Fire Hacks
Fire Hacks is a one-day, in-person hackathon for high school students who want to ship real software, learn from mentors, and meet other builders.
Hosted by CodeStarters — a student-led nonprofit teaching CS & AI. Fire Hacks is inclusive of both Software and Hardware, so you can build to your heart's content! Whether it’s your first project or your tenth model, you’ll get space, resources, and community to build something you’re proud of in one packed day.
Quick facts
Who: Grades 9–12 (high school). Beginners welcome.
Where: Bay Area, CA (exact venue — add once confirmed in Luma location)
When: Saturday, July 11th, 2026, 10 AM - 8 PM PST
Cost: 100% free — meals, snacks, swag, and programming covered by sponsors.
Scale: ~100–200 hackers · $30K+ in prizes
Tracks themes
Web · AIML · Mobile · Cybersecurity · Game dev (build whatever fits — judges love clear problems and solid execution)
Why come
Workshops on AI/ML, full-stack dev, and product/design
Mentors from industry & university on-site
Full meals, snacks, caffeine — stay fueled
No registration fee, ever
501(c)(3): CodeStarters operates with fiscal sponsorship; sponsorships supporting this event are described as tax-deductible on our materials — confirm wording with your fiscal sponsor if needed for compliance.
Our Wonderful Sponsors(more to come)
CodeCrafters — Hands-on coding courses where you build real systems step-by-step (e.g. interpreters, Redis-like servers), aimed at leveling up backend/low-level skills.
Gen.xyz — Registry behind
.xyzdomains, often bundled with student/hackathon programs so teams can grab short project URLs.Relay (relay.app) — AI-assisted workflow automation: connect apps, chain steps, and add approvals/human-in-the-loop in visual workflows.
Medo (linked as medo.com in your site) — AI-powered app building: describe apps in plain language / iterate quickly toward working full‑stack-ish prototypes (exact positioning may vary by product updates).
Featherless AI — Hosted inference / API access to open models so you can ship AI features without running your own GPU fleet.
n8n — Fair-code workflow automation (self-hostable Zapier-style): triggers, branching, and integrations across SaaS APIs.
Render-Render is a cloud platform for developers who want to ship production-grade apps and agents without managing infrastructure. Push your code, and Render builds, deploys, and runs your full stack with intelligent defaults for networking, scaling, and reliability. Over 5 million developers use Render today. Customers include Base44, Fortune, Cognition, Basis, and McKinsey & Company.
Join the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/utUNdDz3