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.
Your money goes directly to whoever solves your problem. Define a challenge, set the prize, and pay out to the winning team. No tier required — though Chrome and above include one.
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 $5,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 prize. Minimum $500.
- 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.
EVERY DOLLAR HITS THE FLOOR
THE MONEY · TARGET $10KHackKentucky and HackTheTrack are volunteer-run. No staff, no overhead, no margin. Our target is $10,000 and here is precisely where it goes:
Beyond $10K → t-shirts, bigger prizes, 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.
GET INVOLVED
SPONSOR · VOLUNTEER · SPEAKTell 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.
LET'S TALK.
Dan Ross-Li · 502.521.2872 · hackkentucky.com · hackthetrack.org