The operating system for running exceptional hackathons, on a campus, in a company, at a school, or around your kitchen table. Everything MLH, ElevenLabs, Spotify, Junction, NASA and the research literature learned the hard way, compressed into a 10-minute onboarding. Built in Brussels, at befounders.eu.
The single biggest research finding: hackathons fail through goal-incoherence, not bad logistics. So we start with you, not with the checklist.
You've never organised one. Good, the format was invented for you. Take the 90-second format picker, then run the 15 rules below. That's genuinely all of it.
Pick my format → ⚡Skip the onboarding. Go straight to the Field Manual, the psychology chapter, the judging math, and the afterlife design are where veterans find the edge.
Open the manual → 🏛️Company, school, city, or family retreat. The core is portable: problem + team + deadline + witnessed demo. Chapter 8 shows the transplant surgery.
Beyond tech →MIT Hack-Nation and a Lovable vibe-jam share almost none of the same playbook. Answer five questions and we'll point you at the single best-fit format, then browse the rest below. Plenty of them are European, from ElevenLabs in London to Junction in Helsinki to EUvsVirus across the whole union, because this is built in Brussels, at befounders.eu.
Check them off as you internalise them, your progress is saved in this browser. Then open the Master Timeline and you're operational.
“Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always produce subjects.” Lilly Irani, Science, Technology & Human Values
Judged as software factories, hackathons are a scam. Judged as identity factories, they're the best deal in civilization: deadline + strangers + witnessed demo = a person who has publicly enacted “I am someone who builds.” Design for the conversion; make shipping the designed add-on, and done right survival jumps to 25–40%.
My goal is to take builders from 1% to 51% of people. The same way we crossed the majority line on internet access, then on mobile phones. AI is the next step, so more people get more able. That makes this one of the best levers we have against inequality. Reframe someone into a builder and you have changed who gets to shape the world.
Screenshot this. Every value is sourced in the manual's appendix.
The doctrine. Eight chapters: format picker, the psychology, money, the room, judging, the afterlife, and taking hackathons beyond tech. 10-minute fast path up top.
🗓️Interactive countdown. Type your event date, every deadline becomes a real date, checkable, saved in your browser. Two tracks: flagship weekend & 3–12h sprint.
🤖A Claude Code skill pack. /scaffold interviews you, ten questions, then writes your entire event as files: timeline, budget, sponsors, run of show, judging, comms.
Copy-paste artifacts with one click: the sponsor first-touch email, the 2-page prospectus, the judge briefing, the 15-minute opening ceremony script, the next-30-days card.
The full playbook, manual, timeline, research insight bank, agent pack, as plain markdown. Yours.
Download the playbook ↓Ran an event that broke the mould? Spotted a format we're missing, a number that's moved, or a template that actually worked? The whole doctrine lives on GitHub. Open an issue or a pull request and put your field data into the canon.
Curated from Brussels by Cedric at Seven Events, Brussels ambassador for hackathonhub.eu.