Cursor Hackathon Heilbronn: 166 developers, 65 teams, 30 hours
Sachin Agrawal
166 developers, one venue, 30 hours on the clock
On March 21-22, 2026, CREATORS and Arkadia hosted the Cursor Hackathon Heilbronn at the Openspace in Heilbronn. 230 people registered. 166 showed up. They formed 65 teams and had 30 hours to build something real.
One participant traveled 16 hours to be there. Another flew in from Egypt. People came from across Europe, all with the same goal: ship a working product before the clock ran out.
Cursor was the title sponsor, providing credits for every participant. Credit sponsors n8n, ElevenLabs, Beyond Presence, Convex, LangChain, Miro, Featherless, Vercel, and Google gave teams the tools to move fast.
Our local sponsors nxtspace, marsstein and openspace by arkadia supported the event to make it a huge success.
30 hours of building, zero excuses
The venue stayed open overnight. Teams cycled between deep focus and ping pong breaks. By 4am, the energy shifted from chaotic brainstorming to quiet, concentrated building. By morning, 50 teams had submitted working products.
The range of projects was staggering. Teams tackled healthcare, robotics, logistics, agriculture, cybersecurity, 3D printing, and video editing. Some had been thinking about their idea for years. Others came up with theirs at 2am.
One participant summed it up: "Speed over perfection. Clarity beats complexity. Good teams form fast when everyone takes ownership."
20 judges, 10 finalists, 3 winners
The first judging round was handled by 20 judges, many from tech companies in San Francisco including Google, Meta, Palantir, and Adobe. From 50 submissions, 10 finalist teams earned the right to pitch on stage in front of a live jury panel.
The live jury consisted of Manuel Szedlak from Marsstein, Michael Aechtler from CREATORS, and Marina Iantorno from Campus Founders. Scoring covered five categories: product viability and market potential (25%), technical innovation and AI use (25%), execution quality (20%), user experience and design (15%), and presentation (15%).
The winners
Cursor Hackathon Heilbronn 2026 — Winners
3 winning projects selected by our judges
Behind the winning projects
Shieldly: safety should not be a luxury
Maide, Praful, Vivek, and Zehra built Shieldly, a safety app designed for women to help protect each other from danger. The problem is personal: walking home alone at night and not feeling safe. Their solution scored 90.33 out of 100, the highest score we've seen across both our hackathons.
As Maide put it: "48 hours of building, iterating, and yes, very little sleep. But even more: real teamwork, fast execution, and stepping in for each other when it mattered."
outtake: Cursor for video editing
Daniel, David, and Kai built outtake, an AI-powered video editor. Describe what you want in plain language and it edits the video for you. One judge tested a real editing prompt, converting footage to Instagram format with cinematic colors, and it worked. Second place.
Print it: from sketch to 3D print, no CAD needed
Tim and Jianan built Print it, a tool that turns drawings and descriptions into 3D-printable models. No CAD knowledge required. They ranked first in the initial judging round, evaluated by engineers from Google and Meta, and finished third overall. Third place.
Projects that stood out
Beyond the top 3, the finalist projects showed the breadth of what 30 hours of focused building can produce:
(5th place, Best Use of n8n) is a voice-first immigration concierge that guides newcomers through German bureaucracy step by step, in their own language. MechaGen let you describe a mechanical part in plain language and get a fully interactive 3D model. No CAD, no learning curve. Memoria built an observability dashboard for AI agents, tracking every task, action, and cost across dev and production. CropSense predicted crop quality before harvest and verified it after, helping farmers and distributors make smarter decisions.
One team had been thinking about their project for seven years. They built the first working version in 30 hours.
What 166 developers proved in one weekend
The Cursor Hackathon Heilbronn was our largest event yet. It confirmed something we saw at our Mannheim hackathon one week earlier: the tools have caught up to the ambition. When you give motivated people the right environment and 30 hours, the output is remarkable.
Projects spanned healthcare, agriculture, cybersecurity, robotics, creative tools, and developer infrastructure. The best ones came from teams who understood their problem deeply, not the ones with the most technical experience.
A special thanks to our volunteers Aniruthan, Lucas Braun, Jannik Hiller, Abd El Aziz, Elena, Anastasia, Hüseyin, and Fadel for keeping the energy high from start to finish. And to Narimane Sonbol for supporting with the venue and organisation.
More hackathons are in the works. Check our upcoming events to join the next one.
Browse all 48 projects and scores
Every project, judge score breakdown, and comment is on the hackathon projects showcase. See what 166 developers built in a single weekend with Cursor.
This article is also available in German: Deutsch