About the Hackathon
For two days, you will develop new projects with festival data, City of Linz open data, and AI-assisted coding tools in the middle of Ars Electronica Festival 2026. The best ideas are honored on Saturday afternoon.
The AI Hackathon is an official event of Ars Electronica Festival 2026, held under the theme NEGOTIATING HUMANITY. On September 11 and 12, you will work alone or in teams of two to five at Grand Garage in Linz to develop prototypes that combine the festival program dataset with open data from the City of Linz. The award ceremony takes place on Saturday afternoon, September 12, directly after the community voting.
Register by September 7, 2026. Participation is free; registration is required. Sign up on the City of Linz participation platform.
At a glance
- Hackathon: Friday, September 11, 2026, 09:30–18:00, and Saturday, September 12, 2026, 09:30–16:00, at Grand Garage in Linz; doors open at 09:00 on both days
- Award ceremony: Saturday afternoon, September 12, 2026, after the community voting
- Registration: July 21 through September 7, 2026
- Cost: Free; registration is sufficient
- Minimum age: 14
- Experience: Prior coding or vibe-coding experience is not required
- Ways to join: Alone, alone with a request for team matching, or as an existing team
- Team size: Two to five people
- Next information: Registered participants receive the detailed schedule by email
The challenge
Linz neu entdecken — rediscover Linz.
At this two-day AI hackathon, develop creative digital projects using festival data and open data from the City of Linz. On Saturday afternoon, present your project or demo in a voluntary short pitch.
With AI tools and support from mentors, turn your ideas into tangible projects: smart guides, interactive maps, storytelling tools, artistic works, or entirely new approaches. We are looking for projects that let people experience Linz and the festival differently.
Schedule
Friday, September 11, 2026
- 09:00 Doors open
- 09:30 Kick-off: welcome, impulses and inspiration, introduction of the challenges and the mentors, team matching
- 10:00–18:00 Hacking and mentoring
- 12:00–13:00 Lunch break
Saturday, September 12, 2026
- 09:00 Doors open
- 09:30–16:00 Hacking and mentoring
- 12:00–13:00 Lunch break
- Afternoon Voluntary project pitches, community voting, award ceremony, and group photo
What you get
- The current festival dataset, provided directly from the festival’s content system and accompanied by cleaning guidance.
- A curated selection of City of Linz open data: events, trees, mobility, visitor services, environmental readings, historical maps, and more. Sources that need conversion or caching will be prepared centrally.
- An optional development environment hosted in Austria that opens in your browser, with the festival resources and pi.dev already set up.
- Optional OpenRouter access to Mistral Medium 3.5 with a $20 budget per attendee. This add-on is required if you choose the hosted environment.
- The freedom to use other models through your own, self-funded accounts.
- An optional browser-based development environment, so you can work directly in a browser without first installing a local development setup.
- Food during the hackathon. The registration form asks about dietary preferences, intolerances, and allergies.
- Mentoring from festival staff, city data specialists, and AI engineers.
Who can take part
Participation is open to everyone aged 14 or older. You can register alone, ask to be matched with a team, or sign up as an existing team of two to five people. The registration form explicitly welcomes people with no previous coding or vibe-coding experience.
Optional AI tool and development environment
The organizers provide optional, free access to Mistral Medium 3.5 through OpenRouter. Personal registration data is not shared with OpenRouter. Use the tool at your own responsibility and only for the hackathon; never enter sensitive personal information such as health data, passwords, identity documents, or confidential information into AI tools.
You can instead use your own AI tools. You may also request the optional browser-based development environment during registration.
Ars Electronica Festival 2026
The wider festival runs from September 9–13, 2026, across central Linz. Under the theme NEGOTIATING HUMANITY, international artists, researchers, and innovators examine what it means to be human amid AI, global crises, and technological change. Its program includes exhibitions, performances, concerts, conferences, and interactive formats.
Explore the festival program and tickets.
How winners are chosen
The winning projects are chosen by the community. On Saturday afternoon, September 12, 2026, you present your project in a voluntary short pitch, and everyone present then votes in the community voting. The winning teams are honored right afterwards at the award ceremony. What counts is the idea, creativity, originality, execution, and how meaningfully a project connects the two data worlds.