Emberhacks 2026
Major League Hacking · University of Toronto Mississauga
Prize breakdown
1st Place
Xtrike Me GH-510 Gaming Headset (Stereo Sound, Static RGB Light) for each member of the winning team.
Non-cash2nd Place
Redragon M616 RGB Wired Optical Gaming Mouse (10,000 DPI) for each member of the winning team.
Non-cash3rd Place
$10 bookstore gift card for each member of the winning team.
Non-cash
Timeline
- Submissions openSep 19, 2026
- Submission deadlineSep 19, 2026
About
EmberHacks 2026 challenges you to build your own real-world intelligent interface. Give AI a way to interact with the world, not just answer questions in a chat window.
This year's theme asks you to build an interface that uses Gemini to interpret real-world or human input and turn it into something meaningful, whether that's an action, a visualization, or a piece of generated content. Gemini needs to actually do the interpreting or reasoning in your project. Bolting a chatbot onto an existing app won't cut it.
Your input can be text, voice, images, video, sensor data, physical interactions, documents, or anything else that captures something happening in the real world. Your output can be text, voice, a visualization, an action your app takes, a physical action, or generated content of any kind. We want to see projects that would be genuinely hard, awkward, or impossible to pull off with a normal keyboard and screen.
Build for whatever platform fits your idea. Web, mobile, desktop, hardware, robotics, games, physical installations, or some mix of these are all fair game. If you can dream it up and Gemini plays a real role in how it works, bring it.
Expect a weekend of building alongside other students, mentors on hand to help when you get stuck, and a community that's genuinely excited about what you're making.
Requirements
What to Build
Interfaces where Gemini plays a real part in reading or reasoning about the input, not just a chatbot feature added on top.
Real-world or human input of any kind: text, voice, images, video, sensor data, physical interaction, or documents.
Output that does something: text, voice, a visualization, an action your app takes, a physical action, or generated content.
Any platform: web, mobile, desktop, hardware, robotics, games, physical installations, or a mix of these.
What to Submit
Project description explaining what you built and the problem it solves.
A demo video or live demo that shows your interface actually working.
GitHub repository or a link to your project code.
A short explanation of how Gemini is used in your project's interaction loop.
List of technologies, APIs, and hardware used.
Names of all team members.
- Submissions open
- Sep 19, 2026
- Deadline
- Sep 19, 2026
- First seen
- Sep 19, 2026
- Last seen
- Sep 19, 2026