The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched the second edition of its flagship initiative, the 5G Innovation Hackathon 2026, building on the encouraging response to the previous edition. Organised under the 100 5G Use Case Labs Initiative, the Hackathon seeks to catalyse the development of innovative and scalable solutions leveraging 5G and allied technologies. It invites participation from students, start-ups, micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), and innovators across the country.
The Hackathon will commence with a call for proposals from March 20, 2026, and submissions will remain open until April 17, 2026. Proposals will be received through the designated 100 5G Use Case Lab institutions, which will function as nodal centres. All entries will undergo a structured multi-stage evaluation process, including institute-level screening, regional committee assessment, national level evaluation based on presentations, prototype development support and final evaluations based on physical demonstrations.
Selected teams will be provided both financial and infrastructural support to convert their ideas into working prototypes. A dedicated seed funding pool of Rs 5 million has been earmarked for this purpose. In addition, teams will have access to the advanced infrastructure available at the 100 5G Use Case Labs established across premier academic institutions for testing, validation, and refinement of their solutions.
The Hackathon offers a total prize pool exceeding Rs 1 million. The first prize carries Rs 500,000, followed by Rs 300,000 for the runner-up and Rs 150,000 for the second runner-up, along with a special best idea award of Rs 50,000. In addition, support for intellectual property rights (IPR) filing will be extended to up to 25 teams. The final results will be declared on October 1, 2026, and the selected innovations will be showcased and awarded at India Mobile Congress 2026.
Applications are invited across a broad spectrum of thematic areas, including 5G and 5G advanced-based use cases, applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning for telecom technology development as well as network operations and maintenance, and internet of thing (IoT)-enabled applications in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, industrial automation and other key areas of the economy, 5G/5G advanced-based applications for disaster management, redcap user equipment, and fixed wireless access. Additional focus areas include non-terrestrial networks and their integration with 5G/5G advance systems, 5G use cases leveraging advanced network capabilities, including network slicing and quality of service and other native 5G features, and telecom security solutions for next-generation communication systems.
