Welcome

Join us online and in person March 24-26, 2025, for the nf-core hackathon! 🗓️

You can join for free from wherever you are online, or travel to a local site to hack with other Nextflow / nf-core enthusiasts in person!

To get a feel for how the event will work, check out the similar style hackathons that we held in 2023 (16 local sites, 407 attendees) and 2024 (23 local sites, 466 attendees).

Registration

Registration to join the hackathon is now open! See below or open in a new tab.

Joining remotely

The nf-core hackathon will take place both in-person and online. If you don’t have a local site near you or can’t join in person, you can attend online!

The hackathon will use Slack extensively, with a main event channel as well as project-specific channels. Attendees will be encouraged to use Slack huddle video calls, as well as asynchronous messaging over Slack.

In person: Local sites

If you have registered for a local site your local host will be in contact with you to outline site-specific information. For the most recent information about your site as well as the contact details of your organizer please check the event page specific to your local sites.

There are currently 43 local sites in 27 countries!

Projects

We’ll work in projects during the hackathon. Projects can be anything from:

• Adding new features to existing pipelines
• Adding and improving components (modules / subworkflows)
• Improving the website and nf-core tooling
• Creating entirely new pipelines
• Discussion and planning community initiatives
• Working on special interest group topics
• …anything else

You can bring your own favourite topic or choose from a list of open issues in the community. Each project has a lead person who can point you in the right direction.

You don’t need to commit to a single project and are free to move around groups and projects throughout the event.

Submit a new project

If you have an idea for a project that you think would be fun to do during the hackathon, please add it to the website by submitting a pull-request to the nf-core/website repository.

You need to add a new markdown file to the sites/main-site/src/content/hackathon-projects/hackathon-march-2025 directory.

See existing files for examples, if you’re unsure about anything please ask in Slack or in the pull-request. The front-matter YAML at the top of the file should be filled in as follows:

• title: Short and self-descriptive name for the project
• category: One of pipelines, components, tooling
• slack: If your project already has an obvious Slack channel (eg. a pipeline) then right click it and Copy link and fill in here. Otherwise, leave blank as we will create a hackathon-specific channel for your project.
• intro_video: This field is not required, however it’s recommended to record a short video prior to the event to help folks joining in other time zones to get started. You can also do this by recording the kick-off meeting at the start of the hackathon and adding that. We can help with uploading videos to the nf-core YouTube channel, just ask in Slack.
• image: A meme, silly picture or any other image to make your project more memorable. Add to the sites/main-site/src/assets/images/events/2025/hackathon-march directory as part of your PR.
• image_alt: Text description of your image.
• leaders: One or more contact people for your project (array)
  • Each key under leaders: Your GitHub username
    • name: Your name
    • slack: Link to your Slack user. Find this by right clicking your name in Slack and selecting Copy link

The body text can provide any context and background. Projects should have at least one goal mentioned in the body text under a ## Goal heading that you want to try to achieve by the end of the hackathon.

Join a project

Joining a project is as simple as turning up and getting in touch with the group. If you don’t know where to find them in the room, ping the project lead on slack.

You can move freely between projects throughout the event.

List of projects

Software packaging: ARM

JSON schema improvements

nf-core/seqinspector

Adapt Single Cell Expression Atlas analysis workflow to nf-core standards

Hosting a local site

We are now accepting registrations from organizers interested in hosting local hackathon sites 🎉

Anyone is welcome to host a site: you don’t need to be an expert or have prior experience with hackathons.

What you’ll need:

• Access to a dedicated space for the duration of the event
• Decent wifi and a bunch of extension cables
• Enthusiasm!

Any space will do: be it a meeting room for 5-10 people through to larger spaces to accommodate more.

The steps to host a site are:

1. 👩🏻‍💻 Open a pull-request to add your site-specific page to this website
   • Create a new site-specific .mdx file and add it to the main event page’s table.
2. 📢 Advertise - both locally and online
3. ☎️ During the event: act as a contact point with the hackathon organisers

For more details, see the About nf-core hackathons bytesize talk:

🍕 In previous years, Seqera has sponsored pizza. We’re not yet sure how much funding will be available in 2025 or what shape it will take, so please don’t plan around this.

📆 There is no closing date for local site registration, however the sooner you register your interest the better. We use the site names in the main registration form and it really helps with planning. Also if we know about your site we’ll have more time to help advertise and get folks to join!

If you have any questions, jump into the #hackathon-mar-2025 channel on the nf-core Slack and we’ll be happy to help.

Social activities

During the hackathon, we will have a bit of light-hearted fun and games for you to play! Special prizes are up for grabs for the winners!

• Online quiz
• Hackathon bingo
• more coming soon..

Hackathon playlist

A community Spotify playlist was created during the first ever nf-core hackathon, and many songs have been added since. Feel free to tune in and enjoy the somewhat eclectic mix!