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Amazon Web Services (run on Devpost) · HackathonKiroween 2026
AWS's Halloween-themed hackathon for apps built with its Kiro AI IDE: $100,000 in cash across 15 places, four of them $1,500 prizes only students can win. Kiro's free plan is enough to start, and the build window runs to 4 December.
Dates & timeline
Prizes
- $100,000 in cash in total, per the official rules
- Overall: 1st $30,000, 2nd $20,000, 3rd $10,000
- Category prizes, $5,000 each: Best Resurrection, Best Frankenstein, Best Skeleton Crew, Best Costume Contest
- Best Student Project, one per category: $1,500 + a 1-year Kiro Pro Max subscription (every team member must be a student)
- Bonus prizes: Best Startup Project $10,000; Best Ghost of Kiroween Past $2,000 (2025 registrants); Best Kiro Crew App $1,000; Best Demo $1,000
- Blog prize (2,000 Kiro credits, 100 winners) and Social Blitz prize (3-month Kiro Pro+, 5 winners) are not cash
- A project can win one overall or category prize plus any number of bonus prizes
- 15 cash-paying positions, four of them reserved for students
- 5,954 registered participants as of 2 November 2026
- Teams of up to three
Why it's worth your time
Kiroween is a hackathon from Amazon Web Services, administered by Devpost, for working software built with Kiro, AWS's AI coding environment (IDE, CLI, web or Kiro Crew). You enter one of four Halloween-themed categories: Resurrection (revive a dead technology), Frankenstein (stitch incompatible technologies into one app), Skeleton Crew (a reusable code template shown powering two different apps) and Costume Contest (any app with a polished, haunting interface). Projects must be built from scratch during the submission period, and the rules warn that insufficient use of Kiro means disqualification.
The official rules itemise $100,000 in cash: $30,000, $20,000 and $10,000 overall; $5,000 for the best project in each of the four categories; a $10,000 startup prize, $2,000 for the best entry from a 2025 registrant, $1,000 for the best Kiro Crew app and $1,000 for the best demo. The line that matters most here is Best Student Project: four prizes of $1,500 plus a year of Kiro Pro Max, one per category, open only to teams whose every member is enrolled at a recognised academic institution. A project can win one overall or category prize plus any number of bonus prizes. The blog and social prizes pay in Kiro credits and subscriptions, not cash.
On contention: 5,954 had registered as of 2 November 2026. What you submit: a URL to the working app, a public GitHub repository (not GitLab or Bitbucket) with a visible open-source licence and the /.kiro directory left in at the root, a text description and a public YouTube demo under three minutes. The excluded-country list is longer than usual for Devpost — it names Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Italy, the Philippines, the UAE and Quebec alongside the sanctioned countries — but India is not on it.
How to apply
Register on kiroween.devpost.com and install Kiro — the free plan includes 50 credits.
Pick one of the four categories and build a new app with Kiro during the submission period; keep the /.kiro directory (specs, hooks, steering) in your repo.
Put the code in a public GitHub repository with an open-source licence file visible at the top of the repo page.
Record a demo video under three minutes and upload it publicly to YouTube; for the student prize, add every member's student email, year, degree, school and LinkedIn.
Submit the app URL, repo, description and video before 4 December 2026, 2:00pm PT — 3:30am IST on 5 December. No extensions.
Frequently asked questions
Can students in India enter?
Yes. The rules exclude Quebec, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Italy, the Philippines, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Belarus, Crimea, the DNR and LNR regions, the UAE and other OFAC-sanctioned countries; India is not on the list. You must be at least 18, the age of majority in India.
What is the student prize?
Best Student Project pays $1,500 plus a one-year Kiro Pro Max subscription, one per category, so four in total. Every team member must be attending classes at a recognised academic institution, and you may be asked for proof of enrolment.
Do I have to pay for Kiro?
No. Entry is free, and Kiro has a $0 plan with 50 credits and access to open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5. Each entrant can also request a one-time allotment of 4,000 Kiro credits through the hackathon's Credit Request Form (requests by 1 December 2026, 12:00pm PT); the hackathon does not require you to buy a paid plan.
Is it all cash?
The $100,000 is cash. The Kiro subscriptions bundled with the student prizes, the 2,000-credit blog prizes and the Social Blitz subscriptions come on top and are not cash.
Can I submit something I already built?
No. Projects must be newly created after the submission period opened on 30 October 2026. You may use frameworks, libraries and starter templates, but must disclose any other pre-existing code.
Official links
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