The Aotearoa AI Hackathon Festival is a nationwide, multi-venue hackathon held across Aotearoa New Zealand. She Sharp, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) with the AI Forum are bringing the festival to AUT's City Campus for a two-day, in-person event on 7–8 August 2026.
Working in teams, participants create AI-enabled solutions to real-world challenges aligned to five UN Sustainable Development Goals. Day one focuses on team formation, problem definition, and building; day two on refining solutions and pitching to a local judging panel.
Each venue selects a winning team whose pitch advances to national judging, and four national finalists will be invited to pitch live at the Aotearoa AI Summit on 18 September 2026 in Auckland, where the Summit audience votes for the overall winner. No matter your experience level — around a third of participants are new to hackathons — mentors from AUT, She Sharp and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare will support teams throughout.
Free online pre-event training runs throughout July to help you build stronger ideas, prototypes and pitches. The festival is about building practical AI capability, encouraging responsible and ethical AI use, fostering collaboration across regions and sectors, and showcasing innovative, impact-driven ideas.
Two-Day Format
Day 1 (Friday 7 August) — Welcome, health & safety briefing, introduction to the hackathon themes, team formation, and the build begins, with ongoing mentor and technical support.
Day 2 (Saturday 8 August) — Continued building, pitch practice, final submissions, live 5-minute pitches to the local judging panel, and announcement of the venue winner.
Venue winners advance to national judging; four national finalists pitch at the Aotearoa AI Summit on 18 September 2026 in Auckland.
Each team delivers a live 5-minute pitch to a three-person panel of academic and industry judges.
Judges score four equally-weighted criteria (1–5 each):
Inspiration — a clearly defined problem, a solution that solves it, and real impact for New Zealand and the world.
Technology — the solution must use AI; demonstrate feasibility, engineering quality, and how the technology solves the problem (a working prototype is highly recommended).
Design & Innovation — originality, user experience, and inventive use of technology.
Presentation — a clear, creative pitch that addresses the problem and answers judges' questions within the time limit.
An optional pitch deck template is available in the Community Hub as a guide.
The Challenge — Five Real-World Themes
Tackling food insecurity in a food-exporting nation
Enhancing digital accessibility for all communities
The Aotearoa AI Hackathon Festival runs as a series of 48-hour hackathons hosted at venues across Aotearoa New Zealand between 3 and 10 August 2026.
Every venue records its team pitches and selects a local winner. A national judging panel then reviews the winning pitches and selects the finalists.
Four national finalists are invited to pitch live at the Aotearoa AI Summit on 18 September 2026 in Auckland, where the Summit audience votes for the winning solution and the award-winning team is announced.
Prizes & Awards
Every venue winning team: $250
Top four national finalists invited to pitch at the Aotearoa AI Summit 2026
National — TAIAO Prize (Summit audience vote): $1,000
National — Technological Brilliance (national judging panel): $1,000
Prizes supported by AWS and provided via AI Forum New Zealand
Individual venues may offer additional prizes and categories
Free Training — Seen Ventures Hack Fit Series
Free for all participants — 60-minute online sessions throughout July, 4:00–5:00pm NZST, designed to help you build stronger ideas, prototypes and pitches with practical tools across business, design and technology.
Become Hack Fit
Tell the Story with AI
Design Thinking with AI
Agentic Workflows
Making Sense of Data
Creative Tech Booster
Creating Multi-Modal AI Experiences
Register via the AUT City Campus Community Hub : https://tnz-ecosystem-hub.circle.so/c/ai-hackathon-festival-2026/aut-city-campus
Featured Problem: Food Waste
One of this year's featured problems is supported by Woolworths New Zealand alongside Kai Commitment, focused on reducing food waste across the supply chain — from farm to fork.
Explore how AI can help identify waste, fill data gaps, support optimisation and better collaboration across the food system.
Featured Problem — F&P Healthcare: Facilities Helpdesk Agent
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, a sponsor of the festival, has put forward a process optimisation challenge: design an AI agent for its Facilities Helpdesk — the single point of contact for maintenance and facilities service requests across the organisation.
Today the experience places unnecessary effort on both the people raising requests and the Facilities team. Intake, prioritisation, escalation guidance and status communication all rely on manual steps, separate process knowledge and email follow-up. The result is inconsistent processes that sit outside the tools staff use day to day, incomplete request data, no real-time visibility for the requestor, and sub-optimal escalation responses.
The opportunity is to create a more employee-friendly front door for Facilities requests: guiding staff through structured intake in plain language — in their own words — applying the existing priority process consistently, surfacing escalation guidance at the right moment, and keeping requestors informed throughout.
How it matches the UN Sustainable Development Goals: being inclusive means every employee can engage in their own language and has equal visibility of progress (SDGs 8, 9 and 10); removing wasted effort, resources and rework makes the process more sustainable (SDG 12); and F&P Healthcare's solutions support good health and well-being (SDG 3).
