Hackathon : définition

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, and how it is spelled here

“Hackathon” joins hack and marathon. “Hack” is used in its older engineering sense — solving a problem quickly and inventively — and not in the sense of breaking into systems. “Marathon” describes the format: one continuous, fixed block of time rather than a series of sessions. So the word literally describes a long, uninterrupted stretch of inventive building, which is what the event is.

French uses three spellings for it and they all mean the same thing:hackathon, the original form and the one most organisers put on their own listings; hackaton, which drops the second h and which French search reports as a term of EXACTLY the same size as the correct spelling — a genuinely unusual result, and the reason it is worth naming here rather than treating as a typo; and hack-a-thon, which spells the parts out. French keeps the noun lower case mid-sentence where English headline style might capitalise it, and the plural is hackathons either way. Nothing on this site is filed differently because of the spelling: an event is listed under the name its organiser gave it.

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 France

The one word covers several quite different events here, and working out which kind you are looking at tells you most of what you need to know before registering — who else will be in the room, how long you will be there, and whether anything is at stake beyond the prize.

• School and university hackathons — run by a faculty, a student association (a BDE or a tech club) or a campus society, normally over a weekend and normally the largest by headcount. In France the grandes écoles are as visible as the universities: engineering and computing schools, business schools and the public universities all run their own, alongside the instituts universitaires de technologie.
• Corporate challenges — a company sets a challenge tied to its own business and runs it over a day or two, sometimes with a cash prize and a recruitment pipeline attached. The French word for it is usually the English one, and the format is common across the industrial, banking, transport and energy groups that dominate the market.
• La Nuit de l’Info — a French format with no equivalent elsewhere: a single overnight student build, run simultaneously on campuses across the country every December, with briefs set by partner organisations. It is a hackathon in everything but the name, and this directory treats it as one.
• Public-sector and civic events — ministries, régions, métropoles, research bodies and city administrations run open-data and civic-technology hackathons, often with a policy brief rather than a commercial one.
• Community and startup hackathons — organised by a meetup group, a coworking space, an accelerator or a technology vendor. Usually shorter, usually free, and usually announced only a few weeks ahead, which is why a calendar is worth checking more than once.
• Game jams — the same format applied to making a game rather than an application, most visibly around Global Game Jam each January. “Game jam” is the single largest filter term in this market by more than ten times, which is why it has a page of its own.

The name shifts with the subject matter. A hackathon over datasets is usually a datathon; one that stops at the idea and the pitch, with nothing built, is an idéathon; one aimed at physical or hardware builds is a makeathon; and a weekend of building a game is a game jam. They are all the same shape — a brief, a clock, teams, a demo — and this site lists each under the name its organiser used.

// the formats named above are examples of the KINDS of hackathon run in France, described by what the format is rather than by any organisation's record. Nothing there is a claim about a specific edition, its dates, its size or its outcome — every event this directory lists has its own page, with the organiser's own description and a link to their listing.

how long they last

There is no standard length — the organiser sets it. Of the 6 hackathons listed on this site right now, 4 run inside a single day and 2 run across two or more. The longest currently listed is EU Vibe Coding Hackathon: From Idea to Subscription in 48h, which runs 3 days (25–27 sept. 2026).

The two shapes you will meet most often in France 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 usually nothing — participation gratuite is the norm here. 4 of the 6 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 6 hackathons listed here, 5 are in-person, and 1 runs 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 France

Not evenly. Right now 3 of the 6 hackathons listed here are in Paris, and the other 2 are split between Marseille and Nantes; one more runs entirely online. This directory groups every listing into ten city hubs, and each hub covers the area around it rather than the commune alone — an event in Saclay is listed under Paris, one in Aix-en-Provence under Marseille, one in Villeurbanne under Lyon. That is why a city you can reach in an hour is worth checking even when your own town has nothing. Eleven further cities — Nice, Rennes, Brest, Caen, Le Havre, Tours, Bourges, Dijon, Besançon, Ajaccio and Bastia — are too far from any hub to be folded into one honestly, so they keep their own names in the listings instead.

The ten hubs are Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes, Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Montpellier and Grenoble, and each page says exactly which communes, towns and régions it covers. Brittany, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Corsica, the Alpes-Maritimes and the seaward halves of Normandy and the Centre-Val de Loire are deliberately left out of that grouping — an event in Nice, Rennes, Brest, Caen or Le Havre 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 organiser describes the event around AI or machine learning — the theme it is judged on, the tools teams build with, or the problem set it hands out. (5 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. (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. 2 of the 6 listed here are built around vibe-coding, no-code or agentic tooling by the organiser's own description, which is a fair part of why the format has stopped being a programmers-only event.

If it's your first one, the practical advice is to scope small. A finished small idea demos far better than an ambitious half-built one, because judging happens on what actually runs. Student events are the usual way in — university hackathons take beginners by design and run workshops alongside the build.

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 France, updated weekly. Browse all 6 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.