Participation

Your PR/MRs must be created between October 1 and October 31 (in any time zone, UTC-12 thru UTC+14).

Your PR/MRs must be made to a public, unarchived repository.

Pull/merge requests created before October 1 but merged or marked as ready for review after do not count.

Found a repository that goes against the values of Hacktoberfest? Let us know and we’ll take a look.

PR/MRs that are labeled with a label containing the word “spam” by maintainers will not be counted.

• We use the Node.js RegEx engine with /\bspam\b/i to look for spam labels.
• PR/MRs that also have the “hacktoberfest-accepted” label cannot be marked as spammy via a label.
• PR/MRs that have been merged and do not have a label containing the word “invalid” cannot be marked as spammy via a label.

 

PR/MRs that our system detects as spammy will also not be counted.

Any user with two or more spammy PR/MRs will be disqualified.

Hacktoberfest is now opt-in for maintainers, so only contribute to projects that indicate they’re looking for Hacktoberfest PR/MRs.

Once your PR/MR has passed this check, we won’t check this again (unless your PR/MR fails a check before this, such as it being marked as spammy).

Your PR/MR must match criteria to be considered participating before Hacktoberfest ends on October 31 (in any time zone, UTC-12 thru UTC+14) to be counted.

PR/MRs that have a label containing the word “invalid” won’t be counted, unless they also have the “hacktoberfest-accepted” label.

Specifically, we use the Node.js RegEx engine with /\binvalid\b/i to look for invalid labels.

Your PR/MR must not be a draft to be considered accepted.

If your PR/MR is being accepted for Hacktoberfest via an overall approving review it must also not be closed.

Your PR/MR must be accepted by a maintainer before Hacktoberfest ends on October 31 (in any time zone, UTC-12 thru UTC+14) to be counted.

We continually evaluate all of the checks until your PR/MR completes the seven-day review period, except the [participating] check which is a one-time check. If it fails any of these checks during this time, the seven day timer will reset.

After the seven day review period completes, your PR/MR will be automatically accepted for Hacktoberfest assuming it still passes all the checks. Once accepted for Hacktoberfest, we stop checking. :party:

PR/MRs that are passing all checks and are still in the review period on October 31 can continue the seven-day review period into November.

Maintainers: label spammy requests “spam” and close them. PR/MRs labeled “spam” won’t count toward Hacktoberfest. Contributors with 2+ spammy PR/MRs are disqualified.

Maintainers accept PR/MRs by merging them, labeling them “hacktoberfest-accepted,” or giving them an overall approving review. Accepted PR/MRs enter a seven day review window, during which approval can be revoked by the maintainer or by our team.

PR/MRs should be useful to maintainers. Repos that encourage simplistic PR/MRs (like adding a name or profile to a list or arbitrarily curating content) will be excluded from Hacktoberfest. Remember: quantity is fun, quality is key.

Found a repository that you think doesn’t follow our values? Report it to us and we’ll take a look.

Hacktoberfest is about contributing meaningfully to open-source projects. Here are some examples of low-quality pull/merge requests that won’t count towards Hacktoberfest.

• Automated pull/merge requests: scripted opening pull requests to remove whitespace, fix typos or optimize images.
• Disruptive pull/merge requests: taking someone else’s branch/commits and making a pull request.
• Anything that a project maintainer flags as spam.
• Anything that looks like an attempt to duplicate your pull request count for October.
• Multiple pull/merge requests for the same issue that are unnecessary, for example five PR/MRs to remove a stray whitespace.

Aside from the knowledge you’ll gain, (and the fun you’ll have) you can earn a digital reward kit courtesy of DigitalOcean and our sponsors and partners. You’ll receive your digital reward once you’ve completed four accepted pull/merge requests. Also, the first 50,000 participants to have their first PR/MR accepted will have a tree planted in their name through Tree Nation.

