Battle of the Schools is a weekend, in-person AI/ML hackathon between the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, hosted by UTMIST and WAT.ai. Over 200 student builders come together at the Bahen Centre for 24 hours of hacking, workshops, sponsor challenges, and a rivalry that only one campus gets to win.

Every team chooses to represent either U of T or Waterloo, and every result feeds into that school's cumulative score. Placing first, second or third in a sponsor track earns points for your university, and side-quests (Cleanest Hacker Space, Best Slide Aesthetics, a Saturday night trivia challenge and surprise competitions) earn bonus points along the way. At the closing ceremony, the school with the highest overall score takes home the Maple Cup and keeps it until next year.

• When: Saturday, September 12 to Sunday, September 13, 2026. Doors open 9:00 AM Saturday; hacking runs from 11:00 AM Saturday to 11:00 AM Sunday.
• Where: Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George St, Toronto, ON (University of Toronto St. George campus).
• Who: Undergraduate and graduate students from any university. You do not need to be in computer science, and you do not need to have done a hackathon before. Every team picks U of T or Waterloo to represent.
• Teams: 1 to 4 people. Find teammates in the #find-a-team channel on Discord, then register your team with the team registration form. Registering your team is required to collect prizes.
• Cost: Free. Meals, snacks, cloud compute, model APIs, robotics hardware and sponsor mentors are provided all weekend.
• Register: Apply at utwat.ca/apply, register here on Devpost so you can submit your project, and join the Discord, where all event communications happen.
• Homepage: utwat.ca · Contact: utwat.bots@gmail.com

There are three tracks, each run and judged by the sponsor behind it. Projects are scored out of 100 on three pillars: technical excellence, creativity in solving problems or using modern AI tools, and overall "wow" factor in the live demo. You can enter more than one track if your project honestly fits.

Robotics with BracketBot — Best Use of Next-Gen Robots. Founded in 2025, BracketBot is building the lowest-cost, highest-performance robot in the world. Build the most compelling thing you can on their brand-new generation of robots. Prizes: a Bambu Lab 3D printer for every member (up to 4) of the top three teams: P1S for 1st, A1 for 2nd, A1 mini for 3rd. Entering this track? Also fill in BracketBot's track form on top of the team registration form.

Web Agents with Steel.dev. Founded in 2024, Steel.dev is building the browsing infrastructure for AI agents: an open-source browser API that lets you control fleets of browsers in the cloud. Build creative AI solutions powered by browser use. Prizes: $1,000 cash to the team + $600 in Steel Pro credits + $500 in OpenRouter credits (1st); gaming keyboards or headphones + $300 in Steel Pro credits (2nd); JBL speakers + $100 in Steel Pro credits (3rd). Plus two wildcards open to everyone: the Steel Computer Wildcard ($500 cash for Steel's favourite use of the beta product) and Most Unhinged Idea ($200 Uber Eats gift card).

Healthcare with Toralis Labs — Most Unique Use of the Healthcare Dataset. Toralis Labs builds AI-powered software for vascular surgery, using a patient's medical scans to analyze blood vessels, measure anatomy and identify the best-fitting medical devices. Build the most creative way for Toralis to visualize and organize a set of healthcare data. Prizes, for each member of the team: Keychron V1 Max mechanical keyboard (1st), Logitech G305 wireless mouse (2nd), Anker 10,000 mAh power bank (3rd).

See the Prizes section for the full breakdown.

Saturday, September 12

Sunday, September 13

Battle of the Schools 2026 is backed by Steel.dev, BracketBot, Toralis Labs, Cognition, Accenture, Shopify, Anthropic and Astral. Their engineers will be on site all weekend to mentor, run workshops and judge their tracks, and most of them are hiring.

Hosted by UTMIST, the University of Toronto Machine Intelligence Student Team, and WAT.ai, the University of Waterloo's Artificial Intelligence Design Team: two of Canada's largest student AI communities.

• Creativity
  How original is the idea, and how well does it fit the track brief? Judges look for a fresh angle on a real problem rather than a rebuild of something that already exists.
• Technical Excellence
  How hard was it to build, and how well does it work? Judges weigh the quality of the ML or engineering, how well you used the sponsor's hardware, dataset or API, and whether the demo actually runs.
• Wow Factor
  Did the demo make the judges sit up? Polish, a compelling pitch, a live demo that lands, and a project people will still be talking about at the closing ceremony. Each track is scored out of 100 across the three criteria by its sponsor's judges.