Hackathon 101
Timeline
- Sept 28
- Registration opens 11:00 ET
- Sept 29
- Optional AMA with the hackathon committee at 13:00 ET
- Oct 08
- Registration closes 11:00 ET
- Oct 09
- Build starts 19:00 ET
- Oct 11
- Submissions close 19:00 ET
- Week of Oct 12
- Local judging complete
- Week of Oct 19
- Global winners announced
Who can participate
- Students in participating schools — the student track
- Professionals and other students — the professional track
- Solo, or with a team of up to 4
How registration works
- One person registers the team as its captain, with the team name, node, track and up to three teammates. To compete solo, register a team of one.
- Teammates sign in to Qollab with the email the captain entered, then accept on the registration page. No email goes to them, so tell them.
- Each person can be on one team. An invitation can't reach someone who already registered a team or joined another, and registering a team cancels the invitations you have.
- A captain can withdraw the team and register again until Oct 8, 11:00 ET. After that, changes go by email to hello@qollab.xyz.
- Projects come on the build weekend, Oct 9 to 11. Submit up to five; each one is judged on its own.
What you need to win
To be eligible for awards, you'll need to build a quantum project that:
- Is a Qiskit project that runs on Qollab's free simulators, including IonQ's quantum simulator
- Is published and runnable on Qollab under an MIT license, before the deadline
- Comes with a Qollab project page explaining what it does and how to run it
- Is built during the hackathon window. Existing code is fine as a starting point when you disclose it; judging is based on what you add
- Includes a 2 to 3 minute demo video at a public link, with no sign-in
New to Qiskit? Programming your first quantum circuits gets you to a running circuit on the IonQ simulator in six short lessons.
How judging works
Fair judging rubrics. Awards that make you tingle. What more can you want?
Every submission is judged on the same four traits:
- Novelty & creativity
- Technical execution
- Impact potential
- Documentation quality
Local judges score first. Top scorers advance to a global panel, which re-scores using the same rubric.
What's at stake
Local awards
Local teams may add their own bonus prizes on top of these, so check with your location's organizers.
Fewer than 10 submissions at a location? The top 3 advance straight to global judging with no local awards. Up to one project per location can also advance in each global specialty category, alongside overall placement.
If you compete in a location with 10+ project submissions, you can be eligible for local awards:
| Cash | Compute | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | $500 | $5,000 |
| 2nd | $300 | $3,000 |
| 3rd | $200 | $2,000 |
Global placement awards
The global top three teams receive cash and compute-credit awards. They also receive the additional benefits detailed below.
All top local submissions compete for global placement awards:
| Cash | Compute | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | $10,000 | $20,000 |
| 2nd | $5,000 | $15,000 |
| 3rd | $2,500 | $10,000 |
For the global top three
Additional winner benefits
- IonQ mentorship. Three structured one-to-one sessions with IonQ engineers during the 12 months following the hackathon. Mentors will be matched by specialty where possible. Sessions will focus on developing the winning project and may also include career guidance.
- Expedited IonQ interview access. For 12 months following the hackathon, eligible winners may apply for suitable roles through an expedited process. Internship and early-career applicants will bypass the initial screening stage and receive a first conversation with the hiring manager. Professional candidates may be considered for one role aligned with their background. Participation does not guarantee employment.
- Featured on Qollab. Winning projects receive featured placement on Qollab.
Global specialty awards
- Most novel / creative
- Best of theme:
- Quantum Impact — solving real-world problems with quantum + classical computing
- Quantum Playground — using quantum to build something playful, artistic, or unexpected
- Quantum Unlocked — make the hardest ideas in quantum computing click
- Most impact
- Best documentation
A single project can win multiple specialty awards and placement awards.
Projects can also compete to win one of the following specialty awards:
| Cash | Compute | |
|---|---|---|
| Specialty | $500 | $5,000 |
Separate Qollab opportunity
Qollab Fellows
Qollab may invite selected hackathon participants to become Qollab Fellows from November to April. Fellows bring their networks onto Qollab, help newcomers publish their first projects, and contribute tutorials and projects of their own. Each Fellow also has a small grant pool to fund promising projects from their network.
The fellowship includes cash, compute credits for research and a grant pool. It is run by Qollab, separately from IonQ's awards. Full role details will be shared privately with those invited.
Can I submit more than one project?
Yes. Awards are given per project, not per person or team.
Can I be on more than one team?
No. Each person is on one team, as its captain or as a teammate who accepted. You can still submit more than one project.
What if my teammate can't find the invitation?
Invitations go to the email the captain entered. Your teammate signs in to Qollab with that address, then accepts on the registration page. No email goes to them, so send them the link. If the address was mistyped, or they already registered a team or joined another, the invitation can't reach them: the captain emails hello@qollab.xyz to sort it out.
What are the three themes?
Quantum Impact. Take on a real challenge in logistics, manufacturing, space, finance, energy or another industry with a hybrid quantum-classical approach: pick a public dataset, build a strong classical baseline, then show where a quantum subroutine makes a measurable difference.
Quantum Playground. Turn quantum mechanics into a creative medium: a game, music, art, an interactive experience, or something we haven't imagined. The bar is that superposition, interference, entanglement or measurement is essential to the piece, beyond simply generating randomness.
