🚀 Get ready for Hafnia Hackathon 2026
Following the success of Hafnia Hackathon 2025, we're excited to welcome both familiar faces and new builders to the 2026 challenge. Whether you joined us last year or are taking part for the first time, we can't wait to see what you build.
Registration opens on October 1, 2026. This page is your central hub for everything about the hackathon. We'll keep adding webinars, technical resources, FAQs, and registration details as they're confirmed. Bookmark this page and check back regularly. 📌
Find a real operational problem in security, traffic, public safety, smart cities or beyond, and build a focused prototype that turns video understanding into something an XProtect user could actually use. Think intelligent alerts, natural-language video search, smart dashboards, shift summaries, or detecting when a camera has been moved or blocked.
You don't need to train a model or own any video infrastructure. You'll build on Hafnia VLMs, NVIDIA Cosmos-3 fine-tuned on real-world video, inside your own cloud-hosted XProtect environment with camera streams, APIs and development tools ready to go.
Front-end, back-end or full-stack developer, computer vision engineer, student or founder: if you understand a real problem, you have what it takes.
What we provide
Participation is free. Every registered developer gets a ready-to-use environment:
Participants may also use their own development and AI tools where permitted by the hackathon rules.
What you can build
Anything that combines Hafnia VLMs, video and XProtect to solve a real problem. For example:
Your own idea
Bring any idea for video and AI. You can even connect your own video to XProtect.
About Hafnia
Hackathon Prizes
Winners are announced before the Milestone Developer Summit in Copenhagen, where selected winners are invited to present (conference access included; travel and accommodation not included). Prize details will be shared before registration opens.
Important dates
From idea to prototype
Judging Criteria
You don't need a production-ready product. A focused prototype solving the right problem is worth more than a polished app without a meaningful use case.
Real-World Value
Does it solve an actual customer, operator or industry problem in security, traffic, transportation, smart cities or similar? Could organizations realistically want to use it?
Innovation
An original approach to video, VLMs or an existing problem.
Use of Hafnia VLM & XProtect
Takes advantage of what VLMs uniquely add and fits naturally into an XProtect workflow. Solutions that feed VLM results back into XProtect as events, alerts or actions score higher than those that only display model output.
Technical Execution
Sound architecture and implementation that is reliable and reproducible by the judges.
Functionality
The solution works end-to-end and addresses the problem it set out to solve.
Demo & User Experience
A clear, concise demo that shows the problem, the solution, its value and the user experience.
Participation Rules
Build a working proof of concept or MVP that combines XProtect, Hafnia VLM and your own application logic to solve a real customer or operational problem. The strongest solutions go beyond sending video to a VLM and displaying the answer. They turn visual understanding into workflows, alerts, dashboards, integrations or automated actions within XProtect.
You keep ownership of your work and are free to keep developing or commercialize it after the hackathon. Submissions grant Milestone usage rights as defined in the official hackathon terms.
Rules at a galnce:
- Participation is free
- Register before 8th of October
- Build alone or in a team
- Every participant or team gets their own environment and credentials
- Projects must be original and use both XProtect and Hafnia VLM as core components
- Third-party tools, frameworks and AI-assisted development tools are allowed
- Registrations may be reviewed to prevent duplicate accounts or misuse of resources
- The provided XProtect environment and licenses are for hackathon development and testing only
- Full eligibility and IP terms are in the official hackathon rules
What to Submit
Working Solution
A functional PoC or MVP that uses XProtect and Hafnia VLM to solve a real customer or operational challenge.
Solution Description
A short overview of the problem, the target user, how you use XProtect and Hafnia VLM, and the value your solution creates.
Demonstration Video (Required)
3–5 minutes recommended, shared via a public or accessible link, showing the solution in action and its user experience.
Source Code
The code and supporting materials needed to reproduce, deploy and test your solution. Open source is not required, but open-source projects are viewed positively.
Live Demo Access (optional)
A link where judges can try your solution directly.
Documentation (Optional)
README, setup instructions, architecture diagrams or other supporting materials.