Name: SC Quantathon v3
Start: 2026-09-25T10:00:00.000-04:00
End: 2026-09-27T11:00:00.000-04:00
Location: SC Quantathon v3

About the challenge

SC Quantathon v3 is a 24-hour quantum computing hackathon at Clemson University, hosted by the Clemson Quantum Club on September 25–27, 2026 at the Watt Family Innovation Center. SC Quantum founded the Quantathon and ran its first two editions in the Southeast. This third edition is hosted at Clemson.

Teams of three to five students are assigned one of two technical challenges written by our challenge sponsors. You then have 24 hours to build something real and present it to judges. Teams rank their technical challenge preferences on Friday night, assignments are posted later that evening, and full briefs are released at the opening ceremony on Saturday morning.

This year’s challenges come from:

Savannah River National Laboratory
Quantum Rings

Teams may also participate in the optional Social Media Challenge alongside their assigned technical challenge. Create appropriate Instagram posts about the hackathon with your team and tag @clemsonquantum.

No prior quantum computing experience is required. Mentors and sponsor representatives are on site all weekend. A self-paced bootcamp covers the tools the challenges use before the event starts. Students from computing, physics, engineering, mathematics, and related fields are all welcome.

Key details

Dates: September 25 to 27, 2026
Venue: Watt Family Innovation Center, 405 S Palmetto Blvd, Clemson, SC 29634. Check in at the north door into the Atrium
Format: In person
Team size: 3 to 5 students. Register alone and we will place you on a team
Eligibility: Undergraduate and graduate students, 18 or older
Cost: Free, with meals provided
Hacking window: Saturday at 10:00 AM to Sunday at 10:00 AM
Submission deadline: Sunday, September 27 at 10:00 AM
Prizes: Prizes and the judging rubric are announced at the opening ceremony

Schedule

Friday, September 25

5:00 PM, Check-in
5:30 PM, Welcome ceremony
6:30 PM, Dinner, challenge ranking opens, social media challenge begins
9:00 PM, Challenge ranking due
10:00 PM, Challenge assignments and team rooms posted on Discord, Watt closes for the night

Saturday, September 26

8:30 AM, Breakfast
9:30 AM, Opening ceremony
10:00 AM, Challenge kickoff and hacking begins
12:00 PM, Lunch
3:30 PM, Sponsor tabling
6:00 PM, Dinner
9:00 PM, Sponsor firesides

Sunday, September 27

12:00 AM, Midnight snack
8:30 AM, Breakfast
10:00 AM, Submissions due on Devpost
12:00 PM, Lunch and judging presentations
2:00 PM, Social Media Challenge submissions due
6:00 PM, Awards ceremony

Get started

Register for the event. Apply through the registration form. Registering on Devpost does not register you for SC Quantathon v3
Join the Discord. Announcements, challenge assignments, team rooms, and mentor support all run through the Discord, which will be included in the Welcome email. If you did not receive this, email [email protected]
Work through the bootcamp. The self-paced SC Quantathon v3 Bootcamp is released one day at a time from September 14 to 22. It covers the basics plus the tools the challenges use. Brushing up on Python helps too
Set up your accounts before Friday. Every team member needs a Devpost account. You also need a qBraid account and an IBM Quantum account. Those two are all you need in advance. If your challenge uses anything else, you will set it up Saturday
Check in Friday at 5:00 PM. Rank the challenges after the welcome ceremony, then check Discord at 10:00 PM for your team’s challenge assignment and room
Build Saturday 10:00 AM to Sunday 10:00 AM, then submit here on Devpost. Project work starts at the challenge kickoff, not before

Bring a laptop and a charger. That is all you need. Questions before the event go to the Discord or [email protected].

Full details, travel and hotel information, and the FAQ live at clemsonquantum.com.

Requirements

What to Build

Each team builds one project responding to the challenge it is assigned on Friday night: Savannah River National Laboratory or Quantum Rings. The full brief for your challenge is released at the opening ceremony on Saturday morning. The sponsor that wrote it will be on site and Discord to answer questions.

Your project must use quantum computing in a meaningful way. That can be a quantum algorithm, a quantum simulation, a hybrid quantum-classical workflow, or quantum hardware, depending on what your challenge asks for. Simulators are fine unless your challenge says otherwise. Hardware and simulator access is available through qBraid and IBM Quantum. See the Resources tab.

All project work happens inside the hacking window, Saturday 10:00 AM to Sunday 10:00 AM. Brainstorming beforehand is fine and encouraged. Writing your project’s code beforehand is not. Open-source libraries, public tutorials, and sponsor starter notebooks are all fair game as long as you say what you used in your submission.

What to Submit

One Devpost submission per team, created before the deadline. It must include:

Your team name and team number as assigned on Friday night
The challenge you were assigned (Savannah River National Laboratory or Quantum Rings)
All team members added to the submission. Every member needs a Devpost account, and each one must be linked on the final submission
A written description of what you built, the approach you took, what your results show, and what you would do with more time
Images, such as a results plot, a circuit diagram, or a screenshot of your project running
One ZIP file uploaded to the submission form, containing your slides as a PDF, your code, and anything else that helps a judge understand the project

Submissions close Sunday, September 27 at 10:00 AM. Create your submission early and keep editing it. You can update it freely until the deadline.

Judging presentations begin at 12:00 PM and every team presents in person. Each team presents for 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions from the judges.

How to package your ZIP

Judges open dozens of these back to back. Yours should make sense to someone who has never seen it, in under a minute. Name the file TeamNumber-TeamName.zip and use exactly this structure:

README.txt, with your team name and number, your challenge, every member’s name, a short summary of the project, and a line saying what each folder contains and how to run the code
01-Presentation.pdf, your slides exported to PDF. Not .pptx, not a link
02-Code/, all of your source. A notebook that runs top to bottom, or a script with setup instructions in the README. Include a requirements file if you used anything unusual
03-Data/, anything else that supports the project: results, figures, raw data, benchmark output, design notes

A few things that will cost you when judges are reading quickly:

Files dumped in the root with no folders, or names like final_v3_REAL.ipynb
Dead code, abandoned experiments, and scratch files mixed in with the work you want judged
Screenshots and figures with no caption or context anywhere
A ZIP full of material with nothing explaining the order to read it in

Label everything. If a file is in the ZIP, the README should say why it is there.