame (Friday, June 12th 9:00PM - Sunday, June 14th, 9:00AM)
Prizes
Best Overall Project (1st Place)
Smart Air Fryer (x4)
Hack The North Auto-Acceptance (x4)
Hack The 6ix Auto-Acceptance (x4)
Congrats on your win! For JAMHacks 10’s gold medalists, enjoy smart air fryers and acceptances for Canada’s largest hackathon, Hack the North!
Outstanding Project (2nd Place)
Razer DeathAdder V2 X HyperSpeed Bluetooth Optical Gaming Mouse (x4)
For the runner-up team, enjoy brand-new Razer DeathAdder V2 gaming mice! Happy gaming!
Honour Mention (3rd Place)
Portable Projects with Built-In Speakers (x4)
For our third-place team, you win mini portable projectors with speakers—perfect for a movie night or just to decorate your room with!
Best Beginner Hack
Duck Lamps (x4) (courtesy of Incubator Hacks)
To be eligible for this prize track, JAMHacks 10 must be the first hackathon for the majority of the team (1/1, 2/2, 2/3, 3/4)
Best Female Hack
UWaterloo Goose Plushies (x4) (courtesy of the W Store)
To be eligible for this prize track, the majority of the team must identif7 as female (1/1, 2/2, 2/3, 3/4)
Best Hardware Hack
Precision Soldering Irons (x4) (courtesy of PCBWay)
For the best project with any kind of physical hardware involved, think Arduinos, mechatronics, something you wear, or anything else that’s more than just an app on a laptop!
Best Solo Hack
Giant Capybara Plushie (x1)
For the lone-wolf sigmas, you could win a giant capybara plushie as commendation for making it through 36 hours of hacking with just your own skills!
Best Non-GenAI Hack
UWaterloo Red Hoodies (x4)
Tired of GPT-wrappers? Us too. We’re awarding UWaterloo-branded hoodies to the best project in which no features are powered by generative AI! (Generative AI may still be used in the project’s creation, just not the project itself)
Best Sustainability Hack
Skullcandy Waterproof & Wireless Bluetooth Speaker (x4)
For the project which solves real-world sustainability challenges, enjoy Skullcandy wireless speakers to blast some tunes!
Most Entertaining Pitch
Assortment of exclusive sponsor merch (tote bags, water bottles, stickers, etc.)
As a token of appreciation for not putting our judges to sleep, enjoy exclusive merch from our sponsors!
Best Developer Tool Hack
Keychron Mechanical Keyboards (x4) (courtesy of Warp)
Need better tools to use as a programmer? Why not build one? Come build the best tool that developers can use, and try your chance at winning Keychron mechanical keyboards for your team!
Best Use of Gen AI
Assorted Prizes (courtesy of MLH)
NOT tired of GPT-wrappers? Utilize publicly available Generative AI APIs (like those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, Llama, IBM Watson, or Google Gemini) to develop a unique and functional application.
Best Use of MongoDB Atlas
M5Stack IoT Kit (x4) (courtesy of MLH)
MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5Stack IoT Kit for you and each member of your group.
Best Use of ElevenLabs
Wireless Earbuds (x4) (courtesy of MLH)
Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!
Best Use of Solana
Ledger Nano S Plus (x4) (courtesy of MLH)
Harness Solana's core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real-world projects. Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!
Best Use of Vultr
Portable Screens (x4) (courtesy of MLH)
Vultr empowers hackers to bring their high-performance projects to life instantly, providing everything from the speed of one-click deployment and scalable cloud compute to specialized Vultr Cloud GPUs that can power AI-driven applications. We want you to push the limits of what can be built when infrastructure is no longer the bottleneck!
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Advait Maybhate
JAMHacks co-founder, SWE @ Warp, prev SWE @ Google, Ramp
Akash Nagabhirava
SWE @ TD | CS @ UofT
Ching Lam Lau
JAMHacks 8 Co-Lead & CS @ UWaterloo
Dekai Li
Co-founder/CTO @Trident(YC S26)
Eshaan Jain
Senior Product Manager @ Mphasis
Evelyn Guo
JAMHacks co-founder, UW SE class of 2023, Game Developer
Faiz Mustansar
swe @ tangerine, prev @ td bank
Fiona Fang
SWE building Google-funded Products
Hreem Pandya
prev ai intern @ environics analytics
Josh Wu
Mechatronics Engineering @ UWaterloo
Junaid Mahmmod
CEO, Esprit Labs (YCS26)
Leon Fattakhov
JAMHacks co-founder, SWE @ Warp, prev SDE @ Amazon
Lifeng Yin
Prev Mentor/Judge @ StarterHacks and IncubatorHacks
Matthew Li
SWE @ Microsoft
Nathan Wong
Co-Founder @ Prometheus Industries
Richard Li
SWE @ SaFuture Inc & Qwhery
Rohanth Marem
Lead Platform Engineer @ Extrian
Samanthi Jayetileke
Director, Global Product Management @ Sun Life
Sohil Athare
Research & Engineering @ Northside Ventures
Vidu Widyalankara
SWE @ Toronto-Montreal Exchange | CS @ UWaterloo
Zachary Yu
Founder @ Fractal Machine Research
Jason Cameron
Sr SWE @ Stan, Prev JAMHacks org
Judging Criteria
-
Anything!
At JAMHacks 10, we believe that your project shouldn't be judged based off of a strict criteria. We encourage you to build a project that YOU and YOUR TEAM want to build!
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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