The 10th anniversary of Hacktoberfest is a wrap!

A milestone year and month have come to a close!

Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of open-source software, has once again joyfully brought individuals together worldwide to contribute to open-source projects during the month of October. Developers, maintainers, and first-time contributors crafted innovative solutions, making technology more accessible to all. We are deeply grateful to those who contributed and helped make this Hacktoberfest a great year, even as we made several changes to the program. Hacktoberfest’s legacy as an open source celebration continues to grow, and we saw many new participants this year!

What stood out was the genuine enthusiasm among participants to work together to contribute to open source projects, driven by a desire for improvement rather than focusing on rewards. At its core, Hacktoberfest’s mission is to inspire more people to get involved in open source and work together to improve the software powering our world today. We’re proud that Hacktoberfest continues to be a source of inspiration, consistently motivating people and successfully fulfilling our mission.

A big change for Hacktoberfest

This year we removed the t-shirt reward that folks had come to know and love. While we expected this to impact participation in Hacktoberfest, we were very pleased that 98,855 people from 184 different countries registered for Hacktoberfest compared to 146,891 last year. Participants also completed a total of 118,469 contributions during the month of October and 139,422 repositories opted-in to participate. In fact, Hacktoberfest has contributed 2.4 million accepted pull/merge requests to open source projects in its ten years.

From our partner, OpenSauced “We were inspired to see our contributors making progress and growing through our repositories and documenting their growth and contributions through the OpenSauced platform during Hacktoberfest. We also had the privilege of onboarding two dedicated community maintainers who supported new contributors with kindness. The commitment and energy of our contributors and maintainers have inspired others to make meaningful contributions to open source that have already continued beyond October.”

This year’s Highlights

Livestreams

This month we held three engaging sessions that ranged from getting started to what’s new in open-source dev tools, to the future for AI and open-source. The AI session, in particular, provides guidance on GitHub Pilot, Hugging Face and other AI tools, as well as thoughtful advice on how to adjust to the rise of AI in tech.

Kickoff Event

Satellite Session #1: OS Dev Tools

Satellite Session #2: Future of AI & OS

Community Gatherings

CHAOSS Project Africa did so much for open source this month!

Check out their X/Twitter Feed

Folks loved personalizing their digital badges. Check out the Holopin Hacktoberfest Badge Board of Fame to see more.

Hacktoberfest love

Thank you so much to all of you who responded to our call for stories. Hacktoberfest offers many opportunities to learn and grow in your career, but don’t take our word for it, check out how these great folks have been influenced by participating!

Tuhina Tripathi | LinkedIn .

Hacktoberfest has been an incredible journey for me as a woman in tech from India. It introduced me to the world of open source, a realm I was initially hesitant to explore but soon found to be immensely rewarding. I delved into various projects, submitted pull requests, and collaborated with developers from around the globe. I experienced substantial growth in my coding skills, learned the importance of clean and efficient code, and gained insights from experienced contributors. I am especially proud to have been among the first 50,000 participants and earned the privilege of having a tree planted in my name, contributing to environmental sustainability. Hacktoberfest not only allowed me to level up as a developer but also expanded my network, connecting me with like-minded individuals who share my passion for open source. I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Hacktoberfest for this transformative experience, and I look forward to continuing my journey in the open source community.

Maricio Vargas Sepulveda | GitHub |

Website Open Trade Statistics began around Hacktoberfest, and the funding from the DigitalOcean Credits for Open Source program to host a large database was crucial. Read the full story.

Mohammad-Ali A’râbi | GitHub | Twitter/X

Hacktoberfest has a special place in my heart. I started attending Hacktoberfest in 2017 and experienced something new each year with it: 2017 Opened my first pull request on GitHub. 2018 Created my first public library. 2019 Made my first real open-source contribution. 2020 Received contributions to my repos for the first time. 2021 Organized my first Hacktoberfest event (online). 2022 Organized my first in-person Hacktoberfest event as a Docker Community Leader!

Now I’m a Docker Captain, writing a blog series called Git Weekly, and writing a book on Docker Security. It’s hard to believe that I opened my first PR in 2017 and I was super intimidated by it. Now even my CV is hosted on GitHub and is compiled using GitHub Actions, and… wait for it… it’s called Hacktoberfest-CV. It always surprises me to see how much I learn from Hacktoberfest when I look back.

Amruth Pillai | GitHub | LinkedIn

Hacktoberfest '23 proved to be a significant milestone for Reactive Resume, propelling the project into the spotlight and attracting numerous new developers eager to contribute to a repository. With its user-friendly codebase and a winning combination of popular tech-stack, it emerged as the ideal starting point for aspiring developers venturing into the realm of production-level web applications. Throughout this period, the project experienced a surge in activity, with numerous new features, bug reports, and issues contributed by both users and contributors. This collective effort strengthened the project’s resilience and security. Additionally, the project achieved an impressive user base of 300,000 users, demonstrating its widespread adoption and impact.

A vibrant online community

This year the Hacktoberfest Discord community grew to 70k members from 40k in 2022. Through the community, we learned that Hacktoberfest helped advance careers, develop new passions, level up skills, and inspired mentorship. Open source projects belonging to startups and young companies that participated received help improving their open source projects, which helped grow their businesses. Keep in touch with our community by joining the over 70,000 developers on the Hacktoberfest community on Discord.

Help make Hacktoberfest better, tell us what you think.

Every year we look for new ways to make Hacktoberfest valuable to the open source community. After a big year of changes we’d love to get your feedback, of course, including the change in rewards. The great news, if you take the time to fill out our short survey, we’ll plant a tree for you through our partner, Tree-Nation, and you can help improve Hacktoberfest, and combat climate change - all with one action!

Take me to the survey!

Gratitude for our Sponsors and Community Partners

Every year we are fortunate to receive support both financially through sponsorship and via engagement from our community partners. They are all wonderful and you didn’t get a chance to learn about them during Hacktoberfest, we encourage you to check them out now!

We are very grateful for this year’s sponsors and partners who made Hacktoberfest possible and provided great opportunities to learn, grow and connect.

Sponsors: ILLA Cloud, Appwrite, Amplication, Runme and OpenSauced

Community Partners: Major League Hacking, Holopin, Tree-Nation, GitHub, GitHub Education, GitLab, DEV, DagsHub, Hugging Face, Paperspace

Congratulations to all who completed the challenge! Keep coding and contributing.

-Phoebe & the Hacktoberfest Team

Phoebe Quincy, Senior Community Relations Manager