Hacktoberfest is Back for 2024! 🥳🎉
Every October, the open-source community is thrilled with excitement (at least for me) for one of its most anticipated events — Hacktoberfest! Whether it’s the chance to earn new, custom digital badges from Holopin or grab exclusive rewards like the Hacktoberfest kit from their partners. There’s something for everyone to look forward to.
In this blog, I’ll cover everything you need to know about Hacktoberfest 2024: how to find issues or repositories to contribute to, how to participate, and much more.
What is Hacktoberfest?
Hacktoberfest is an annual event that takes place every October with a mission to get more people involved in open source. The event encourages everyone—coders and non-coders, regardless of skill level—to participate and make a positive impact on open-source.
It’s a month-long celebration of all things open source, where developers from around the world come together to contribute to projects, collaborate with others, and celebrate open-source with others.
Why participate on Hacktoberfest?
Why should you participate in Hacktoberfest? Is it worth your time? Here are some reasons why you might want to join Hacktoberfest 2024:
1. Digital Badges or Rewards
By participating in Hacktoberfest 2024, you can earn a customizable digital badge from Holopin that evolves with each of your pull or merge requests.
Let me show what I earned from last year’s Hacktoberfest:
And here’s a look at the Hacktoberfest 2023 Reward Kit:
To learn more about the rewards, visit Hacktoberfest’s website
2. Making your first contribution
If you’ve never contributed to open source before, this is the perfect opportunity to make your first contribution and kickstart your open-source journey.
Other reasons are:
- Hone Your Technical Skills: Improve your coding skills
- Network opportunities: Connect and meet with like-minded developers, maintainers, and organizations.
- and many more: There are plenty of benefits, from gaining experience to simply having fun!
How to Participate?
Participating in hacktoberfest is straightforward:
Register
To participate in Hacktoberfest, simply register between September 23 and October 31. Once registered, you can start contributing from October 1. Contributions can be made on both GitHub and GitLab, but make sure that the repositories you contribute to have the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic.
Make Contributions
Start making your contributions between October 1 and October 31. To be eligible for the rewards (and finish Hacktoberfest), you need to submit 4 high-quality pull requests (PRs) within this period.
Ensure that you follow Hacktoberfest’s PR guidelines to make sure your contributions count. Check out this FAQ to understand how Hacktoberfest validates PRs and ensures they are counted.
For maintainers, check out this guide
Find Projects to Contribute to
In this section, I’ll discuss ways to find projects and issues to work on during Hacktoberfest:
1. Use GitHub’s Built-in Filter
One way to find issues for hacktoberfest is going to the issue tab (top left corner menu) 
In the search field, you can use the following filters to find issues labeled for Hacktoberfest:
is:open is:issue label:hacktoberfest
You can also add other labels, such as label:good-first-issue, to find issues ideal for beginners.
2. Explore topics
You can explore Hacktoberfest-related projects by visiting this link. It showcases repositories that contain the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic.
3. Websites
Here are some websites you can visit to find issues or projects for Hacktoberfest:
good-first-issue
Filter by programming language, issue label, and other features that might be helpful for finding issues.codetriage
CodeTriage provides a list of repositories with the ‘hacktoberfest’ label, making it easier to find repositories to contribute to.
For more ways to find projects and issues to contribute to, check out this great blog by Pradumna Saraf here
Ways to contribute
There are many ways to contribute to Hacktoberfest, and you don’t need to be a coding wizard to get started. In fact, there are several ways to participate that don’t involve coding at all!
Here are some of the ways you can contribute, as mentioned on the Hacktoberfest website:
- Writing: Contribute by writing or improving documentation.
- Translating: Translate documents into your local language to make them more accessible.
- Copy Editing: Enhance existing documentation by fixing errors, improving clarity, and refining content.
- Blog Posts
- Graphic Design: Create graphics, icons, and other visual elements that projects may need.
You can read more about low or non-code contributions here
That’s it!
I highly encourage you to check out the official website of Hacktoberfest which contains everything you need to know about the event. Hacktoberfest is a fantastic opportunity to learn, grow, and give back to the open-source community.
So, what are you waiting for? Registration opens soon — just 10 days to go (as of writing this blog)! Don’t miss out on the chance to be part of this global celebration of open source.
See you there, and happy contributing! 🚀