Hackathon planning checklist, week by week.
To organize a 24- to 48-hour hackathon, allow about 8 weeks. The first three go to goal, brief and rules, the next ones to jury, promotion and sign-ups, the last one to logistics. Then come the day itself and the follow-up.
This checklist puts every task in its week and names who owns it. Print it or copy it into your project tool. There are three roles: organizer (decides and coordinates), jury (evaluates), comms (promotes and reports). For the reasoning behind each step, read the step-by-step guide. The other templates to copy are in resources.
How do you use this checklist?
Assign every task to a named person, not to a role. Review the list at the start of each week and reschedule late items straight away. Tasks tagged with two roles need those people to talk: the organizer writes the criteria, for example, but the jury reads and accepts them before you publish.
What if you only have 4 weeks?
A small internal hackathon can be prepared in 3 to 4 weeks. Keep every task and merge the weeks:
- Week 1: goal, format, budget, theme, brief, criteria, rules, jury.
- Week 2: publish, open sign-ups, internal announcement.
- Week 3: teams, materials, mentors, jury briefing.
- Week 4: logistics, reminders, event.
The one task not to compress is the rules review: give your adviser time to read them.
What to do 8 weeks before?
- Goal in one sentence and the number you will measure it by (organizer)
- Format: in person, online, hybrid or internal (organizer)
- Date, duration and expected headcount (organizer)
- Submissions you want and registrations to accept, worked out backwards (organizer)
- Budget by cost line, using the hackathon cost breakdown (organizer)
- Follow-up owner: who will take the winning idea forward (organizer)
For the math: registrations to accept = places ÷ share who show up. Example, with values to replace: 60 places and two in three showing up at your last edition give 90 registrations. For the share who submit, use your last edition; at your first edition, measure both rates.
What to do 7 weeks before?
- Theme and question for teams, for instance from the example themes (organizer)
- Brief: situation, problem, constraints, materials, deliverable (organizer)
- Data and materials for teams, already cleaned (organizer)
- First contact with judges and mentors (organizer)
What to do 6 weeks before?
- Three to five judging criteria with weights and scale (organizer, jury)
- Rules filled in and sent to your adviser (organizer)
- Prize decided and written into the rules (organizer)
- Jury confirmed before sign-ups open, 3 to 7 people (organizer, jury)
What to do 5 weeks before?
- Event page or challenge published with brief, rules, criteria and timeline (organizer)
- Participant FAQ published with the page: can I join alone, do I pay, can I use AI, who owns my work, will I get feedback, what do I get if I don't win (comms)
- Sign-up form asking: first hackathon yes or no, background, dietary and accessibility needs (organizer)
- Sign-ups open (organizer)
- Promotion plan: channels, dates, messages; ideas in how to promote a hackathon (comms)
- Visuals and copy for each channel (comms)
What to do 4 and 3 weeks before?
- Promotion live: posts, newsletters, outreach to universities or departments (comms)
- Weekly sign-up check (organizer)
- Follow-up on the channels bringing the fewest sign-ups (comms)
- Mentors confirmed, with shifts, by 3 weeks before at the latest (organizer)
- New questions from these weeks added to the FAQ (comms)
- Prize delivery arranged: who hands it over, when, how (organizer)
What to do 2 weeks before?
- Sign-ups closed (organizer)
- Eligibility check: anyone who does not meet the requirements in the rules is told at once (organizer)
- Teams formed or confirmed (organizer)
- Preparation email: agenda, materials, resources and tools to install or try (comms)
- Brief, criteria and scoring sheet sent to the jury (organizer, jury)
What to do 1 week before?
- Logistics: room, Wi-Fi, power and food, or the online space, ready (organizer)
- Minute-by-minute run sheet for the day, with the end time (organizer)
- Briefing with jury and mentors: criteria, scale, conflicts of interest, tie-break rule (organizer, jury)
- Reminder to participants (comms)
- Day-before email ready, using the template below (comms)
- Plan for photos, video and live posts (comms)
What goes in the day-before email?
Copy and fill in, deleting the lines your event does not need:
Subject: [Event name] tomorrow: times, address and what to bring
Hi [name], see you tomorrow, [date].
Times: doors [time], submission deadline [time], finish [time].
Where: [address], entrance at [point], getting there [transport]. Online: [link].
What to bring: ID, laptop and charger, [other].
Food: [meals included], options for [needs collected at sign-up].
Agenda and reading: [link].
Accessibility: [entrances, toilets, who to contact].
Code of conduct: [link]. To report an issue: [name, phone].
Questions: [channel] or [phone].
See you tomorrow, [signature]
What to do on the day?
