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. Taiwanese listings write it 黑客松 (the same characters Hong Kong uses) and often the English word beside it; this directory reads both and 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 Taiwan

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 hackathons — NTU, NTHU, NYCU, NCKU and the campus computing societies run most of the weekend calendar, and the 大專聯合 inter-university events are the largest; beginner tracks and free entry are the norm.
• Semiconductor and hardware challenges — a genuinely Taiwanese pattern: the Hsinchu Science Park companies, the foundries' university programmes and the EDA vendors run chip-design, sensing and edge-AI hackathons with dev boards provided.
• g0v and civic-technology events — g0v 零時政府 runs one of the world's largest civic-tech communities; its hackathons and the government's open-data events recur every few months, often hybrid.
• Corporate and fintech challenges — banks, FinTechSpace and the platform companies set briefs tied to their own products, with cash prizes in NT$ and a hiring angle.
• Game jams — 遊戲創作松, around Global Game Jam Taipei in January and the Taipei and New Taipei indie scenes.

The name shifts with the subject: a dataset makes it a 資料松, 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 — a hackathon runs for whatever block of time the organiser sets.

The two shapes you will meet most often in Taiwan 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

Entry cost is set per event, and free entry is the norm in Taiwan. Every listing here shows the ticket price where the organiser publishes one, so you can check before registering.

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

Events run in person, online or hybrid. Every listing states its format, and the locations index splits them by city.

where they happen in Taiwan

Not evenly. This directory groups every listing into six city hubs, and each hub covers the districts around it rather than the city alone — an event in Xinyi or Neihu is listed under Taipei, one in Banqiao under New Taipei, one in Zhubei under Hsinchu. That is why a city you can reach in an hour is worth checking even when your own town has nothing. Five further cities — Taoyuan, Keelung, Chiayi, Hualien and Yilan — 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 Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, Tainan and Hsinchu, and each page says exactly which districts and counties it covers. Taoyuan, Keelung and the east coast are deliberately left out of that grouping — an event in Taoyuan, Keelung, Chiayi, Hualien or Yilan 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. (0 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 Taiwan, updated weekly. Browse all 0 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.