The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is holding a hackathon to encourage developers and subject matter experts to discuss, collaborate, and develop utilities, ideas, sample code, and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF standards.
When: 14 - 15 March 2026 (Saturday - Sunday)
Where: Futian Shangri-La
Room: TBD
Sign up for the Hackathon
View the list of registered:
Keep up to date by subscribing to the IETF Hackathon email list.
The IETF Hackathon is free to attend and is open to everyone. It is a collaborative event, not a competition. Any competition is friendly and in the spirit of advancing the pace and relevance of new and evolving internet standards.
¶ Agenda
Subject to Change
Hackathon (all times are GMT-4)
¶ Saturday, 14 March
- 09:30 : Room open for setup by project champions
- 10:00 : Room open for all - pastries and coffee provided
- 10:30 : Hackathon kickoff
- 10:45 : Form teams, see Team Schedule
- 12:30 : Lunch provided
- 15:30 : Afternoon break - snacks provided
- 18:30 : Dinner provided
- 20:30 : Room closes
¶ Sunday, 15 March
- 09:30 : Room opens - pastries and coffee provided
- 12:30 : Lunch provided
- 13:30 : Hacking stops, prepare brief presentation of project
- 14:00 : Project results presentations
- 16:00 : Hackathon ends
- 17:00 : Tear down complete
Related activities before and after the Hackathon weekend
¶ Hackdemo Happy Hour
- Share your Hackathon project with the IETF community
- Monday, 16 March, Time: 19:00 - 20:00, Room: TBD
- View the schedule or reserve space for your team/project
- Reservations for space must be made by 13:00, Monday 16 March
¶ Shared Workspace
- Space for groups to gather and collaborate on running code
- Monday - Friday, 16 - 20 March, Room: TBD
- View the schedule or reserve space for your team/project
NOTE: You will need an IETF Datatracker account to login to the Hackathon Meetecho sessions.
When you register for the IETF Hackathon, you are sent a separate email to create an IETF Datatracker account if you don't already have one.
If you already have an IETF Datatracker account, please ensure that the email address with which you registered is associated with your Datatracker account.
If you received the email but the link to create an account has expired, please see the instructions below:
- Go to https://datatracker.ietf.org/accounts/create/
- Select "New Account" from the User menu at the top
- Enter the email address that you registered with for the Hackathon
- Follow the instructions in the email you receive
¶ Presentation and Meeting Materials
- You can share the code you're working on through the IETF Hackathon GitHub, or via the links provided in the project descriptions below.
- Request to be added to IETF GitHub organization by sending your GitHub ID to (hackathon-chairs@ietf.org).
- Hackathon project result presentations should be uploaded to Datatracker under the specific session Hackathon Results Presentations at 14:00-16:00.
- To upload your presentation, you must have a Datatracker account and be logged in.
- The Hackathon Results presentations from Sunday, 14:00-16:00, are available on Datatracker:
¶ Participant Preparation and Prerequisites
¶ Project Teams and Champions
- Champions are the leads for individual projects in the Hackathon
- Champions are individuals familiar with a given technology who volunteer to help get others get up and running with that technology
- Before the Hackathon, champions should:
- Add information about your project to the list of Projects included in Hackathon
- Recruit participants from associated working groups, open source projects, etc. Announcing your projects via an email to (hackathon@ietf.org) can be helpful as well.
- Specify when and how the project team will meet on the Team Schedule
- At the Hackathon, champions should:
- Make themselves available to answer questions and help others
- Hack on things themselves in their copious free time
- Additional projects are welcome at any time. For any questions, contact the chairs at (hackathon-chairs@ietf.org)
¶ Choosing a Project
- Champions post and lead projects
- Details on each project and links to additional information for each project are in the list of Projects included in Hackathon
- How and when teams meet during the week is up to them and can be found in the Team Schedule.
- Familiarity with technology area(s) in which you plan to participate will certainly help
- It is perfectly fine, even encouraged, to work on multiple projects
¶ Lost & Found
- Participants looking for a team and champions wanting help on their projects are encouraged to visit the Lost & Found.
