about nz hackathons

what this is

NZ Hackathons is a listings directory. It tracks hackathons taking place in New Zealand and puts them on one page, sorted by date, with the dates, location, ticket price and prize information attached to each one, and it browses by 6 city hubs.

Right now there are 5 upcoming events listed. That number moves every week — the collection run adds what it finds, and an event drops out of the main list into the archive once it has happened. The directory is new, so expect it to be on the thin side for a while; what is here is real.

We do not run hackathons. Every listing links out to the organiser's own page, which is where registration, rules, schedules and any questions about the event itself belong. Think of this as an index, not an intermediary.

where the listings come from

Listings are gathered automatically. Once a week, on a Sunday, a collection run checks the public event platforms that New Zealand hackathon organisers actually use — Luma first of all, then Eventbrite, Meetup and Devpost — and collects anything that looks like a hackathon happening in New Zealand, whether the listing calls it a hackathon (or Kiwijam, for the national game jam). Organisers can also add an event directly through the submit form.

Automated collection is the only way to keep a directory of this kind current, but it is also the part most likely to be wrong, so candidates are filtered before they are published:

• New Zealand only. The risk is the Australian calendar: trans-Tasman online listings and the Humanitix platform both carry Australian events. An event is accepted when a New Zealand venue, a .nz link, the Pacific/Auckland timezone, a New Zealand university or company, or a four-digit postcode confirms it.
• Actually a hackathon. Build weekends, game jams, buildathons, datathons and hack days and similar hands-on competitions. Conferences, webinars and meetups that merely mention the word do not qualify.
• Online events need a New Zealand signal. An online listing is only kept if something ties it here — a local link, a local timezone, or New Zealand-only eligibility rules.
• Still upcoming. Past events move to an archive section rather than the main listings.
• Not a duplicate. The same event cross-posted to two platforms is matched on its link or its title and merged into one listing.

how the listings are written

Once an event is accepted, its page is read and the details are pulled out — dates normalised to the local format (26 Sep 2026), prices to New Zealand dollars, written NZ$2,500 so they are never mistaken for the Australian, US or Canadian dollar editions this site links to, the venue and address separated out, the banner image copied onto our own servers rather than hotlinked from the organiser. Titles stay exactly as the organiser wrote them. Māori place names are read too — Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Ōtautahi, Ōtepoti and Kirikiriroa fold onto their hubs.

how the city hubs work

Six hub cities — Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton and Tauranga — plus the regions around them. Each hub covers the area around it rather than the city limits alone, so events on the North Shore, in the Hutt Valley, in Rolleston or at Mount Maunganui all show up under their nearest hub. Palmerston North, Napier, Nelson, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Whangārei, Invercargill and Queenstown keep their own name and show under all events. The kinds of event you will find — university hackathons, Kiwijam, government and civic events, industry challenges in agritech and health, and community weekends — are listed on the guide page.

money

The directory is funded by featured listings: an organiser can show their event as a banner on every page for seven days for a one-time fee. The order of ordinary listings is unaffected — it stays chronological.