The 2026 New Year Challenge is a global, collaborative hackathon jointly hosted by five leading AI projects: MemU, OpenAgents, Sealos, TEN Framework, and Zeabur. Running from January 8 to 18, 2026, this 10-day event offers a total prize pool of $3,000 distributed across independent tracks. Each project hosts its own challenge focusing on different aspects of AI agent infrastructure, including memory management, deployment, and framework development.

Participants can join multiple tracks simultaneously, with each project evaluating submissions separately using its own scoring system. This event is significant for developers as it provides a unique opportunity to contribute to open-source AI agent technologies while competing for cash prizes, community badges, and project-specific credits. The hackathon emphasizes practical contributions, from fixing bugs and adding features to deploying production-ready applications, making it an ideal platform for both experienced and emerging AI developers to showcase their skills and gain recognition in the rapidly evolving AI agent ecosystem.