¶ Development Environment
- Bring a laptop on which you are comfortable developing software
- Some projects may require installing additional software or make use of VMs or containers
- Installing and becoming familiar with !VirtualBox, Vagrant, Docker or something similar may be helpful
- Specific coding languages are called out by some projects (e.g. Python, Go, Java, C++), but this is heavily dependent on the project(s) you choose
¶ Sharing Code
- Git/GitHub is commonly used for open source projects. Familiarizing yourself with it is recommended.
- An online tutorial is available here: Git Tutorial
- The IETF Hackathon GitHub organisation is used by some of the Hackathon projects to host their repositories.
- If you would like to have your project/code hosted here, send your GitHub ID and the name of your project via email to (hackathon-chairs@ietf.org)
¶ Project Presentations
- All teams have the opportunity to present what they did at the end of the Hackathon.
- Hackathon project result presentations should be uploaded to Datatracker under the specific session Hackathon Results Presentations at 14:00-16:00.
- To upload your presentation, you must have a Datatracker account and be logged in.
- DO NOT WAIT until just before the start of the Hackathon project presentations to upload your presentation, as it may be lost in the chaos.
¶ Network
Access to the IETF network
The NOC team has an ongoing experiment that allows you to join the IETF network remotely as well as at an IETF meeting venue.
Requests for networking capabilities beyond wireless access to the IETF network (e.g., wired ports, L2 access, prefix delegation) can be sent to support@ietf.org.
All requests are addressed on a best effort basis. Advance notice is appreciated and improves the odds of your request being fulfilled.
¶ Webex sessions for teams
Champions can request a Webex account they can use to schedule meetings for their team. These are similar to the Webex accounts allocated to working group chairs to be used for virtual interim meetings. An account can be requested by a team champion at any time. Accounts will remain active and available for the duration of the IETF meeting. Request your account HERE. In the request form, you can use your project name where it asks for "Working Group Name" ("Hackathon Project Name").
¶ Ongoing Communication
In addition to registering for the Hackathon and subscribing to the Hackathon list. It is recommended to monitor both the Hackathon wiki and the list as the Hackathon approaches, determine which project(s) are of interest to you, and reach out to the champions of those projects to determine how best to be involved and coordinate with the rest of the team working on each project.
Champions are welcome and encouraged to list times and mechanisms for collaborating with their team in the Team Schedule. Participants can use this page to determine how and when to reach other team members.
The Hackathon kickoff and the project results presentations can be joined via Meetecho. The Hackathon Zulip stream may be used for general and project specific communication.
¶ IPR and Code Contribution Guideline
All Hackathon participants are free to work on any code. The rules regarding that code are what each open source project and each participant's organization says they are. The code itself is not an IETF Contribution. However, discussions, presentations, demos, etc., during the Hackathon are IETF Contributions (similar to Contributions made in working group meetings). Thus, the usual IETF policies apply to these Contributions, including copyright, license, and IPR disclosure rules.
¶ Projects Included in Hackathon
Note, all projects are open to everyone. However, some champions have identified their projects as being particularly good for those who are new to the IETF or new to the Hackathon. These projects are marked with a star, i.e. *. If you are championing a project that is great for newcomers, please add a * at the end of your project name.
For inspiration and examples of previous Hackathon projects see the previous Hackathon page.
¶ First Project Here (replace me)
- Champions
name and email - Project Info
project description
¶ Second Project Here (replace me)
- Champions
name and email - Project Info
project description
Don’t see anything that interests you? Feel free to add a project to the list, sign up as its champion, and show up to work on it. Note: you must login to the wiki to add content. If you add a new project, we suggest you send an email to (hackathon@ietf.org) to let others know. You may generate interest in your project and find other people who want to contribute to it.
TEMPLATE: Copy/paste and update the following template to add your project to the list:
### Your Project
- **Champions**
name and email
- **Project Info**
project description
To edit the wiki, log in using your IETF Datatracker login credentials. If you don't yet have an IETF Datatracker account, you may get one by going here and requesting a new account.