Bay Area
SF hackathons worth your weekend
Not every hackathon is worth a Saturday. This is the shortlist I actually pay attention to for AI, security, and identity work in the Bay Area.
Standing communities and hubs
Live calendars beat a hardcoded list of dates, since hackathon schedules shift season to season.
- Cerebral ValleyThe closest thing SF AI builders have to a shared calendar. Sponsor-run hackathons post here first.
- AI Tinkerers, San FranciscoPractitioner meetups and build nights, including occasional security-focused sessions.
- Luma, SF hackathon collectionAggregates most SF hackathon listings in one calendar.
- DevNetwork AI/ML HackathonRuns annually each spring at the South San Francisco Conference Center. I sit on DevNetwork's AI/ML Advisory Board.
- dev.events, SF AI hackathon indexThe broadest listing if the above don't have what you're after.
What tends to have a real security track
Identity vendors are showing up as hackathon sponsors more often, not just cloud credits and API keys. Auth0 sponsored the identity and auth layer at the RSAC 2026 Deep Agents Hackathon in SF, for example, which tells you where agent-building events are headed: the interesting judging criteria is shifting from "does the demo work" to "would this agent's permissions survive a real attacker."
Hackathon calendars shift fast. Confirm dates on the organizer's page before you build a weekend around this list. Organizing one and looking for software sponsors or prizes? See the sponsorship guide.
More on running a hackathon
The rest of this series: