Student Hackathon 2025

Projects Beyond Potential: Innovating the Way We Move, Learn, and Adapt

Are you ready to go beyond expectations? Join our second edition of the PMI Bulgaria Student Hackathon and reimagine the way we Move, Learn, and Adapt in a fast-changing world.

The event is a great opportunity for the students to deep dive in the business world and gain hands-on learning and practice, collaborating with experienced professionals.

What to Expect?

Project Management Practice

Apply project management frameworks to real-world business cases in teams. You’ll tackle one of the three key tracks – transportation innovation, educational transformation, or organizational adaptability.

Training and Mentorship

Access exclusive training materials and receive support from experienced mentors from PMI Bulgaria and business experts from our partner companies.

Connect and Network

Meet like-minded peers, industry professionals, and potential future employers. Expand your PM community and visibility.

Present, Pitch, and Win

Prepare a winning project proposal and pitch your solution to an expert jury. The top three teams will receive prizes and recognition. All participants get a Certificate of Participation.

What are the focus areas of the hackathon?

MOVE

This track invites teams to tackle real-world transportation challenges with the sharp tools of project management, and invites business to generate such cases for them. Whether developing traffic flow solutions or redesigning personnel allocation systems, participants will apply structured planning, agile thinking, and cross-functional collaboration to create transport systems that are more reliable, efficient, and human-centric.

LEARN

This track challenges participants to explore how universities and training providers can better engage students, integrate emerging technologies like AI, and motivate lifelong learning, as well as motivating the universities to challenge them. By applying project methodologies to communication, evaluation, and classroom innovation, teams will build actionable, scalable solutions that bring clarity and collaboration to the educational experience.

ADAPT

This track invites students to step into the complex world of financial services, where risk is constant and agility is key. In collaboration with risk management departments from the banking sector, participants will work on real, structured case studies designed to reflect the evolving challenges faced by modern banks. These may include managing credit risk, market volatility, operational failures, cyber threats, or regulatory compliance pressures. From designing early-warning systems for financial risks to building adaptive response plans for regulatory changes or fraud incidents, participants will learn to apply project-based thinking to build more resilient and future-ready organisations.

What is the phases of the hackathon?

Kick-off meeting – Students will be split into teams and receive their real-world business cases at the kick-off meeting on 14th October.

Working phase – Each team will have 8 days (2 of them will be in-person) to develop their ideas, project proposals, and prepare to pitch.

Final presentation – Final pitch presentation in front of the Jury members on 23th October.

To enhance their learning experience students will be supported by business mentors from the respective company partner and project mentor from the PMI Bulgaria Chapter.

What are the general guidelines?

Students will be assessed based on their group work and the following deliverables:

  • Generate solution options to the provided business case (problem statement) and validate your choice with the business mentor.
  • Develop a project charter and validate it with the project mentor (Template with guidelines will be provided during the kick-off meeting).
  • Prepare a 10-minute presentation with your project proposal and pitch to the jury members.

Key Dates:

πŸ“Œβ€―11 October 2025 – Registration deadline (Register here)
πŸ“Œβ€―14 October 2025 – Kick-off Meeting (Hall 3, Sofia Tech Park, 17:45h)
πŸ“Œβ€―18-19 October 2025 – In-Person Hackathon Days (Hall 311K, UNWE, 10-15h on both days)
πŸ“Œβ€―23 October 2025 – Final Presentations & Awards (John Atanasoff, Sofia Tech Park, 9:00h)

Where?

Join us in this exciting opportunity to innovate for a better world.

Let’s create future-ready solutions together!

πŸ“₯ Registration link: here

Contact us:

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Learn more about what PMI offers for students here.

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