Hack Western is Western University's annual hackathon and one of the largest student-led hackathons in Canada. Founded in 2014, Hack Western’s mission has been to foster an approachable and accessible environment for students from all backgrounds to learn about technology.
The 12th annual Hack Western took place from November 21 to November 23, 2025, welcoming over 400 students representing over 30 universities and colleges across North America—a scale that reflects the competitions growing national footprint. Over 36 hours, students submitted 82 projects that spanned the full spectrum of contemporary innovation: AI-driven product design tools, urban-environment visualizations, AR storytelling platforms, social-impact prototypes, and hardware projects pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished within a weekend. This year’s imagination-themed event, under the tagline “The world is your canvas”, encouraged participants not only to solve problems but to treat technology as a medium for artistic and conceptual expression, inspiring both first-time coders and advanced builders to explore unfamiliar domains.
A defining feature of Hack Western 12 was its emphasis on structured learning. Workshops throughout the weekend provided practical, high-value content that complemented the hacking experience—from deep dives into generative AI and Google’s latest Gemini release to ethical technology design, résumé building, and recruitment insights from industry practitioners. This provided a space to creatively build, while acquiring the interdisciplinary skills that shape long-term careers.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the highly attended two-part workshop series delivered by the event’s title sponsor, Scotiabank. Their first session, Financial Fitness for Tech Innovators: Skills for Tomorrow’s Leaders, positioned financial literacy as a foundational competency for early-career technologists, offering accessible frameworks for budgeting, investing, and long-term planning. The session provoked notably engaged discussion, with students posing questions on business financing, investment horizons, and managing variable income: topics that rarely surface in technical learning environments but have tangible implications for students’ future stability.
As one participant reflected, “This workshop shifted my perspective entirely. It showed me how major institutions like Scotiabank can make a tangible, personal impact on a student's journey. It brought into sharp focus the critical role financial literacy plays in every aspect of life and has genuinely inspired me to take full ownership of my financial future."
The second Scotiabank session focused on navigating the corporate world, translating workplace experience into actionable guidance. Students received candid advice on sustaining work-life balance, cultivating team dynamics, building trust, and creating a resilient professional network. The workshop concluded with personalized LinkedIn reviews, offering individual feedback that many described as a helpful exercise of the weekend.
The hackathon’s final showcase demonstrated the cumulative impact of this learning environment. The first-place project, Vril, created an AI-powered platform enabling users to generate and iterate 3D product models using natural language—an ambitious concept that reveals how quickly generative AI is reshaping design processes. The Organizer’s Choice Award went to Manhattanhenge, a web application that visualizes sunset alignments across city grids worldwide, blending astronomy, urban geography, visualization design, and creative storytelling. Such projects captured the spirit of the event: curious, technically sophisticated, and grounded in creativity. All projects and winners can be found here.
Yet perhaps the most memorable experiences unfolded informally: moments when first-time hackers deployed their first API call, when teams celebrated debugging a stubborn error at 4 a.m., or when students with no shared background found themselves learning from one another in spontaneous mentorship circles. Hackers discovered that while tech can seem prescriptive on the surface, true innovation lies in the creative application of its principles of blending logic with imagination to craft unique solutions. This environment of fearless exploration fostered a profound appreciation for the craft of coding and the transformative work happening in the industry, reminding everyone that technology is, at its core, a powerful medium for human creativity.
These interactions demonstrated the core strength of the competition: its ability to transform a large competitive event into a welcoming learning community where experimentation is encouraged, risk-taking is normalized, and innovation emerges through collaboration.
Hack Western 12’s success reflects the dedication of its organizers, mentors, judges, and partners who worked tirelessly to create an environment where students could imagine boldly and build confidently. With Scotiabank’s leadership as title sponsor providing both educational depth and meaningful professional development opportunities, this year’s hackathon affirmed its place as a key platform for cultivating Canada’s next generation of builders, designers, and innovators. As students left the venue, some with prizes, many with new skills, all with a renewed sense of possibility, the theme resonated with renewed clarity: the world is indeed their canvas.