F&P frames this as "Care by Design" — good people doing good work with intent. When reviewing and judging pitches, F&P is looking for teams whose design is genuinely underpinned by that Culture of Care, and which centre people and process ahead of technology. Watch the video below to see how F&P works.
Care by Design — Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
2026 Venues
Auckland — Mission Ready, 5–6 August (Onehunga)
Auckland — Unitec + Seen Ventures, 6–8 August (Mt Albert)
Auckland — AUT + She Sharp, 7–8 August, CBD (this event)
Auckland — AUT + Tū Ātea, 7–8 August (Manukau)
Auckland — academyEX, 8–9 August
Waikato — Te Ipu o Te Mahara | Artificial Intelligence Institute, 6–7 August
Wellington — Amazon Web Services (AWS), 6–7 August
Christchurch — EPIC Innovation + Canterbury Tech, 6–7 August
Why Attend
Build practical, hands-on AI capability on real-world problems
Collaborate in diverse teams (3–7 people) with mentor and technical support
Learn responsible and ethical AI practices
Access free pre-event training to strengthen your idea and pitch
Pitch your solution and compete to represent your venue at national judging
Open to all experience levels — beginners are welcome
Live Q&A Sessions
The first live Q&A session was held on Wednesday 1 July 2026, 12:00–1:00pm NZST — mentors and venue hosts covered rules of engagement, ideas, technology and how to take part.
Q&A Session 1 (1 July 2026) : https://tnz-ecosystem-hub.circle.so/c/ai-hackathon-festival-2026/q-a-session-1
Future Q&A dates, session recordings and the Ask a Question tab are all published in the AUT City Campus Community Hub — join for updates through July and August.
Registration
Register online at aihackathon.nz.
Open to students and professionals — all experience levels are welcome.
In-person capacity at AUT City Campus is limited to 100 participants.
Concession and complimentary places are available for AUT students, mentors and supporting staff — registration details are shared directly via the AUT City Campus Community Hub.
Enter as a team or as an individual — just let us know which when you register, and we will help solo registrants find a team on the day.
Join the AUT City Campus Community Hub for the latest updates, training registration and Q&A session links.
Supporters & Venue Hosts
Mission Ready, Unitec, Seen Ventures, academyEX, AUT, Tū Ātea, She Sharp
Te Ipu o Te Mahara | Artificial Intelligence Institute, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
EPIC Innovation, Canterbury Tech, Tech New Zealand
Woolworths New Zealand and Kai Commitment (Food Waste featured problem partners)
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (Facilities Helpdesk Agent featured problem)
55 Wellesley Street East, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010
Auckland
Event poster
Meet the Judges
Nicholas Fourie
Vice President — Information & Communication Technology, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
Dr. Mahsa Mohaghegh (McCauley)
Head of Department, Computer and Information Sciences · Chair, AI Forum NZ, AUT
Abby Dowd
Senior Director — AI Strategy and Transformation, AUT
Ming Cheuk
CTO & Co-founder, ElementX
An unfurling silver fern koru, symbolising new growth and the spirit of the Aotearoa AI Hackathon Festival
Event sponsors
Powered by our partners
Thanks for the support
About the Festival — AI for Good
Aotearoa AI Hackathon Festival is a nationwide kaupapa built around one idea: AI for good — building solutions that matter. Over an intense weekend, diverse teams turn real-world challenges into working, AI-enabled prototypes.
Hackathons are a safe space for a wide range of people to unite and solve problems. Building a team with a variety of skills — not just coding — is the surest path to a strong pitch.
One of this year's featured problems is supported by Woolworths New Zealand alongside Kai Commitment, focused on reducing food waste across the supply chain — from farm to fork.
Explore how AI can help identify waste, fill data gaps, support optimisation and better collaboration across the food system. Watch the problem statement video and related resources in the Community Hub.
Festival sponsor Fisher & Paykel Healthcare has put forward a process optimisation challenge: an AI agent that gives staff a friendlier front door to the Facilities Helpdesk, guiding requests in plain language, applying the existing priority process consistently, and keeping people informed as their request progresses.
F&P calls this Care by Design — good people doing good work with intent — and is looking for teams whose solutions are underpinned by that Culture of Care. The full challenge brief and Q&A recordings are published in the Community Hub.
On day two, each team delivers a live 5-minute pitch to the local judging panel. Venue winners advance to national judging, and four finalists pitch at the Aotearoa AI Summit on 18 September 2026 in Auckland.
Download the official pitch deck template from the Community Hub to structure your solution, impact and next steps.
The AUT City Campus Community Hub is your central hub for everything leading up to the hackathon — Q&A session recordings, free training registration, the pitch deck template, and the Ask a Question tab for direct support from mentors and venue hosts.
The first live Q&A session was held on 1 July 2026. Future session dates and resources are published in the Hub as they are announced.
The event is hosted in person at AUT City Campus, 55 Wellesley Street East, in the heart of Auckland's CBD — well served by public transport and within walking distance of the city centre.
Please bring your own laptop and charger. Power, Wi-Fi, mentoring and refreshments are provided on site across both days.
