What is a hackathon?

the short definition

A hackathon is a competition with a deadline. Organisers set a theme and a time limit, participants form teams, and every team spends that time turning an idea into something that runs. At the end each team demonstrates what it built, judges score the entries against published criteria, and prizes go to the strongest.

Four things make an event a hackathon rather than a workshop or a conference: it is time-boxed, work happens in teams, the output is something built during the event, and it is judged. An event missing any of the four is usually called something else on its own listing — a workshop, a bootcamp, a meetup — and this directory follows whatever the organiser called it.

what the word means

“Hackathon” is hack plus marathon. “Hack” here is the old engineering sense — a quick, clever solution to a problem — not intrusion into a system. “Marathon” describes the format: one continuous, bounded stretch of time rather than a series of sessions. German uses the same word, capitalised as a noun; Austrian listings sometimes add “Hackathon Wien” or the Bundesland to the title, and this directory lists events under whatever the organiser called them.

how a hackathon runs

The order is close to the same everywhere:

• Kickoff — the organiser sets out the theme, the rules, the judging criteria and the deadline.
• Team formation — people either arrive as a team or form one on the spot.
• Building — the bulk of the time, usually with mentors on hand.
• Submission — work stops at a hard deadline and teams submit whatever state their project is in.
• Demos — each team presents, typically in a few minutes.
• Judging and prizes — judges score against the criteria set at kickoff and announce winners.

the kinds of hackathon run in Austria

The word covers events that differ a lot in who turns up, how long they run and what is at stake. Knowing which kind a listing is tells you most of what you need before registering.

• University and FH hackathons — TU Wien, TU Graz, JKU Linz, the Uni Innsbruck and the Fachhochschulen run most of the weekend calendar; beginner tracks and free entry are the norm.
• Corporate and bank challenges — banks, insurers, energy and automotive groups set a brief tied to their own business and run it over one or two days, often at weXelerate or a company campus.
• Civic open-data events — cities and the federal data.gv.at programme run civic briefs; Linz's Ars Electronica Center and Vienna's Open Data community recur.
• AEC, Lakeside and startup-hub programmes — the innovation parks and incubators run short, free events announced late, which is why the calendar is worth checking more than once.
• Game jams — the same format producing a game instead of an app, around Global Game Jam in January and the Graz and Vienna indie scenes.

The name shifts with the subject: a dataset makes it a datathon, a game makes it a game jam, an ideas-only event with no build is an ideathon. The shape is the same — a brief, a clock, teams, a demo — and this directory lists events under whatever the organiser called them.

how long they last

There is no standard length — the organiser sets it. Of the 14 hackathons listed on this site right now, 2 run inside a single day and 12 run across two or more. The longest currently listed is VoltHacks, which runs 115 days (22 May – 13 Sep 2026).

The two shapes you will meet most often in Austria are the weekend build of 24 or 48 hours, which starts on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and finishes with demos on the Sunday, and the single working day, which is what most corporate challenges and community events run. Shorter events are built around a narrow brief you can finish in one sitting. Longer ones leave room for a bigger build and normally put food, sleep and mentor sessions in the schedule.

what it costs to enter

Less than people expect, and usually nothing — kostenlose Teilnahme is the norm here. 10 of the 14 hackathons listed on this site publish a free ticket, and 4 have not announced one yet. Where an organiser has published a figure it is on the listing, so you can check before registering.What a ticket price does not tell you is capacity: free events at universities and coworking spaces routinely cap places and close registration early.

do you need a team

Almost always, and the organiser sets the size rather than leaving it open — it is one of the first things stated on a listing, because it decides how you show up. The limits vary more than people expect, from a pair to a room, so read the one on the event you are entering rather than assuming. If you arrive alone, most events run a team-forming session at kickoff.

in person or online

Worth checking before you plan around one. Of the 14 hackathons listed here, 6 are in-person, and 8 run entirely online. The practical question is usually which host city you can get to, which is what the sections below are for.

where they happen in Austria

Not evenly. This directory groups every listing into six city hubs, and each hub covers the district around it rather than the city alone — an event in Klosterneuburg or Mödling is listed under Wien, one in Hagenberg or Wels under Linz, one in Villach under Klagenfurt. That is why a city you can reach in an hour is worth checking even when your own town has nothing. Six further cities — Dornbirn, Bregenz, Feldkirch, Eisenstadt, Krems and Villach — are too far from any hub to be folded into one honestly, so they keep their own names in the listings instead.

The six hubs are Wien, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Klagenfurt, and each page says exactly which districts and Bundesländer it covers. Vorarlberg and the Burgenland are deliberately left out of that grouping — an event in Dornbirn, Bregenz, Feldkirch, Eisenstadt or Krems keeps its own city name and shows under all events.

the types you'll see listed

Hackathons are usually named for their subject or their audience. These are the filters this directory keeps, with what is on each right now:

ai hackathons

A listing appears here when the brief is artificial intelligence — agents, models, machine learning, computer vision, generative AI — either named in the title or clear from the organiser's own description. (13 listed)

game jams

A listing appears here when teams build a game inside a fixed time limit — video games or tabletop, solo or team, from a theme or a constraint handed out at the start. (0 listed)

Events are also split by format — in person, online or hybrid — and by city. You can browse every listing by city from the locations index.

who can enter

Hackathons are open to more than programmers: teams that win are usually a mix of engineering, design and someone who can present the idea clearly. Plenty of events are aimed squarely at people who don't write code, and say so in their own description — several of the ones listed here are built around no-code and AI-assisted tools, which is a fair part of why the format has stopped being a programmers-only event.

what you can win

Prizes are set per event and published on the listing. They are not always cash — mentoring, cloud credits, hardware, an incubator place and introductions are all common — and the amount varies enormously between a community jam and a sponsored event.

faq

find one to enter

This site lists every upcoming hackathon it can find in Austria, updated weekly. Browse all 14 upcoming events, narrow to ai hackathons or game jams, or pick a city from the locations index.

Running one? Submit your hackathon — free to list.