The OpenCV 26 Hackathon invites participants to turn ambitious ideas into working vision applications that demonstrate measurable value to the global OpenCV community. The competition emphasizes Physical AI and Generative AI systems where visual understanding drives useful decisions, actions, predictions, or interactions.
Participation and Timeline The competition runs from August 12 to October 26, 2026. Registration and proposal submissions open on August 13. From August 26 through October 26, selected teams enter a two-month build phase to develop, evaluate, document, and submit their final projects. Final submissions are due at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 26, with winners announced on November 10.
Requirements Every entry must use OpenCV 5 for substantive image or video analysis and run a meaningful component on AWS. Projects may utilize any programming language or supporting hardware provided these core requirements are met. Teams are encouraged to collaborate via the official Slack channel and share progress using the #OpenCVComp26 hashtag.
Featured Paths and Prizes Two optional featured paths offer separate $1,000 awards: * Best Use of COOL Award: Recognizes the effective use of the Cloud-Optimized OpenCV Library (COOL) optimized for AWS Graviton to accelerate vision operations and move from prototype to scalable cloud deployment. * Agentic Vision Award: Honors workflows where an agent uses OpenCV 5 tools within a multi-step perception-decision-action loop, where visual evidence directly influences subsequent plans or actions.
Additionally, 50 teams will be selected to receive a cloud compute grant valued at $150. All other teams remain eligible to continue to the build phase.
Judging Criteria Projects are evaluated based on: * Technical execution (30%) * Innovation (20%) * Real-world impact (20%) * User experience (10%) * Documentation and presentation (10%) * Cloud delivery, reproducibility, and responsible operation (10%)