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. Pakistani listings are almost always in English; the Urdu ہیکاتھون appears on some university posters, and this directory reads both.

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 Pakistan

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 — this is the calendar: NUST, FAST, LUMS, GIKI, NED, IBA, COMSATS and UET student societies run nearly every weekend event, and inter-university and national student hackathons are the biggest of the year. Beginner tracks and free entry are the norm.
• National Incubation Center programmes — the NICs in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar run themed hackathons with corporate and telecom partners setting the briefs.
• Bank and Raast fintech challenges — banks and the payments companies set briefs tied to Raast and their own products, with cash prizes in rupees and a recruiting angle.
• Civic open-data events — Code for Pakistan and provincial IT boards run civic briefs, often hybrid.
• Game jams — a small calendar clustered around Global Game Jam in January, mostly in Lahore and Karachi.

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 4 hackathons listed on this site right now, 0 run inside a single day and 4 run across two or more. The longest currently listed is Code for Humanity, which runs 184 days (16 Jul 2026 – 15 Jan 2027).

The two shapes you will meet most often in Pakistan 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 almost always nothing — free entry is the norm here. 2 of the 4 hackathons listed on this site publish a free ticket, and 2 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 4 hackathons listed here, 0 are in-person and 1 is hybrid, which still means a session you attend in the host city, and 3 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 Pakistan

Not evenly. This directory groups every listing into eight city hubs, and each hub covers the campuses and towns around it rather than the city alone — an event at NUST H-12 is listed under Islamabad, one at GIKI in Topi under Peshawar, one in Jamshoro under Hyderabad. That is why a city you can reach in an hour is worth checking even when your own town has nothing. Eight further cities — Quetta, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Abbottabad, Sukkur, Bahawalpur, Mardan and Gilgit — are too far from any hub to be folded into one honestly, so they keep their own names in the listings instead.

The eight hubs are Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Multan and Hyderabad, and each page says exactly which campuses, towns and provinces it covers. Balochistan beyond Quetta, Gilgit-Baltistan and the far north are deliberately left out of that grouping — an event in Quetta, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Abbottabad or Sukkur 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. (4 listed)

student hackathons

A listing appears here when the organiser restricts entry to students, runs the event on a campus, or names a university, college or student society as the host. (1 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 Pakistan, updated weekly. Browse all 4 upcoming events, narrow to ai hackathons or student hackathons, or pick a city from the locations index.

Running one? Submit your hackathon — free to list.