Dogfood 2026 is a 72-hour online hackathon organised by Hackathon Raptors, a Community Interest Company that has run 35+ hackathons across 85+ countries since 2023. The challenge is to build the
platform that will judge you: a modern, open-source, self-hostable hackathon submission and judging platform that handles the entire lifecycle — registration, team formation, submissions, eligibility, judge assignment, scoring, normalization, results, certificates, and archiving. Everyone builds the same product against the same published specification, with no tracks. The winning project will be forked, self-hosted, and put into production for Hackathon Raptors events, while the team keeps full ownership of its work. Who Should Apply Open to students, software developers, engineers, researchers, professionals, open-source contributors, full-stack developers, backend and API engineers, frontend and design-system builders, data and algorithms enthusiasts, security engineers, and DevOps/self-hosting enthusiasts — from any country. Teams of 1–4 members are allowed; solo participation is permitted, and cross-college and cross-disciplinary teams are encouraged. Format & Timeline The hackathon runs entirely online for 72 hours, from September 25, 2026 at 18:00 UTC to September 28, 2026 at 18:00 UTC. Teams build against a tier ladder: T1 (Core) covers authentication, roles, event creation, team formation, submissions, and a public gallery; T2 (Judging) adds judge assignment, weighted rubrics, role isolation, score normalization, and CSV export; T3 (Public) includes community voting, anti-abuse mechanisms, and audit trails; T4 (Stretch) adds a REST API, webhooks, certificates, and bulk import/export. A clean, correct T2 is better than a broken T4. The acceptance suite verifies tier claims. Judging criteria: Tier Completion & Correctness (40%), Judging Integrity (25%), Adoptability & Operability (20%), and Code Quality & Innovation (15%). Bonus challenges add up to +16 points for normalization proof, pairwise mode, threat model, and API-first design. Prizes Total prize pool of ₹2,50,000. 1st Place: ₹80,000; 2nd Place: ₹50,000; 3rd Place: ₹35,000; 4th Place: ₹20,000; 5th Place: ₹15,000; Best Judging Engine: ₹10,000; Write Up Quest: 4 winners × ₹10,000. The 1st-place project will be adopted for production use by Hackathon Raptors. Eligibility Open to individuals and teams from any country. Teams must have 1–4 members. All project code must be written during the 72-hour window; no code may be committed before kickoff. The project must run locally with a single command (docker compose up) and work without hosted services or network connectivity. About the Organiser Hackathon Raptors is a Community Interest Company that runs online hackathons for working engineers and developers. Since 2023, it has run over 35 hackathons with participants from more than 85 countries, and its last event saw over 300 project submissions. Events are designed around practical engineering challenges rather than purely conceptual ideas. How to Apply Registration opens on August 24, 2026 and closes on September 25, 2026. Apply via the official Unstop listing linked above. All announcements, specification releases, and support happen through the Hackathon Raptors Discord.
Eligibility
Open to individuals and teams from any country. Teams of 1–4 members. All code must be written during the 72-hour window.