- Welcome and attendance (organizer)
- Kickoff and presentation of the brief (organizer)
- Separate channels for announcements, questions and resources; same answers for everyone (organizer)
- At least two mentor shifts, announced at kickoff (organizer)
- Mid-event check-in with teams (organizer)
- More people answering in the last hours before the deadline (organizer)
- Live content published (comms)
- Submissions by the fixed deadline (organizer)
- Individual scoring on the sheet, then discussion (jury)
- Written comment for every score (jury)
- Awards, with an owner and a decision date announced for every proposal that moves forward (organizer, jury)
Expect almost everyone to submit close to the deadline, and early submitters to keep editing until the end. So support should grow toward the finish, not drop off.
What to do the week after?
- Feedback to every team against the criteria (jury, organizer)
- Winners announced by the date set in the rules, if the jury does not decide on the day (comms)
- Certificates for everyone who submitted (organizer)
- Prizes delivered (organizer)
- Date to decide whether to proceed, revise or stop, already announced at the awards, in the owner's calendar (organizer)
- Contact with the people you want to meet, if hiring was the goal (organizer)
- Thank-you to jury, mentors and participants (comms)
The follow-up is covered in after the hackathon.
What to do within 3 weeks?
- Recap page: numbers, teams, outcomes; submissions shown only with the teams' consent (comms)
- Participant survey (organizer)
- Actual attendance and submissions against the forecast: these are the rates for next time (organizer)
- Notes for next time: what to keep, what to change (organizer)
- Archive of submissions, sheets and comments (organizer)
- Update to participants on what happened to the winning idea (comms)
- Final spend by cost line against budget, and cost per participant (total ÷ attendees) (organizer)
What to add for an online hackathon?
The full format is in the online hackathon guide.
- One platform for brief, sign-ups, submissions, announcements and Q&A (organizer)
- Tools checked: GDPR compliance and maximum number of people connected (organizer)
- Full test with a dummy user one week before: sign-up, access, submission (organizer)
- Times written with time zones, if participants are in different countries (comms)
- Time to meet at kickoff: introductions, breakout rooms for teams (organizer)
- Online mentor shifts, with a channel for urgent questions (organizer)
- Kickoff and awards video calls, link sent the day before (comms)
- For multi-week events, an eligibility check on early submissions before the deadline, so teams can fix issues (organizer)
- Rule for uploads in the final minutes (organizer)
What to add for an internal hackathon?
- Agreement with managers on working hours spent on the event (organizer)
- Submission within working hours, no all-nighters (organizer)
- Announcement from leadership explaining why the event matters (comms)
- What will happen to projects, written down beforehand: learning, testing an idea or going into the product (comms)
- Teams mixing people from different departments (organizer)
- Check of internal policies on data and intellectual property (organizer)
- Judges who can decide what happens to the winning idea (organizer, jury)
- Date when the company announces what it will take forward (comms)
What do you need on the day of an in-person event?
- Printed attendee list and badges (organizer)
- Wi-Fi with credentials posted in the room, sockets and extension cords (organizer)
- Brief and rules printed as well as online (organizer)
- Scoring sheets for each judge (jury)
- Visible clock or timer for the deadline (organizer)
- Food and water for the whole event, with dietary needs collected at sign-up (organizer)
- Contact person for emergencies and reports (organizer)
- Photo and video consent, if you publish images of participants (comms)
How does MARA shorten the checklist?
On MARA the builder writes the brief, rules, criteria, deliverables and timeline from a few lines about your problem. So the week 7 and week 6 tasks become a draft to review instead of a document to write.
You can publish the challenge to the MARA student community, growing with partner universities, or keep it closed: reserved for a university's students, who sign in with their university email, or for whoever receives the private link. Sign-ups, submissions, announcements and Q&A all live in the same challenge. Everyone who submits gets a verifiable certificate to add to LinkedIn. Judging stays with your jury: judges enter the workspace and update the statuses, and MARA gives no scores.
A real example: H-FARM's H-ACK "Robots in Action", a 24-hour hackathon held on 11 and 12 April 2026, ran end to end on MARA: 157 participants, 30 teams, 6 judges (source: H-FARM College article). Read the case.
- 157participants
- 30teams
- 6judges
Frequently asked questions.
01How far ahead should you start planning a hackathon?
For a 24- to 48-hour event, start 6 to 8 weeks ahead. A small internal hackathon can be ready in 3 to 4 weeks: compress the weeks, keep every task.
02Who should be on the organizing team?
You need at least three roles: organizers who decide, a jury that evaluates and someone on comms. In a small event one person can cover two roles, but the jury stays separate.
03How many registrations should a hackathon accept?
Work backwards. In person, divide your places by the share of sign-ups who showed up at your last edition. For example, with 60 places and two in three showing up, you accept up to 90 registrations. For submissions, divide the number you want by the share of sign-ups who submitted last time.
04What should you do right after a hackathon?
Within a week: feedback to every team against the criteria, certificates for everyone who submitted and, if hiring was the goal, contact with the people you want to meet. The owner and decision date for every proposal that moves forward are announced at the awards.
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