AI On Apple - Sydney Hackathon

The Sydney Mobile AI Hackathon brings together Sydney's most ambitious developers, designers, founders and creators for one intense weekend of building AI-native apps for Apple platforms.

Over the weekend, you’ll form a team, take an idea from concept to a working prototype, learn directly from experienced builders, and present your creation to a panel of founders, senior engineers, and industry partners.

Expect workshops, mentoring, great food, new collaborators and a room full of people who genuinely want to ship something remarkable.

This is not a weekend of slide decks and hypothetical ideas. It is a hands-on build sprint focused on what becomes possible when intelligence runs directly on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.

You might build:

• A private, offline experience powered by an on-device LLM or vision model
• An intelligent agent or assistant that feels native to the device
• A multimodal product combining voice, camera, sensors and spatial computing
• An AI application that creates meaningful social or community impact
• Something nobody in the room has seen before

Projects will be judged on innovation, technical craft, impact and the quality of the live demo, with an incredible prize pool across the grand prize, enterprise, visionOS, social-impact, beginner and People’s Choice categories.

== Sponsor Announcement == We’re proud to have ElevenLabs sponsoring the weekend, supporting our community of builders as they bring ambitious AI ideas to life. Whether you’re exploring voice, conversational experiences or something entirely unexpected, this is your chance to build something people will want to use.

Prizes

[TBA]

Who should apply?

You do not need to arrive with a team or a finished idea.

We are looking for:

• iOS, macOS, visionOS, tvOS, AI/ML and full-stack developers
• Product designers and creative technologists
• Founders and independent builders
• First-time hackers ready to learn
• Experienced engineers ready to push the technology further

Whether you have spent years shipping Apple-platform products or are building your first serious prototype, there will be a place for you to contribute.

Schedule

Friday: 6.30pm - 9:00pm Pre-Event

Saturday: 10am-8pm Hacking Time

Sunday: 10am - 2pm Hacking Time

2pm: Judging, Closing Ceremony & event wrap

Event details

23rd–25th October 2026
Sydney CBD (20 Martin Place)
In person

Attendance is application-based, so we can create a strong, balanced room of builders across engineering, product, design and AI.

Bring your Mac, your curiosity and the willingness to build fast.

Apply to join us and put intelligence in people’s pockets 🚀

(Applications will be reviewed closer to the event. Only approved applicants will be charged. Tickets are non-refundable. Approval is based on capacity and balancing the mix of beginner and advanced participants. We want to ensure we have a balanced environment to encourage participation from beginners and experts)

-- Sydney Apple AI Hackathon is an independent event and is not endorsed by Apple Inc. Apple and related trademarks are the property of Apple Inc.