As Hacktoberfest has grown, so have the logistical challenges associated with creating a reward. Unfortunately, it’s no longer feasible for us to provide a free t-shirt. Nevertheless, we still want participants to have a memorable experience and receive a special memento marking their participation and the year. Instead of a t-shirt reward, we’re partnering with Holopin and our sponsors to provide digital rewards, making global delivery much simpler. We believe this shift will allow Hacktoberfest to continue supporting and raising awareness for open-source projects worldwide for years to come.

The cost of planting trees is far less than the cost of printing t-shirts. Additionally, planting a tree helps the Earth. Fabricating t-shirts heavily utilizes natural resources and the printing, packaging and shipping have a large carbon footprint. We still want to give a gift to our participants and we believe the gift of planting a tree is a great way to show our appreciation, and help the environment.

We are aware that there are many options out there for t-shirt production and fulfillment. We have made the move away from using t-shirts as a reward in the interests of making global delivery of rewards simpler and to ensure Hacktoberfest continues supporting and raising awareness for open-source projects worldwide for years to come.

You will receive a notification in your Hacktoberfest profile on the Hacktoberfest website. Additionally you will receive an email from Holopin to claim your rewards. You may also receive emails from Tree Nation.

We will not be sending free stickers to participants or for events. However, you are always welcome to purchase swag from the DigitalOcean swag shop. This year we will be awarding digital badges for each level of participation, as well as a digital reward kit. You can learn more about that here.

Hacktoberfest profiles close on December 15. Please make sure you’ve claimed all your Holopin badges and digital reward kit (if you completed the challenge with four accepted pull/merge requests) using the claim links on your profile (also sent via email).

Further, if you completed Hacktoberfest, make sure you’ve claimed all the rewards you intend to use within the digital reward kit by December 15 to ensure they’re valid.

Yes, all pull/merge requests created between October 1 and October 31 will count, regardless of when you register for Hacktoberfest.

Yes, but we strongly encourage you to make quality contributions to other repositories.

Yes, each pull/merge request will count separately.

No, only pull/merge requests count.

No, pull/merge requests for Hacktoberfest do not need to be attached to a hacktoberfest issue.

Pull/merge requests must be made on either the GitHub or GitLab platform.

You can politely request that the maintainer of the project you contributed to tag your contribution with the label hacktoberfest-accepted . Or, add the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic to the repository to opt the project into Hacktoberfest.

Any pull/merge request with the hacktoberfest-accepted label, submitted to any public GitHub/GitLab repository, with or without the hacktoberfest topic, will be considered valid for Hacktoberfest.

Please visit the Hacktoberfest Events page to learn how to host a Hacktoberfest event.

To create your event visit: https://events.mlh.io/series/hacktoberfest-2023

Yes. To create your event and share it globally, visit: https://events.mlh.io/series/hacktoberfest-2023

Check out the Hacktoberfest Events page for more information.

Events are a great way to increase awareness of open source in your community, giving community members an opportunity to meet maintainers, contributors, and each other.

Events provide opportunities to learn about the open-source ecosystem—from how to start an open-source project to marketing your project, sustaining growth, and troubleshooting and maintenance.

Anyone can organize an event as long as you celebrate open source during the event and follow the DigitalOcean Code of Conduct.

Whether you’re meeting virtually or in person, meetups can be challenging to facilitate, but they can still be fun! Using networking tools like Icebreaker or Kahoot for a trivia game and asking fun opener questions (such as two truths and a lie) can loosen up the crowd and get attendees ready to share their open source knowledge.

Yes! We encourage all kinds of events - whether they are virtual, in-person or a hybrid.

If you do want to hold an in-person event, there are a few things to note:

• We will not be providing swag or event kits for in-person events held this year. Do, however, check out our Organizer Event Kit which includes some virtual swag such as mobile or desktop wallpapers and a Git Cheat Sheet.

• Please follow the advisory guidelines of your state and local governments about gatherings in person.

