Welcome

Join us in person for the April 2026 nf-core hackathon in Boston!

This hackathon will be held as part of the Nextflow Summit 2026 in Boston, USA and is organised jointly.

Nextflow Summit 2026 - Boston

Staying Connected

Even though it’s an in-person hackathon, communication tools can be quite useful!

Slack

Slack is our official online communication tool. Join via nf-co.re/join and make sure you’re in these channels:

How the Hackathon Works

Workflow

  1. Pick a project - Browse the projects below and find one that interests you
  2. Join a project - Joining a project is as simple as turning up and sitting down at the table of the project you’re interested in.
  3. Find a task - Check the GitHub project board for issues
  4. Assign yourself - Claim the issue in GitHub (one at a time to avoid duplicating work)
  5. Hack! - Write code, chat with your group, ask questions
  6. Open a pull request - When you’re done, submit your changes
  7. Pull request reviews - Need a review? Post your PR in #request-review and find a “review buddy” to swap reviews with.
  8. Celebrate! - Share your progress with your group and at the daily wrap-up
Tip

Don’t feel tied to one project - it’s fine to move between projects throughout the hackathon.

For Project Leads

Daily wrap-ups: Prepare 1 slide per project with a high-level summary, photos, or memes (max 1 minute). The sillier the better! Post memes to #nf-core-memes.

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.

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-boston-2026 directory.

See the topics migration project markdown file as an example, 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, create a hackathon-specific channel for your project with the pattern #hack-boston-2026-<project-name>.
  • 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/2026/hackathon-boston 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.

List of projects
On this page