Join the MLH Hackathon Season.

Our team of Community Managers supports hundreds of Member Events every year. We’ve helped organizers like you handle all sorts of problems and questions. You may participate in Peer Groups to learn the team’s expert advice and receive mentorship when you need it in a 1-on-1 environment.

We’ll list your event on the official MLH Season schedule. Hundreds of thousands of hackers and sponsors visit this page every single year and use it to discover the events they want to participate in. We’ll also promote your event to hundreds of thousands of hackers and sponsors via social media and/or the MLH monthly newsletter.

Organizing a great hackathon can be expensive. To help you save time and money, we have vetted and partnered with amazing vendors that are offering exclusive discounts and priority access to Member Events.

Over the years, we’ve created a library of templates and tutorials for all organizers to use while planning and hosting their event. We’ve recognized some pain points for organizers, such as organizing finances and judging, so we’ve created these templates including a budget, sponsor list, judging, and more.

We’ll send an MLH representative to your event to act as an extension of your organizing team. They have a lot of expertise and experience with organizing hackathons and are there to help make sure your event runs smoothly. This is available for both physical and digital events.

We know that judging is one of the most stressful periods during a hackathon. Our MLH representative on-site can assist you with running demos and judging during your event in a fair, standardized way.

All Member Events are provided with special prizes to hand out to hackers such as pins for winners and select MLH category prizes (such as “Best Domain.com Domain Name” or “Best Use of Google Cloud Platform”).

Every hacker who participates in a Member Event will have special access to discounts and freebies to APIs and developer tools through the MLH Software Lab. This includes services like web hosting credit to free domain names and more.

If you overshoot your predetermined attendance target by overbooking up to 200% and exhausted all of your emergency budget funds on the day-of your event, we’ll cover the difference in food or event costs (up to $1,000) to make sure your event doesn’t go over budget. See our Membership Guidelines from more details on eligibility.

Member Events who utilize MyMLH for registration will receive priority support for setup and troubleshooting from our engineering team. MyMLH is an OAuth API that makes registering for hackathons a breeze for hackers by storing their information in a centralized MLH Database which allows them to easily share it with multiple events.

Your event will receive assorted swag including Season stickers, event specific “I Demoed” stickers, MLH Stickers, GitHub stickers, and feminine hygiene products. Events may also receive assorted swag from MLH Season sponsors such as pens and t-shirts.

Our MLH representative on-site will run a 1 hour mini-event during your hackathon to provide a fun break from hacking and create a bonding experience for your attendees. Previous Mini-Events include Painting with Bob Ross, Wikipedia Races, and more.

Anyone who participates in your Member Event will receive a post event survey about their experience. We’ll share this data with you, show you how you compare to other Member Events, and identify some areas of improvement for your next event.

Hackers who participate in Member Events are earning points for their school in the MLH Season rankings. At the end of every Season, hackers can see how their schools performed against other schools and be in the running to win the MLH Season trophy to take back to their hacker club.

Just because your event is over, it doesn’t mean we aren’t available to help. You still have access to our team and we are happy to help with whatever you need to successfully wrap up your event and pave the way for the next one.

If there are project(s) suspected of cheating submitted to your hackathon, the MLH team will follow our Cheating Response Procedure to investigate the project(s). We will work with you and your team to investigate and come to a conclusion, but your hackathon team will make the final decision.