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Top Ten Hackathons for High School Beginners in Illinois for 2025
- Chang Liu
- Mar 27
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 28
Hackathons are great events for learning various skills and practicing team working. The following are great hackathon events for beginners to level up skills. In this article we focus on easy hackathons for high school aged participants in the State of Illinois.
There are a variety of choices. Hackathons can be held online or in person. Some are well funded and held regularly, and some are not yet regular.
The criteria we choose them include:
Format: Online flexibility for easy budgeting. However, organizing one effectively is not easy since participants are not physically together. In-person hackathons offer excitement and immersion social experience - however they require travel and time commitments. We favor online national events, or small in person local events.
Customer service and quality: great organization allows participants to focus on learning and interaction. Good service typically means the event is moderately or well funded, and attracts good group of volunteers.
Flexibility of team size and ease of forming teams. Here, we deem a hackathon as good if team forming is easy for beginners.
The right size: size of participants not too large or too small. If there are too many people it might be overwhelming for beginners. If the crowd size is too small then it offers no social aspects of the benefits.
Easy on beginners. Easy for inclusion, such as easy for girls and ladies to participate.
Here is our list of hackathon events for participants in the state of Illinois.
A 12 hour in person hackathon where participants can chill, code, and get prizes.
Well funded by generous sponsors.
Date: April 12/13, Arlington Heights, IL
A 5-hour hackathon created by high school students for high school students across Illinois and the midwest.
Data: April 13, 1-6 pm, Champaign public library, Champaign, IL
An in-person event that takes place on McGill University campus. Despite being reputed, the program is open to all - irrespective of their coding and computer science acumen and skill.
Date: January of each year, check the website for updates
A 2-day event attracting many people from over 185 countries. This is ideal for both seasoned and novice high school coders and developers to put their skills to the test.
Host volunteers needed!
Date: October 4-5, 2025
This is open to beginner high school students and conducted online.
It was last hosted online at DevPost March 16-18 2024.
Participants use data from the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative and the AWS Data Exchange to build sustainable solutions for global problems such as hunger, poverty, health, clean water, and more.
Date: July 5 to August 30, 2025.
It is run by University of Michigan and online. First place wins 3000 dollars.
Date: April 12-14
100% virtual, anyone is welcome. Organizers in 2024 were from Bellevue Washington.
Date of last known event: April 6
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