I wanted to personally invite you to the upcoming Databricks Lakebase Hackathon, taking place virtually on Wednesday, September 23rd, from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM PT.
We run virtual Lakebase Hackathons every few months, each focused on a different Databricks product. These events give teams an opportunity to learn through hands-on building, live enablement, and friendly competition.
This hackathon focuses on Lakebase, Databricks’ fully managed Postgres database for real-time applications, AI agents, and operational workloads. Lakebase brings the familiar Postgres experience together with lakehouse data, AI, and Databricks governance.
For developers, Lakebase is designed to make the database move at the speed of the rest of the development stack. With Git-like database branching, teams can create isolated lower environments for development, feature work, QA, previews, and CI. Developers can test schema migrations and application changes on a branch, then reset or discard it when the work is complete—without affecting production. Autoscaling and scale-to-zero make these intermittent environments practical and cost-efficient.
Whether you’re new to Lakebase or looking to take your skills to the next level, this event is designed to be practical, collaborative, and rewarding.
Choose your track
Track 1: Application Builders — For anyone building apps, APIs, or AI agents. Build an application on Lakebase, try database branching for isolated development, and explore how Lakebase compares with the database you use today. Vibe coding is encouraged, and submissions will be judged on the strength of the business use case.
Track 2: Data & ML Engineers — For teams working with data pipelines and machine learning. Build AI agent applications with persistent memory, use Reverse ETL and Lakehouse Sync to connect lakehouse and Postgres data, and serve ML features in real time.
What to expect
Live enablement: Instructor-led training from the Databricks SA Team, breakout sessions tailored to each track, and important announcements from the Lakebase Product Team.
Hands-on labs: Work through Data Operations, Agentic Memory, App Deployment, database branching and autoscaling, Reverse ETL, Lakehouse Sync, and Online Feature Store.
Free Databricks Lighthouse environment: Build and showcase your project in an environment provided by Databricks.
Flexible data options: Use the public datasets provided for the hackathon, or use Genie Code in the hackathon environment to generate synthetic data for the use case you want to explore.
Judging guidance: Learn the judging criteria during the enablement session. Submissions will be evaluated on insights, design, storytelling, innovation, and business value.
Prizes: Per track, first place will receive a $500 prize, second place $300, and third place $200.
Key dates
Enablement session: September 23rd,, 2026, 9:00 AM–2:45 PM PT
Submission deadline: October 2nd, 2026
Team guidelines
Teams should include 2–4 people from the same company; multiple teams are allowed from the same company.
Each person can join only one team.
One representative per team will be responsible for submitting the final entry.
Solo participants are welcome if they are the only registrant from their company.
How to register
Every participant must complete the Hackathon Signup Landing Page: https://events.databricks.com/fy27q3-sd-aeebcustomerlakebasehackathon
One representative from each team must complete the Team Formation Form: https://forms.gle/WmNiFQYUfgivFViZ6
Please review the official rules before registering: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L8cOLNOAMgS_c1Aijj_PiB270Vg43ETN/view?usp=sharing
Curious what these hackathons look like? Read about what teams built at our last hackathon: Ask, Build, Compose
If you have any questions, please reach out to us at dnb-hackathon@databricks.com.
Hope to see you there!