Open to undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at any university or college. Participants must be at least the age of majority in their province or country of residence.

The Maple Cup is contested between the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. Students from other schools are welcome and compete for all track prizes and wildcards; like every team, they choose one of the two schools to represent.

Participants must apply at utwat.ca/apply and be admitted to attend in person. Organizers, judges, sponsor employees and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.

Teams are 1 to 4 people. Each participant may be on only one team, and each team may submit only one project.

Every team must select either U of T or Waterloo to represent and register through the team registration form. Mixed-school teams are allowed; the team's points go to the school it selects.

All code, models and designs must be created during the hackathon, between 11:00 AM on Saturday, September 12 and 11:00 AM on Sunday, September 13, 2026. Ideation and planning beforehand is fine.

You may use open-source libraries, public datasets, pre-trained models and sponsor-provided APIs, hardware and datasets, as long as you clearly credit them. Projects that reuse substantial pre-existing code will be disqualified.

Sponsor hardware and datasets (BracketBot robots, the Toralis Labs healthcare dataset) must be used according to the sponsor's brief and any usage or privacy rules given at the opening ceremony, and returned as instructed. Teams in the BracketBot track must complete BracketBot's track form.

Teams retain full ownership of the intellectual property in their projects. By submitting, you grant the organizers and sponsors permission to display your project, description and demo video for promotional purposes.

A project may be entered into more than one track if it genuinely fits each brief.

Each track is judged by its sponsor against the criteria in their brief. Projects are scored out of 100 on technical excellence, creativity in solving problems or using modern AI tools, and overall "wow" factor in the live demo.

School points are awarded as follows: 1,000 for 1st place, 600 for 2nd and 400 for 3rd in each track, and 200 for each honorable mention (top 5 cutoff). Side-quests earn bonus points: Community Discord Choice (250 for each of the top 3), Best Slide Aesthetics (200), the Saturday Night Game/Trivia Challenge (200 for the top 3) and Best Team Name (100), plus any surprise challenges announced at the event. The school with the highest total score takes the Maple Cup. Wildcard prizes do not count toward the Cup.

Teams must be present for judging (Sunday, 12:30 to 2:30 PM). Winners must be present at the closing ceremony (Sunday, 4:30 PM, BA1160) or have a teammate collect on their behalf.

Per-person prizes are awarded up to the team size cap of 4. Cash prizes go to the team, not per person; how you split it is up to you.

Physical prizes, cash and credits are fulfilled by the sponsor of that track after the event, not by the organizers. You will be asked for shipping and payment details afterward, and credits may carry expiry dates set by the sponsor.

Judges' decisions are final. The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any submission that violates these rules or the code of conduct.

We are committed to providing a safe, inclusive and harassment-free hackathon experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, religion or school affiliation. The rivalry stays collaborative and professional.

Prohibited behaviour. Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

• Verbal or written comments that reinforce social exclusion or discrimination.
• Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following.
• Sustained disruption of talks, presentations or hacking sessions.
• Inappropriate physical contact or unwelcome sexual attention.
• Digital misconduct, including offensive code comments, inappropriate project imagery, or harassment in the event Discord channels.

How to report an incident. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please reach out immediately:

• In person: find any organizer or volunteer wearing an Organizer lanyard, or come to the help desk in the BA Atrium.
• Digitally: ping the @Organizer role on Discord or use the incident report form.
• Urgent care: for immediate safety concerns call 9-1-1, then U of T Campus Safety at 416-978-2222, or find a staff member.

Consequences. Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately. The organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including a formal warning, immediate expulsion from the hackathon, disqualification of the participant's team from the competition, and reporting the incident to the participant's home university.

The full code of conduct is also available at utwat.ca/code-of-conduct.