Your own prize category
The Next Gen Award is the student lane inside Shipaton. Submit a video and source code — no store listing or paid developer account required.
Student track
New for 2026Shipaton for students
Everything students need to join Shipaton 2026 — the Next Gen Award, the Campus Leaderboard, and the Learning Party we throw for the school that ships the most.
Why students ship here
Three reasons to bring your campus.
Most student hackathons end with a demo video and a repo nobody opens again. Shipaton ends with a shipped app. Students get their own prize category, their own scoreboard, and a reason to bring the whole campus along.
A scoreboard for your school
The Campus Leaderboard ranks schools by student applicants today and by submissions from September, so getting classmates on board moves your campus up.
A party for the campus that ships
The school with the most submissions wins a Learning Party: a fully sponsored event on or near campus with food, speakers, swag, and RevenueCat engineers.
Next Gen Award
A lower-friction way into the competition.
Students should not have to buy an Apple or Google developer account just to compete. The Next Gen Award lets student builders enter with a video and their source code, and those projects are still in the mix for the wider Shipaton prize lineup.
Campus Leaderboard
See where your school ranks.
The leaderboard tracks student participation by campus and updates as new builders register. It currently ranks schools by student applicants; in September it switches to ranking by submissions. Search for your school, filter by region, scan the global map, and rally classmates to climb the board before submissions close.
The grand prize for campuses
What is a Learning Party?
The school with the most Shipaton submissions wins a Learning Party — a celebration hosted on or near campus and sponsored entirely by RevenueCat. It is part party, part workshop: the people who build subscription apps for a living come to your school and help your students do the same.
Fully sponsored by RevenueCat, hosted on or near the winning campus.
Food and drinks for every student who shows up — whether or not they submitted to Shipaton.
Talks from speakers and developer influencers in the mobile community.
Shipaton swag for students.
Live office hours with RevenueCat engineers on how to monetize an app and build a business around it.
Get your campus on the board
Register, then bring everyone else with you.
Sign up, tell your CS club, and consider hosting an official Shipaton event at your school. Every registration from your campus counts, and the top school takes the Learning Party home.