Once you have submitted an event, the Major League Hacking events team will review your listing within 1-2 business days. If any changes need to be made, you will be alerted and the review process will start over. Please note: if you submit your event within two days of the event start and that coincides with a weekend, we cannot guarantee that the event will be approved in time.

For Hacktoberfest, pull/merge requests on GitHub/GitLab will not be counted until they are marked as ready for review: Those marked as draft will not be counted.

Please make sure to mark any draft pull requests as ready for review so that project maintainers can merge them.

In an effort to reduce spam and help maintainers, we’ve introduced a week-long review period for all pull/merge requests. This provides a buffer window for maintainers where they can change their decision on a pull/merge request that they may have accepted, and gives our team time to review and tackle spam across the whole program. No action should be required by you, your pull/merge request will automatically count toward your Hacktoberfest progress once the seven days elapse, as long as it is still accepted by the project maintainers and follows Hacktoberfest’s rules.

If a maintainer labels your pull/merge request as invalid or spam, but you don’t believe this is correct, please begin a conversation with the maintainer of the PR and respectfully explain your position. Understand that it is ultimately up to the maintainer whether or not they think your PR/MR is legitimate, and you should respect their decision after discussing it with them.

No. All pull/merge requests made before the start of Hacktoberfest, September 30 at 10:00 AM UTC, will not count.

We continually check the validity of your pull/merge requests, so as soon as a maintainer opts-in the project, we’ll see this has happened and start processing your pull/merge request fully. Once we’ve seen that your PR/MR is in an opted-in project, we won’t check this again, so don’t worry if a maintainer later removes the topic again, your PR/MR will still count.

Hacktoberfest refreshes user profiles automatically in the background every six hours, fetching the latest data for all your pull/merge requests and processing them to ensure they’re in the correct state, before then processing your account itself to ensure you’re in the correct state and have the correct rewards.

When you load your Hacktoberfest profile, we’ll also attempt to refresh your profile in the background, at a maximum rate of once every 15 minutes. Once you’ve loaded your profile to trigger this background processing, you may need to reload your profile again after a few minutes to see the updated data.

If you make changes to a PR/MR that will affect its standing for Hacktoberfest in the final six hours of the event, you will need to load your profile and ensure the changes are reflected there, as there will be no further automatic background jobs to catch the changes.

Due to limitations in how GitHub handles SSO-protected organizations, even if a repository is public, accessing it requires a valid SSO session if you are a member of the organization. This same restriction extends to OAuth applications, such as Hacktoberfest, so we cannot automatically fetch SSO-protected contributions for you if you do not have an active SSO session.

To ensure that your contributions to public repositories in an SSO-protected organization that you are a member of are tracked for Hacktoberfest, first ensure that you are signed into GitHub and have an active SSO session for the organization, such that you can access the PR/MR yourself. With the active SSO session in GitHub, load your Hacktoberfest profile to trigger a background refresh of your profile, which should allow us (via our OAuth app) to fetch the latest data for the PR/MRs.

First, classify your repository with the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic. This will let participants know that your repo is participating in Hacktoberfest.

You can also create issues for anything you’d like contributors to help with, and you can add labels like good first issue and help wanted so they’re easier to discover.

We dislike seeing spam pull/merge requests just as much as you, so please give them a spam label and close them. Pull/merge requests that have a label containing the word spam won’t be counted toward Hacktoberfest, and participants with two or more PR/MRs identified as spam will be disqualified.

Whether you are a maintainer, contributor or event organizer, you are eligible to receive a digital reward kit upon completion of four accepted pull/merge requests. Unfortunately, we won’t be rewarding maintainers for completing maintainer actions such as reviewing pull/merge requests this year, only for submitted accepted PR/MRs.

Hacktoberfest is an opt-in system for maintainers. Repositories must have the hacktoberfest topic to opt-in and have PR/MRs be counted, or individual PR/MRs can be labeled with the hacktoberfest-accepted label. Any repository without the hacktoberfest topic, and not using the label, is automatically excluded, no action required.