About the program
Hacktoberfest is open source's front door: a month-long festival where GitHub and its partners encourage four or more quality pull requests, and participants earn a digital badge and a tree planted in their name. No stipend, no mentorship matching - just a calendar that makes a habit of contributing.
Rules have tightened over the years (spam PRs are counted out, only quality counts), which is exactly why it works as a gateway: the four-PR bar is low enough for a first-timer and the October deadline is the best motivator in programming.
Primary stack
Technical focus
The path
- 01Prep in late September
Pick 5-10 repos you actually use; scan their good-first-issue and hacktoberfest labels.
- 02PR one: docs
Fix a typo or stale command. Docs PRs count and teach you the contribution flow.
- 03PRs two to four (Oct)
Small fixes, tests, translations, examples - pace of one PR a week clears the bar.
- 04Claim the badge
Opt in at hacktoberfest.com, get the digital collectible, and keep the repos you touched on your watchlist.
Who it's for
- Absolute first-timers who need a deadline instead of a dream
- Contributors rebuilding momentum - one month of green squares fixes a dead profile
- Teams using October to point juniors at real repos with a shared goal
What you walk away with
- Digital badge, planted tree, and four+ merged PRs by October 31
- Your first contribution-graph streak that compounds into GSoC or LFX proposals
- Practice on real repo workflows: branching, CI, review, merge
- A curated shortlist of repos you now actually know
Program timeline
Calendar positions for the 2026 cycle - the marker shows October, where you are now.
- Prep & first-timer issuesSep - Oct
- HacktoberfestOct - Novin session
Organizations
Reading the participation record...
More programs we track
Everything else on the calendar - 12 other mentored routes from first PR to paid season.
