European teenagers build their own tech: 6 winners of programming competition awarded
European teenagers build their own tech: 6 winners of programming competition awarded
More than 85 teenagers from 21 countries took part in Youth
Hacking 4 Freedom 2026, with six winners who created solutions ranging
from a scientific graphing calculator to tools tackling food waste and
decentralised search. Their creations show how young Europeans can build
technology everyone can control.Organised annually by the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) allows
European teenagers, aged 14 to 18, to bring their own ideas to life,
with only one rule: the software must allow anyone to use it for any
purpose, to study how it works, to share it with others and to improve
it. In a world where controlling our own technology is crucial, those
skills are essential for society. Beside that, YH4F gives young people
the chance to tinker, have fun with programming, and connect with
like-minded peers.More than 85 teenagers from 21 countries took part,
with projects that stood out for their creativity, technical skill, and
variety of ideas. The 2026 winners are a graphic calculator, a
decentralised search engine, a solution for reducing food waste, a
project supporting local communities, a tool that lets users build and
own their trackers using existing networks, and a music-learning tool –
all of them respecting others rights to control
technology.We tend to look to Silicon Valley when we talk about excellency and technological innovation, but YH4F shows us that here in
Europe, there are young people capable of creating extraordinary things. You can see what they accomplished at this young age
and with little resources, so I am confident there are many more young people here in Europe who could be able to build technology that we, as
society, can fully control”, says Matthias Kirschner, president of the FSFE.2026 WinnersFor this edition, more than 85 participants from 21 countries
participated. The six wining projects are:Ultimate Hacker Awardstrong>(awarded with €4,096 cash prize)
Juan Ramón (Spain)
Juan Ramón won the Ultimate Hacker Award with NumOS, a Free Software firmware and operating system
for a Free Software scientific graphing calculator.Elite Hacker Award(awarded with €2,048 cash prize)
Simon (Germany)
Simon received the Elite Hacker Award for FindMyWeb, a project
that enables users to build and own their own trackers using existing
networks, without relying on proprietary, vendor-specific
devices.Awesome Hacker Award (awarded with€1,024 cash prize)
Konstantinos (Greece)
Konstantinos won the Awesome Hacker Award with
SmartFoodSave, an LLM-assisted platform designed to
reduce food waste in school meal operations. The project combines data
collection, machine-learning predictions, semantic meal normalisation,
nutrition-aware menu planning, and donation-point discovery in a single
full-stack system.Best Arts Project (awarded with €1,024 cash prize)
Marius (Germany)
Marius won the Best Arts Project award with
Pianove , a Free Software piano-learning application
that works entirely offline, without an account or subscription. Users
can practice pieces from MusicXML files using a MIDI keyboard. The
application is built in Python using Pygame.Best Community Support Project (awarded with €1,024 cash prize)
Tommaso (Italy)
Tommaso received the Best Community Support
Project award for Needy, a secure,
geolocated, self-hostable platform that connects people who need help
with volunteers willing to offer their time. Users can request support
with tasks such as grocery shopping, companionship, and small repairs,
while volunteers can earn "Reputation Hours" in
return.Best Teamwork Project (awarded with €1,024 cash prize)
Stella, David, Florian, and Mattis (Germany)
The Best Teamwork Project award went to RastiSearch, a federated search engine designed to
operate independently of major technology companies' indexes. The
project emphasises decentralisation, integration with Tor, accessible
self-hosting, and tools that make it easier for users to build their own
web crawlers."Each of these projects began with a participant
who saw something they wanted, or found frustrating, and decided to
build it themselves. Along the way, they learned new skills and had fun
programming. The result is Free Software that solves a real problem and
that others can use, study, share, and modify. That is what Youth
Hacking 4 Freedom is about: young people learning by building the tools
they need and sharing them with a community that helps them grow. We are
deeply grateful to our sponsors, whose support makes this competition
possible. Without them, we could not spark curiosity about Free Software
in the next generation”, explains Bonnie Mehring, FSFE and YH4F Project Manager.Empowering Europe’s next generation of developersThe Youth Hacking 4
Freedom competition has just concluded its fifth edition attracting
young people passionate about programming. United by an interest in
tinkering with technology, these participants represent a generation
that understands the importance of creating, modifying, using, and
sharing the software they depend on. By empowering young developers to
contribute to software freedom, YH4F fosters a culture of openness,
transparency, and digital independence.This initiative is made possible through the generous financial
support of our donor, Reinhard Wiesemann, and the
award-sponsorship of our platinum sponsor Proxmox, our
silver sponsors Collabora, Nextcloud, SUSE Open Source
Network and our bronze sponsor KIX.The registration for the YH4F 2027 edition is
already open to any young European between 14 and 18 years old. The
programming period is from 01.01.2027 to 30.06.2027. Details for the
next edition can be found under yh4f.org.
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