UK Quantum Hackathon 2025

We are now accepting applications from UK-based students and residents at the Master’s, Doctoral, or early career researcher level to participate in this year’s hackathon.

Apply here

The UK Quantum Hackathon is the NQCC’s flagship annual event, delivered as part of our user engagement programme, SparQ. The event brings together teams of aspiring coders with industry mentors, to tackle practical challenges and develop solutions using quantum computing.

Aimed at students and early career researchers, participants will gain hands-on experience using quantum algorithms and coding with quantum computers.

The event will run over three days, with participants working in teams to develop solutions, showcase their results and demonstrate how they would tackle challenges in areas as diverse as healthcare, energy, and engineering.

Location: Nucleus building, Edinburgh    Dates: 21st – 23rd July 2025

We are seeking innovative use cases for this year’s hackathon from businesses and organisations in the public sector, third sector, and higher education. Successful applicants will have the opportunity to work alongside a dedicated team to develop and test their use case solutions on quantum computers during the event.

Objectives

Connect the UK quantum ecosystem through networking and collaboration throughout the event

Develop use cases that can be further developed through the SparQ program

Develop quantum computing programming and application development skills in masters students, doctoral students, and other early career researchers

Demonstrate the current state of quantum computing technology for real-world applications. In particular, understanding the opportunities and limitations of quantum computing

Showcase the breadth of technology available currently and enable a broad range of users to access these tools

Event schedule

Past UK Quantum Hackathons

UK Quantum Hackathon 2024

The UK Quantum Hackathon 2024 took place at the University of Warwick from 22nd July to 24th July 2024. The event concluded with teams presenting outstanding solutions to both their peers and a distinguished panel of judges.

UK Quantum Hackathon 2024

UK Quantum Hackathon 2023

The NQCC held its second UK quantum hackathon in July 2023 at the University of Birmingham. It aimed at exploration and awareness-raising for the current capabilities and limitations of quantum computing technology, as well as at nurturing the talent pipeline and convening stakeholders.

UK Quantum Hackathon 2023

UK Quantum Hackathon 2022

The hackathon was the first hands-on event organized by the NQCC in June 2022, following the launch of its SparQ applications discovery programme. The goal was to bring together quantum developers, end users, and technology providers to collaborate on solving real-world problems.

UK Quantum Hackathon 2022

Articles

Technical report: UK Quantum Hackathon 2024

The National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) hosted its third UK Quantum Hackathon at the University of Warwick in 2024, bringing together some of the brightest early-career quantum computing researchers.

Read the report

Technical report: UK Quantum Hackathon 2023

In July 2023, we held our second UK Quantum Hackathon at the University of Birmingham as part of SparQ, our user engagement programme. Over the course of two days, ten teams of early career researchers used quantum computing to tackle practical problems based on use cases provided by industrial end-users.

Read the report

Hackathon offers glimpse of quantum potential

The UK’s second quantum hackathon challenged ten teams of early-career researchers, industry mentors and hardware specialists to create quantum solutions to real-world problems in just two days.

Find out more

Quantum hackers tackle real-world problems

The UK’s first quantum computing hackathon challenged teams of students and early-career scientists to devise novel quantum solutions to real-life problems.

Find out more

Past UK Quantum Hackathons: Image gallery