• DATES

    Opening Ceremony: July 11, 2026

    Submission Deadline: July 12, 2026

    Closing Ceremony and Prizes: One day after the submission deadline

    ELIGIBILITY

    vsHacks is open to all secondary (middle school / high school) students.

    RULES

    • All code submitted must be created for and during the hackathon. Projects submitted to any other hackathons are not eligible for prizes. Plagiarism without proper attribution is considered an offence.
    • All aspects of your project must belong to your team. You are allowed to ask for external help from mentors, friends, etc., but you are strictly forbidden from having a non-team member build your project for you.
    • Your project must be appropriate for students. Remain respectful, avoid sensitive topics (politics), and make it safe for work.
    • Your project must not violate any of BC's provincial or Canada's federal laws. Even for educational purposes, you cannot create software for phishing, harassment, etc. If you ever need to question the legality of your project, then don't make it.
    • Failure to comply with these rules will make your project ineligible for prizes, and legal offences will result in your removal from the competition. If you have any questions regarding the rules, feel free to contact an organizer or email us.
    • In terms of A.I. usage: using A.I. to generate the entire project or all of the code is prohibited and will result in immediate disqualification. However, you are allowed to use it for bug fixing or specific case by case scenarios where you can get inspiration from snippets of code like how you would use Stack Overflow.

    JUDGING CRITERIA AND WINNER SELECTION

    • Your project will be judged by a committee of Vancouver Programming Clubs and invited honored judges.
    • "Draw" prizes will be randomly given to participants.
    • Winners that are selected are final. We have an experienced committee of judges, and will not be tolerating complaints or harassment against judging decisions.