«Hack Apertus» Liebefeld known as #siliconlovefield opens the 2nd stage of «Hack Apertus», a Switzerland-wide hackathon series built on Apertus, the country's open large language model, and the first one you can join in person. Over 2 days, teams take on challenges set by our partners and turn them into working prototypes on Apertus, developed for sovereign infrastructure across the public and private sector.
It runs 18–19 October 2026 in Liebefeld near Bern, with 100 builders in the room, the 8B and 70B Apertus models to work with, and everything you build staying open and reusable. On day 2, the top 6 teams pitch live at the Liebefeld Finals and compete for a place at the Grand Finals in St.Gallen.
📍 WORKSPACE & MORE, Waldeggstrasse 34, 3097 Liebefeld (Bern)
📅 18–19 October 2026 · 08:00–21:30 CEST
👥 100 hackers, teams of up to 5. Come with a crew or find one on the day.
🎯 3 partner challenges (incl. Bern Economic Development Agency)
🎟️ Free and open to all
Who's it for?
Open to everyone, and a great fit if you're an AI/ML engineer, software developer, data scientist, researcher, or NLP practitioner. Also very much for technical students (CS, data science, computational linguistics) and for domain experts who aren't engineers.
You don't need to be an Apertus expert to show up and learn.
We've got you covered
Food and drinks are on us. If you like Base caps you'll love the «Hack Apertus» one...
For your overnight stay we recommend Hostel77 which is nearby. A discount code can be requested. If you live more than 100 km from the venue, we cover up to CHF 100 in travel costs against receipts.
What to bring
A laptop, plenty of energy, and a strong team spirit.
The full journey
«Hack Apertus» runs in 3 stages.
Stage 1: the Online Hackathon (1–16 October).
Stage 2: Liebefeld, the first of 6 On-site hackathons across Switzerland.
Stage 3: the Grand Finals on 14 May 2027 in St.Gallen, where the main «Hack Apertus» Award is decided and Apertus projects are showcased.
🏆 Win the Liebefeld Finals and you qualify automatically for the Grand Finals.
Online and on-site run as separate phases, so you choose how far you go. Whether you hacked the online round or you're joining fresh, you belong here.
Want in?
Create an account and finish your builder profile to apply.
