Databricks Free Edition Hackathon: show the world what’s possible in data and AI

The Databricks Free Edition is unlocking creativity and innovation across the globe - empowering developers, students, and hobbyists to build thousands of powerful data and AI projects. Now, we’re taking that innovation the next level with the first-ever Databricks Free Edition Hackathon! This Hackathon is your chance to showcase what you can build and present your work directly to a Databricks co-founder and members of our team.

When is the hackathon?

The Hackathon will run from November 5 - November 14, 2025. During this Hackathon, you can use Free Edition with your own datasets or other sample datasets to build AI agents or train classical machine learning models, explore data engineering concepts, visualize data and build dashboards, or showcase other creative usage of data and AI. Then, you will have five minutes to showcase what you have built and why it matters. It’s your moment to show the world what is possible with data and AI and what you have learned leveraging Free Edition. Submit this five minute demo and share it on your LinkedIn profile. The hackathon will also have opportunities for you to build connections through a Databricks Community group. The forum will be a place where you can learn from others and get your Free Edition questions answered.

How can you join?

Want to join the the Hackathon and show what is possible with data and AI? Make sure to access the required tools to get started:

• Create a Free Edition account
• Familiarize yourself with Free Edition docs
• Consider using sample data like this for the demo:
  • Uber Rides
  • Netflix Movies
  • English Premier League stats
  • Car sales dataset
  • Or find your own on Kaggle, or similar services
• Built your 5-minute demo and ready to share with us? Make sure to submit your project on our Free Edition Hackathon webpage.
• Please carefully review the Official Rules prior to participating in this hackathon to ensure you understand and agree. If there is a conflict between the Official Rules and any other document describing this hackathon, the Official Rules control.

Looking for inspiration?

Here is some guidance on what is possible to create in Free Edition:

• AI Applications & Agents
  • Prepare and process data, experiment with foundation models, deploy and test AI systems, and evaluate models—all within a collaborative notebook workspace.
• Data Science & Machine Learning Projects
  • Use shared notebooks for real-time collaboration, build ML models, and publish results.
• Data Exploration & Analysis
  • Import real datasets, run SQL queries, visualize results, and build hands-on experience in analyzing real data.
• Interactive Dashboards
  • Create dashboards, and visualizations interactively and natural-language prompts.
• Data Pipelines
  • Use serverless tools such as Lakeflow to design, ingest, transform, and orchestrate data pipelines for ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) workflows.
• Hands-on Coding Help
  • Get coding assistance from the Databricks Assistant directly within notebooks, including code suggestions and explanations.

Want to learn from a Databricks MVP who used Free Edition? Catch up on a recent Databricks blog that features how a Databricks MVP, Hubert Dudek, experimented with Free Edition. He ingested two billion rows of data in under six minutes, showing that even a free account can handle real workloads. For learners, that means you do not need enterprise infrastructure to practice with large datasets and see results quickly.

What are the prizes?

In addition to showcasing your work and abilities with Free Edition, there will be an opportunity to win cash prizes. Winners will be notified and emailed with instructions on how to claim their prizes on or around November 30, 2025. Three prizes will be awarded to the projects that best exemplify the Hackathon’s evaluation criteria listed below. The three winners and their projects will also be promoted by Databricks to showcase the innovation of Free Edition in the community.

Who are the judges?

Reynold Xin, Databricks Co-founder, Chief Architect

Franco Patano, Principal Solutions Architect

Holly Smith, Staff Developer Advocate

Will Valori, Senior Product Manager

The judges will be evaluating the projects based on the following evaluation criteria:

Technical Complexity & Execution

• Depth and sophistication of technical implementation
• Use of advanced technologies and skills

Creativity & Innovation

• Originality of the idea or approach
• Uniqueness and inventiveness in using Free Edition

Presentation & Communication

• Clarity of project explanation and demonstration
• Quality of and effective storytelling

Impact & Learning Value

• Usefulness, reusability, or inspiration for the broader community

Interested in showcasing your data and AI project with Free Edition? Submit your hackathon project from November 5 - November 14, 2025 and join the hundreds of thousands of developers, students, and hobbyists who have built on Free Edition!