Quantum Unlocked. Pick a hard, timely topic such as error correction, fault tolerance, quantum networking or algorithms, and teach it: an interactive demo, animation, visualisation or GUI that makes it intuitive.
A project that fits none of them is still eligible for placement and local awards, just not for a theme specialty award. Full descriptions are in the Rules & terms.
Do I have to pick a theme when I register?
No. Registration asks which theme you are leaning toward, but the answer is optional and binds nothing; it only helps us plan mentors and AMA topics. You declare your project's theme when you submit it, and you can change that up to the submission deadline on Oct 11. That is the only point it could be decided anyway, since registration closes the day before the build starts and you can enter more than one project. A project that fits no theme is still eligible for placement awards, just not for a theme specialty award.
What if I'm not affiliated with a participating university?
Register as a professional and pick any location. We recommend selecting the closest to you geographically.
Can students and professionals team up?
Yes. A team with any professional on it registers in the professional track. The student track is for teams where everyone is enrolled at the node university. Everyone on a team competes at the same location.
Can I use AI tools or existing code to start?
Yes. Judging is based on what you add during the window. Say on your project page what existed before the build window and credit its source, such as a fork, template, repo or tutorial. Submitting existing work as new, or using someone else's code without saying so, is grounds for disqualification. QCFlows: Multi-file Example and Quantum Hackathon Soundtrack are both forks that name their original in the project description.
What happens if I don't finish?
Submit what you have. Partial and rough projects are still eligible for judging.
Does all my code have to be on Qollab?
The project has to be public and runnable on Qollab. Judges open the project page, read the description and the code, and press Run on a free simulator. A frontend or backend hosted elsewhere can support it. Keep that repo public, with no sign-in, under an MIT license, with its dependencies listed and no API keys or secrets.
Which browsers can run projects?
A recent Chrome, Edge, Brave or Opera, or Firefox 153 or later. Safari can't run projects yet: it lacks WebAssembly JSPI, which Qollab's runtime needs. On iPhone and iPad every browser uses Safari's engine, so build on a computer. Your team and projects belong to your Qollab account, not to a browser, so switching browsers loses nothing: sign in with the same Google or GitHub account. More on browser support.
Who submits our project, and can we edit it afterwards?
The team captain submits from the registration page, between Oct 9, 19:00 ET and Oct 11, 19:00 ET. A team can submit up to 5 projects, each public and owned by the captain or a teammate who joined. The captain can edit a submission in the form until the deadline. After the deadline, the captain can still withdraw submissions, but the form no longer takes edits or new submissions. Teammates see the list of submissions, and only the captain can submit or withdraw.
What should the demo video include?
Every submission needs a 2 to 3 minute demo video that shows the project working. A screen recording with a voiceover is enough, and you do not have to appear on camera. Host it on YouTube, Loom, Vimeo or Google Drive so that anyone with the link can watch it without a password or sign-in.
Do IonQ job limits affect how my project is judged?
Only if a run fails. Judges press Run on a free simulator, and whether you ran on hardware or a simulator is not scored. A project that runs on an IonQ simulator has to fit one job per run, so press Run there before you submit.
How do jobs, saved data and network requests work on Qollab?
Jobs: Local simulators accept as many jobs per run as you send. IonQ backends accept one per run, so put everything an IonQ run measures into one circuit.
Saving data: Nothing lasts from one run to the next, so ship saved states as project files.
Network: Code can only read, with GET requests to servers that allow cross-origin requests. Your code is public once you publish it, so keep API keys out.
What happens to my project after the hackathon?
It stays live and forkable on Qollab for at least 12 months. You can continue to work on it if you want, or accept others' contributions to it.
How do we communicate before and during the hackathon?
On Slack. Once you register, your local organizing team invites you to your node's channel for local logistics, and to a global support channel for platform, submission, or hardware access questions. There is also an optional AMA with the hackathon committee on Sept 29 at 13:00 ET. Before registration opens, email hello@qollab.xyz — the channels and who to ask are listed in Rules & terms.
Is the hackathon in person or online?
Online. The hackathon runs virtually over 48 hours. University nodes can also plan in-person events at their own discretion, such as sharing local results or demoing projects. Your local organizing team can tell you more in your node's Slack channel.
What if fewer than 10 teams submit at my location?
The top 3 projects advance directly to global judging. Up to one project per location can also advance in each specialty category, alongside overall placement.
Can I win a placement prize and a specialty award?
Yes, both are possible for the same project.
Are awards per person or per team?
Per project. If you submit more than one, each is judged separately.
Who judges the local round?
A local panel including a faculty or staff judge, alongside Qollab and IonQ representatives.
Is there a difference between student and professional prizes?
No. Both tracks are scored on the same rubric and compete for the same awards: the node tables and the global tables are single pools. The track only decides how your team registers. A team where everyone is enrolled at the node university registers as students, and every other team registers as professional. Node universities use the student track to run student-only events and add their own awards.
Are scoring decisions final?
Yes. The one exception is disqualification — see the appeals process in Rules & Terms.
What information do you collect when I register?
Your email address, username, and profile information. A name, profile picture, social links, and your project content are yours to add on top of that. Analytics cookies (Google Analytics 4, and PostHog hosted in the EU) load only if you accept them in the consent banner, and declining them restricts nothing. The Qollab Privacy Policy has the full detail.
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