The Macaly Summer Hackathon has its winners. Meet the best projects
From trip planners to simple online games. The Macaly Summer Hackathon drew over 500 projects from 30 countries. Here are the ones that stood out.
Macaly
At the start of the summer, we announced the first Macaly Summer Hackathon with a simple brief: send us any project with a summer, holiday, or vacation theme. What came back was a wildly varied mix of sites and apps, from trip planners through AI assistants to simple online games. Over 500 projects in total, from more than 30 countries.
The number of entries surprised us. The quality surprised us even more. We expected simple experiments and got finished products instead: apps running on their own domains, connected to public data, with thoughtful design and features that would hold up well outside any competition.
When judging, we looked at how complex, original, and carefully crafted each project was, from the design down to the technical execution.
So it's our pleasure to introduce the ten best projects.
The winning projects
1st place: ZoovČR
Prize: 200M credits
ZoovČR is a guide to every zoo in the Czech Republic. All 39 of them are here, complete with opening hours, admission prices, and current weather. There's also an animal encyclopedia, an events calendar, adoption programs, games for kids, and a personal passport where you can track which zoos you've already visited.
We loved the project's scope and its technical approach, built on publicly available data. The guide includes detailed information about the animals in each zoo, and we especially liked the news section, where users can follow new arrivals and baby animals across all Czech zoos.
2nd place: Summer Memories
Prize: 130M credits
Second place goes to fifteen-year-old Ema. She built an app styled as a digital polaroid album: upload your summer photos, arrange them into pages, and decorate them with vintage stickers. The result is a private album of memories that users will genuinely want to come back to.
We liked the simple but cleverly executed summer idea. While plenty of other projects piled on features, Ema picked one core idea and shipped it as a fully working product. The technical execution earned our respect too.
3rd place: Hey, I See It
Prize: 100M credits
How much of the world have you actually seen? This app answers with a number. Upload a GPX track from your trip or draw a route on the map, and the app calculates how much terrain was visible along the way, coloring it in on your personal map of the world.
Technically, this was one of the most ambitious projects in the whole hackathon. Viewshed analysis, working out what's actually visible from a given point in the terrain, is the kind of task you'd expect from specialized software. Here it runs in the browser on any GPX file, and that earned it a spot on the podium.
Honorable mentions
Take a look at the projects that didn't make the top three but absolutely deserved recognition. Each of their creators takes home 10 million credits.
Czech Water Quality: Shows water quality at more than 300 swimming spots across the Czech Republic. The data is updated regularly based on measurements from public health authorities.
Splash Tycoon: A simple, fun game where you run a public swimming pool. Keep the water clean and warm, attract new visitors, and buy upgrades, from a diving board to a giant water slide.
Grill Assistant: A practical app for the Czech summer. Pick how many guests are coming and what you're grilling, and the assistant puts together a shopping list, a prep schedule, and an estimate of how many drinks you'll need.
Summer Kids Planner: Where will the kids be over summer break? This dashboard helps the whole family plan the season, with an overview of camps, a bucket list, and a budget.
Beer Stamps: A digital version of a beer trail through seven craft breweries around Prague. Scan the QR code at the tap, collect seven stamps, and earn a free beer.
RouteStay: If you drive long distances, you'll appreciate this one. Enter where you're going from and to, and the planner finds places to stay along your route.
FunHoliday AI: It's 7 p.m. on vacation and you're bored? This app helps you find nearby activities based on your budget, your mood, and your appetite for adrenaline.
Congratulations to the winners, and a big thank you to everyone who took part. It makes us genuinely happy that our users spent part of their summer building something new, useful, or just plain fun with Macaly. See you at the next hackathon.
