Hyderabad's largest student hackathon.
Megathon was launched in 2016 by E-Cell IIIT Hyderabad and has grown into the city's largest and most anticipated student hackathon. In 2024 it brought together over 650 participants from across the country, and the momentum keeps building.
This year is the tenth edition. Megathon X runs on 10–11 October 2026 at IIIT Hyderabad, with Lloyds Technology Centre as title sponsor and Qualcomm, Vanguard and Bhashini as challenge sponsors. The motto stays the same: meet, ideate, hack.
It is a 24-hour, on-site build. Problem statements are released at the venue, teams form before registration, and by the end of the weekend every team has pitched a working prototype to the judges. The full rules are in the terms and conditions.
- Prize pool
- ₹8 Lakhs+
- Format
- 24 hours on site
- Team size
- 1 to 5 students
- Dates
- 10–11 Oct 2026
Last year, in three minutes.
Last year's problem statements.
This year's briefs are released at the venue. Here is what 2025 looked like, so you know what to expect.
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Indian language toolkits
Build a deployable mobile or mobile-responsive app on Bhashini's ASR, MT, TTS and OCR models, covering at least four scenarios in one domain — tourism, healthcare, agriculture or banking. It had to be multi-modal and hold together as one product rather than joined-up parts.
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Generative art from a camera feed
An Android app that turns camera snapshots into generative art from a text prompt — restyling a photo as vintage, repainting it, and so on. Every model had to run on the device NPU through the Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit, with no cloud APIs at all.
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Multimodal claims assessment and fraud intelligence
Read vehicle damage from images — detection, severity and a cost band — alongside text claims, and flag tampered photographs. Public datasets only, separate vision, text and fraud components, and explainability through Grad-CAM or saliency maps.
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Churn reasoning and retention insights for auto insurance
Score each customer's churn probability from historical policy and demographic data, then surface the reasons and regional trends in a dashboard a non-technical user can explore. Reason codes via SHAP or LIME, inference in seconds.
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Turning research papers into video presentations
Work on SARAL, the Democratise Research pipeline that reads a paper, drafts slides, generates voiceover narration and produces a shareable video. Presented as an open brief around the existing open-source tool.
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A collaborative rich text editor, in C
Multiple people editing one document at once, with live cursors and highlights, authorised read and write, sane conflict handling, and offline edits that merge on reconnect. The whole thing had to be written in C.
Sponsors
Title Sponsor
Challenge Sponsor
Interested in sponsoring Megathon X? Write to ecell@iiit.ac.in.
Questions
When and where is Megathon X?
10–11 October 2026 at IIIT Hyderabad. It is an on-site hackathon, so you need to be in Hyderabad for the weekend.
How do I register?
Through the registration page. Ticket prices are listed there; eligibility and rules are in the terms and conditions.
Who can take part?
Any student currently enrolled at a university or college in India. Every member of a team must meet this requirement.
Can I participate alone or in a team?
Either. Teams can have up to five members, and members can be from different colleges. Form your team before you register; teams are not allotted.
Can a college send multiple teams?
Yes. There is no limit on the number of teams from one college.
When do we get the problem statements?
At the venue, when the hackathon starts. Last year's problem statements give you a sense of what to expect.
Are there restrictions on languages, frameworks or libraries?
No. Use whatever stack you like. AI tools are allowed too, as long as you say where they were used in your code and in your final presentation.
What do we submit?
A working prototype and an in-person pitch to the judges. The prototype does not need every feature, but the core of your solution should run.
How do I edit, transfer or cancel my registration?
Email ecell@iiit.ac.in with your ticket details.
Where will announcements be posted?
On this site, by email to registered participants, and on our social channels linked below.
Eligibility, submissions, judging, prizes and the code of conduct, in full.