Five weeks to go: what happens before kick-off on 13 November

Road to HackAthlone: 35 days to go

HackAthlone 2026 opens in five weeks, on Friday 13 November at 17:00, in the Engineering Building at TUS Athlone. It closes on Sunday 15 November at 18:00. It’s the fourth edition of the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Athlone, it’s in person and it’s free.

This is the first post in the Road to HackAthlone, a short series we’ll publish every Tuesday and Friday until the event. Think of it as a newsletter with a countdown. Each post covers one thing you can do that week to arrive ready.

The dates that matter

• Now: registration is open on spaceappschallenge.org. Choose Athlone as your local event.
• Now: the 14 challenge summaries have been live since 17 September. You can read them all on our challenges page.
• Now: team formation has been open since 17 September. Teams can have 1 to 6 members, and everyone on a team must be registered for the same local event.
• 28 October: Space Apps publishes the full challenge statements, which “include the full details, resources, and requirements” for each challenge.
• 3 November: Space Apps Connect opens. It’s a free online forum where you can look for teammates and put questions to Space Apps Navigators and NASA subject matter experts.
• 13 November: Space Apps publishes its Project Submission and Judging and Awards guides. Its Global Offers, free tools and resources from its Global Collaborators, become available the same day.
• Friday 13 November, 17:00: HackAthlone opens. In past years, Friday evening meant the registration check, HACK101 and Pitch-Fest.
• Saturday 14 November: the global hackathon begins, and Space Apps opens team project pages for editing at 09:00 local time.
• Sunday 15 November: local judging in Athlone, and HackAthlone closes at 18:00. Space Apps closes project submission at 23:59 local time.
• After the weekend: experts from NASA, Space Agency Partners and industry judge the projects. Global Nominees, Global Finalists and Honourable Mentions are announced in December 2026, and the Global Winners in January 2027.

One rule to know now: Space Apps doesn’t allow any work on your challenge project before the hackathon starts. Until then, it’s research and planning only.

What to do this week

Register, if you haven’t. Space Apps registration stays open until the hackathon closes, but places at the venue are limited. In 2025, 270 people registered for Athlone and 18 more joined the waitlist.

Skim the summaries. You don’t need to choose yet. Just notice which two or three you keep thinking about.

Start talking to people. Classmates, colleagues, the friend who keeps sending you rocket launch videos. If nobody comes to mind, that’s fine too. You can register on your own and find teammates at the event.

Sort out travel. Athlone station is about 3 km from the venue: get a taxi, or the A1 town bus, which runs from the station past the campus. If you’re driving, parking behind the Engineering Building is limited, so email us in advance. We don’t provide accommodation, but our FAQs list some places nearby.

Where we’re coming from

The first HackAthlone, in 2023, had 148 registrations and 22 teams, with 12 projects submitted to NASA and 2 nominated for global judging. In 2024 those numbers grew to 214 registrations, 30 teams, 24 projects and 3 nominations.

Last year we had 270 registrations, 50 teams and 33 projects submitted. Four Athlone projects were nominated for global judging: Cea-SAR, Debugonauts, Dilly Dally and TerraWatt. We’d love 2026 to be the year the room is even fuller.

Coming up on the blog

On Tuesday: how to choose a Space Apps challenge. After that we’ll cover building a team, NASA open data for beginners, what last year’s podium teams built, a plan for challenge statement day, surviving the overnight, a tech stack that won’t let you down, how judging works and, three days before kick-off, the packing list.

See you on Tuesday.