Mike Hale Dev3pack is running its global hackathon from October 30 to November 1, 2026, a three-day hybrid event with more than 40 in-person build stations worldwide, and it bills the event as the largest Solana university hackathon. Prizes and tracks are still listed as TBA.
The May 2026 edition drew more than 4,000 applications from over 1,700 universities across 89 countries and produced 380-plus projects. Dev3pack describes itself as a home for women building in Web3 and AI, and aims its programs at underrepresented builders. That is a narrower pipeline than the open-call hackathons filling the rest of the Solana calendar.
Three phases, and only the middle one is the hackathon
The event runs longer than the three days in the announcement. A free Rust bootcamp opens four weeks ahead of it, and the top teams continue into an accelerator afterward.
Phase | Dates | What it is |
|---|---|---|
Solana Rust Bootcamp | October 6 to 30 | Free prep course, taught in English and Spanish |
Global Hackathon | October 30 to November 1 | Three days, hybrid, 40+ in-person build stations |
Bridge Accelerator | November to January | Post-hackathon program for top teams |
The bootcamp opens October 6, more than three weeks before the hackathon, and teaches Rust to students who have never written a Solana program. It runs in Spanish as well as English, which matches where the build stations are. Latin America carries a large share of them.
Dev3pack calls the Bridge Accelerator the first accelerator for underrepresented founders on Solana. It has put 13 startups through, unlocked more than $60,000 in grants, and run a VC demo day. A team that places well in November continues into that program in the same month the hackathon ends.
The build stations span four continents
The stations span four continents, including Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Lima, San Juan, and Tegucigalpa in the Americas; Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, Johannesburg, Kampala, and Addis Ababa in Africa; Mumbai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo in Asia; and Paris, Belgrade, Kyiv, and Bursa in Europe.
A student in Lusaka or Çanakkale hacking alongside 30 other people in a room is a different proposition from the same student alone on Discord, and the 89-country spread from the last edition suggests the rooms are what produce the numbers.
Dev3pack is still recruiting hosts. Campus groups and local communities can apply to run a station for 30 to 50-plus hackers, which is the opening for anyone who organizes on a campus and wants their university on the map. If you already run Solana campus events as an ambassador, a build station is the same job with a fixed date and a supplied curriculum.
The bootcamp opens six days before the Crypto World's Fair closes
Dev3pack's October 6 bootcamp start lands in the last week of Colosseum's Crypto World's Fair, which runs to October 12 and takes submissions from builders on any chain. A student finishing that one can start learning Rust before it closes and be building in a room somewhere on October 30, with eighteen days in between.
Dev3pack is selling that whole sequence. Four weeks of free Rust instruction in English and Spanish, then a three-day hackathon at one of 40-plus stations or online, then three months in the Bridge Accelerator for the teams that place. Each phase hands off to the next, so a student who starts October 6 with no Solana experience has a defined path to a demo day in January.
Applications go through the hackathon site, and the bootcamp is free whether or not you end up competing.
Dev3pack's claim to the largest Solana university hackathon rests on a number it has already hit once, and 4,000 applications across 1,700 universities is a real distribution advantage that no other Solana hackathon organizer has built.