Celebrating ten years of Hacktoberfest!

This October we’re excited to kick off a very special month of open source contributions—our tenth annual Hacktoberfest! Since 2014, maintainers and contributors have come together to contribute to the open source projects that many companies, including DigitalOcean, rely on. Over the years Hacktoberfest has grown from a small group of just 676 contributors to a truly global event, with 146,891 participants last year representing 194 countries.

How to participate

Beginning in September we encourage you to visit Hacktoberfest.com and mark your calendar for September 26th when registration opens. The Hacktoberfest website offers a wealth of resources for both open source newcomers and seasoned experts. We invite you to join by contributing to open-source projects. You can do this in a variety of ways:

• Prepare and share an open source project for collaboration

• Contribute to the betterment of a project via technical code contributions

• Contribute your non-technical skills and experience such as writing, graphic design, and advocacy

• Organize an event

• Mentor others

• Donate money directly to open source projects

New in 2023: Moving away from t-shirt rewards

In its tenth year, we’re making important changes to Hacktoberfest to ensure its sustainability for the next decade. Most notably, we will be moving away from the t-shirt rewards we have previously provided to a digital reward kit.

Although we know Hacktoberfest t-shirts are loved by the community, producing over 50,000 t-shirts and shipping them around the world has become logistically challenging. Even with the support of external sponsors, almost all of the program’s operating budget in past years has been allocated towards these physical rewards. Furthermore, we’ve run into challenges in many countries with participants being required to pay customs taxes and import duty fees which often exceed the value of the gift itself.

Our commitment remains unwavering towards Hacktoberfest’s primary mission of supporting open source projects. After carefully considering various options for this year and the future, we are excited to introduce an exclusive digital reward kit in partnership with Holopin. We believe that even without t-shirt rewards, the developer community will continue to come together in the same spirit of Hacktoberfest that they’ve always shown.

2023 is the year of the tree 🌳

In previous years we have given participants who completed 4 PR/MRs the option to plant a tree through our partner Tree Nation instead of redeeming a t-shirt. This year we’re excited to share that we’ll be purchasing a tree for the first 50,000 participants that complete their first PR/MR.

Hacktoberfest & Major League Hacking ✨

This year we’re excited to be partnering with Major League Hacking for Global Hack Week, a monthly event series where you can learn new skills, build your portfolio, attend fun sessions, and connect with developers from around the world.

Join us for a special Open Source edition of Global Hack Week taking place October 16th-23rd! Learn how to find and contribute to open source projects through 50+ workshops. The event is completely free to attend, register here to unlock the sessions and event perks!

Learn more about organizing your own Hacktoberfest events, visit hacktoberfest.com/events.

Share your Hacktoberfest 🩷

Share your appreciation of Hacktoberfest with the community through photos, videos, or a blog post! Whether you’re a contributor, maintainer, event organizer, sponsor, or partner we want to hear from you!

VIDEO: Create a short video and share it with the community through your favorite platform. Be sure to tag #hacktoberfest10 and/or #digitalocean Submit your video here.

BLOG POST: If you’d like to write about your experience participating in Hacktoberfest, we encourage you to create a blog post

Share how you first heard about Hacktoberfest, how being part of the community has impacted your personal or professional development, and your favorite or most useful hack. If you’re a project maintainer, share how Hacktoberfest contributions have improved your project. Creativity is welcome! Once your post is live, let us know by sharing on your social channels and tagging or hashtagging Hacktoberfest so we can help amplify it.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Share your Hacktoberfest experience on social media! Use the official hashtag #hacktoberfest10 and tell others about your favorite contributions, any swag you’ve received in the past (share a pic!), or a particularly memorable hack. You can also submit your story for us to spotlight.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing how you’ve been part of the Hacktoberfest community! Submit your story today.

Gratitude for our sponsors and partners

Hacktoberfest wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors—this year, we’re excited to welcome ILLA Cloud and Appwrite as our premium sponsors, as well as Amplication, Runme and OpenSauced. Thanks also to our amazing partners, Holopin, Major League Hacking, Tree Nation, GitHub, GitLab, GitHub Education, DagsHub, Hugging Face, DEV, and Paperspace.

Happy Hacking!

Phoebe Quincy, Senior Community Relations Manager