What does "hackathon" mean?

An event where programmers and others meet for collaborative software development, usually over several days.

What is a synonym for "hackathon"?

Common synonyms include: codeathon, codefest, hackfest.

Pronounced //ˈhæ.kə.θɒn//.

//ˈhæ.kə.θɒn// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
An event where programmers and others meet for collaborative software development, usually over several days. informal
"If these are opinions I'm sure that it happens to have something to do with the immense amounts of caffeine and sugar that I've ingested over the course of his 50hr hackathon."
2
an event involving a marathon coding session wordnet

"What's taking place is the world's biggest hackathon!"

From hack + -athon.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.