What Devpost’s AI Trends Report 2026 reveals about how developers build

Hackathon project data is one of the most direct signals available for how developers are actually building and adopting AI tools. The AI Trends Report 2026 covers what's happening across both internal enterprise hackathons and public developer programs.

Key findings for organizers running AI hackathons in 2026:

• Enterprise AI hackathons grew 83% last year, and the vast majority of what teams are building inside them is operational
• Developers are submitting increasingly complex, agentic AI projects across both community and enterprise hackathons, and the share of agentic submissions is growing fast
• Developers who have participated in 6 or more hackathons ship AI projects to production at 2.2x the rate of first-timers, and the effect compounds with each event

Here's what each of those means in practice.

AI hackathon activity is up across both enterprise and public programs

Companies have been running AI hackathons on Devpost for nearly a decade. But since ChatGPT was released in 2022, that number has grown more and more every year. Enterprise AI hackathons alone grew 83% year over year in 2025. 

For enterprise teams, the most important change comes down to what participants are building. What's coming out of enterprise programs now are operational projects: tools that automate workflows, triage support tickets, and flag compliance issues. 

For public hackathon organizers, the growth in AI hackathon activity is a signal worth acting on. Developer communities have a strong appetite to explore and build with AI tools right now, and hackathons are one of the most effective environments for that.

Agentic AI projects are on the rise across both community and enterprise hackathons

Another trend in the data is the rise of agentic AI in hackathon project submissions. Right now, 1 in 4 community hackathon submissions is agentic. In enterprise hackathons, it's 1 in 10. Both numbers are up from near-zero two years ago.

The projections put community agentic submissions at 1 in 3 by end of 2026, and enterprise at 1 in 5.

Across both community and enterprise programs, developers are building more ambitious AI projects than they were two years ago.

The more hackathons you run, the more developers ship to production

Developers who have participated in six or more hackathons ship AI projects to production at 2.2x the rate of first-timers. Each tier of hackathon participation corresponds to a higher shipping rate, and the compounding effect makes the case for recurring programs over one-off events.

For enterprise and internal organizers, this is the core argument for sustained investment in a hackathon program. The ROI on your fourth event is better than the ROI on your first, because your participants have more experience.

For public hackathon organizers, the same data points toward running programs as the most effective way to drive real developer adoption of your tools. The developers who go on to build and ship something meaningful are the ones who have had repeated opportunities to build. The more events you run, the more of those developers you create.

Download the AI Trends Report 2026

Get the full data on enterprise AI hackathon growth, the agentic AI shift, and the compounding effect of recurring programs.

What else the full report covers:

• What developers say is preventing them from using AI models in their work
• How the time professional developers spend building AI has shifted year over year
• How community hackathon project themes have moved from learning to building
• How developer AI tool preferences are changing across providers

The AI Trends Report 2026 is a Devpost publication based on hackathon project data collected on Devpost platforms.