300 BUILDERS. ONE ROOM.
THE OPPORTUNITYHackKentucky is Kentucky's largest community-run hackathon. For 2026, we're joining forces with HackTheTrack — one venue, one crowd, one sponsorship reaching both communities. We're expecting 300+ builders, mostly college students, early-career professionals, and high schoolers. Past HackKentuckies drew participants from Chicago, Cincinnati, Bowling Green, and Indianapolis.
FOUR REASONS TO WRITE THE CHECK
WHY SPONSORMeet engineers and designers mid-build, under pressure, solving something real. It's the most honest interview that exists.
Set a challenge track and get dozens of sharp people stress-testing your API, your dataset, or your idea — for free, over a weekend.
Friday runs five parallel Learn-a-thon tracks. Put a practitioner from your team in front of a room that actually wants to be there.
Volunteer-run, free to attend, homegrown. Sponsors are visibly the reason it happens, and the room knows it.
WHO ACTUALLY SHOWS UP
THE ROOM- →University students in CS, engineering, and design
- →Early-career software engineers and data professionals
- →High schoolers and first-time hackers — the Friday Learn-a-thon exists for exactly this
- →Startup founders, independent builders, and career-switchers
TWO WAYS TO PARTICIPATE
THE OFFERYour money funds the event — food, prizes, t-shirts, keeping registration free. You get brand presence, a recruiting table, speaking slots, and access to the room.
SEE TIERS & BENEFITS ↓Your reward goes directly to whoever solves your problem. Define a challenge, set a reward — cash or in-kind, ~$200 in value is plenty — and give it to the winning team. No tier required — though Chrome and above include one.
HOW BOUNTIES WORK →All tiers are cash. In-kind — food, prizes, hardware, cloud credits — is welcome and valued against the same table.
SPONSORSHIP TIERS
4 TIERSGet your name in the code.
Be in the room.
Set the challenge. Teach the room.
Own the grid.
| WHAT YOU GET | COMMUNITY FREE | NEON $100 | CHROME $500 | PURPLE $10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logo on both event websites | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Named at opening + closing ceremony | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Social media shout-outs | – | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Logo on the participant t-shirt | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Recruiting table at the venue | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Swag in the welcome bag | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Friday Learn-a-thon speaking slot (35 min) | – | – | ● | ● |
| Post a bounty | – | – | ● | ● |
| Send mentors on-site Saturday | – | – | ● | ● |
| Résumé book (opt-in participants) | – | – | ● | ● |
| Seat on the judging panel | – | – | – | ● |
| Saturday guest-speaker slot | – | – | – | ● |
| Logo on all venue signage | – | – | – | ● |
| Title billing: “presented by” | – | – | – | ● |
Only one Purple sponsorship is available.
BOUNTIES
PROBLEMS + PRIZES- 01You write the challenge — a real problem, an API to build against, a dataset to explore, a workflow to automate.
- 02You set the reward — cash or in-kind. We recommend ~$200 in value; the problem motivates builders more than the prize.
- 03Teams opt in over the weekend and build against it.
- 04You judge your own bounty and pay the winning team directly.
A specific, scoped problem with a clear finish line. “Build something cool with our API” gets ignored. “Build a tool that flags anomalies in this dataset in under 200ms” gets a room full of people fighting over it.
Post on their own, or stack on top of a tier.
READ THE FULL GUIDE + EXAMPLES →EVERY DOLLAR HITS THE FLOOR
THE MONEY · TARGET $15KHackKentucky and HackTheTrack are volunteer-run. No staff, no overhead, no margin. Our target is $15,000 and here is precisely where it goes:
Beyond $15K → even bigger prizes, more swag, and keeping registration free for everyone.
WANT SOMETHING THAT ISN'T ON THE LIST?
CUSTOM PACKAGESThe tiers are a starting point, not a wall. A workshop, a hardware lab, naming rights on a specific award, sponsoring a single meal — bring it to us and we'll build the package around it. In-kind counts toward tier benefits: food, prizes, hardware, software licenses, and cloud credits are all things we need.
READY TO SPONSOR?
NEXT STEPTell us how you want to be part of Fall 2026 and we'll follow up. Sponsoring? Commit by August 14 to make the t-shirt. Already confirmed? Send us your logo →
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LET'S TALK.
Dan Ross-Li · 502.521.2872 · hackkentucky.com · hackthetrack.org