Open Source Community Challenge 2026

Rules

Taking part

Sign in with GitHub and complete the sign-up form to take part. Accepting these rules on the form confirms you will follow them. New here? See how signing in works.

Your details

Your name, email, phone and studies or career stage are kept after the challenge, so the organizers can invite you to later events. You agree to this when you sign up. Only organizers see them.

Register on ocgroups.dev

What you can submit

To earn points, submit the link to a pull request you opened yourself, from your own GitHub account, on an open source project. It must have been opened while the challenge is running.

The project list shows the CNCF projects and their levels, which set the project points. To work on a project that is not on the list, tell the organizers about it before you submit. A pull request to a project that is not on the list waits for an organizer, who either places it in the list or rejects it with a reason. A rejected pull request earns 0 points.

Each pull request can be submitted once. Pull requests written by someone else, or already submitted, are rejected with a message that says why.

How scoring works

Everyone who finishes sign-up starts with 5 points for taking part, before submitting anything.

The portal scores what GitHub can prove, such as the target branch, tests, CI results and whether a maintainer approved or merged the pull request. Organizers decide the rest, such as difficulty, and apply penalties. Anything still waiting for an organizer shows as needs review.

Winning and ties

A pull request's points count as soon as you submit it. When a maintainer approves or merges it before the end date, it earns 15 more. If it is closed without being merged, it loses all its points and no longer counts as one of your pull requests. Points add up across all your pull requests, and there is no maximum. The highest total wins. If two people tie, the one who submitted the pull request that brought them to that score first wins. When organizers review your pull requests does not matter. People who have only the points for taking part are listed by GitHub handle.

Code of conduct

Be respectful to maintainers, organizers and other participants. Follow the CNCF Code of Conduct and the code of conduct of every project you contribute to.

Do not submit automated or copied work, and do not flood projects with trivial pull requests. The rubric below shows the penalties.