Introduction

Good morning, afternoon, and evening to entrants and attendees alike! It’s that time of the year again - we are pleased to announce the 2026 Sonic Hacking Contest!

If you saw our previous announcement, you may already be aware that this year’s contest is seeing something of a sorely-needed overhaul to ensure the longevity of the event going forward. As such, there’s a lot of changes to rules, guidelines, supporting systems, and more that I’ll need to go over for the majority of this post. Whilst I’ll try to keep the explanations and rationales behind each change succinct, I also don’t want to leave out any key details from this announcement.

If you’re just here for contest dates and don’t typically participate in the voting process, you can feel free to skip the end of this post. Otherwise, buckle up and get comfortable; we’ve got a lot of ground to cover!

Quality Control and Submission Guidelines

Right off the bat, last year’s contest could probably be best described as bittersweet. On the one hand, we saw a host of really excellent entries from each category, and I don’t think the event was a total flop by any stretch of the imagination. However, we cannot deny that there was some valid frustration with what many saw as a general regression of quality amongst the entries we accepted last year.

The reasons for this failure are two-fold. For starters, there were internal misunderstandings about the level of scrutiny we need to exercise in accepting submissions, which I’m happy to report has been thoroughly addressed in the months since the 2025 contest concluded. The second issue has to do with the way quality control has been presented to entrants in the ROM Hack and Modern 2D categories for the last few contests.

In previous years, the Quality Control criteria for these categories was presented as a checklist with a minimum required number of changes required to pass. This format, ironically, had the potential to both lock out competent entries that don’t meet the minimum count of arbitrarily-grouped requirements AND made it easier for authors of low quality entries that technically meet the minimum number of changes to cry foul at a rejection, which basically backed us into a corner that we couldn’t get out of without compromising our integrity.

The solution that leadership of both categories have arrived at is to alter the presentation of the Quality Control requirements to an example-based format modeled after the way the 3D category has presented its requirements for years. Please, take a look:

New ROM Hack Quality Control Requirements
X Simple palette, art, music, and sound changes.
X Simple code edits or player handler changes.
X Simple layout modifications of dubious quality.
✓ Noticeable changes to audio-visual assets of acceptable quality.
✓ Custom levels and/or extensive layout modifications of acceptable quality.
✓ Custom game logic/code edits that extend beyond what is achievable through publicly available guides and tutorials (i.e. custom level events or objects).
✓ Major changes which affect the core gameplay formula, ruleset, or other mechanics.

New Modern 2D Quality Control Requirements
X Simple art or audio changes.
X Simple physics changes.
X Simple layout modifications.
✓ Custom or modified levels that are beatable and around the same duration or longer to the original game's levels.
✓ Collections of art changes, including sprites, textures, models or audio.
✓ Collections of small noticeable changes, such as bugfixes.
✓ Major changes to the way a playable character works.
✓ Additional mechanics or major changes to a core mechanic of the game, like Special Stages or a general mechanic.

In addition to the above change, we have beefed up Quality Control Guidelines across the board in a couple other ways. Going forward, all submissions must be playable in some capacity in order to be accepted; we will not be accepting cutscene-only entries or techdemos that lack any form of interactivity. Additionally, all entries submitted to the contest must not be error-prone to the point of disrupting normal gameplay with consistent crashes. Judges also reserve the right to accept or reject entries if a ⅔ majority agree that a given entry does not offer enough value outside of the written Quality Control guidelines. We believe these changes will allow us to avoid the pitfalls of past contests and deliver a better experience to entrants and attendees alike.

If you have general questions about passing quality control, you are permitted to ask Judges publicly or privately to clarify the guidelines. However, under no circumstances is a Judge permitted to perform Quality Control assessment early in order to aid an entrant in figuring out what changes are needed for the entry to become eligible, so please do not ask us to do so; it’s a whole category staff decision and is asking for a Judge to breach the code of conduct.

Next… We need to talk about the use of generative AI and AI-based tools in the development of entries. Whilst we haven’t seen any submission in previous years that made use of AI in an obvious fashion, we do feel it is necessary to clarify our position on it.

First and foremost, use of ‘AI authored’ assets, such as generated images, music, and other audiovisual elements, is explicitly prohibited. This should come as no surprise; we are a competition giving out awards and evaluating entries based on human effort and artistry. However, we will concede that there are emerging use cases for AI-based tools in the context of development, reverse engineering, technical assistance, language translation, debugging, and even creative software for which the term 'AI authored' is not an accurate descriptor.

From this emerges a question of where exactly we draw the line. After some rather spirited discussion about the many ways we could to outline a policy that keeps AI usage as limited as possible, we ultimately decided that we cannot outline a one-size-fits-all policy that remains reasonable, practical, and enforceable. So instead… we’re going to evaluate AI usage on a case-by-case basis. Any entrant that utilizes AI-based tools during development must disclose that they have done so, thoroughly and honestly. Based on the extent to which AI was used, Judges will decide whether or not the entry is eligible to participate. If the usage of AI or AI-based tools is on the heavier side of what we consider within reason, or the entry contains ‘AI assisted’ assets or code, the entry will be marked with a badge to indicate AI usage.

One last thing I would like to cover in this section, as it is semi-related to Quality Control, is our Update Policy. If an entrant finds a severe bug that renders the game or a portion of the game inoperable (such as a crash) that would cause the entry to fail the Quality Control review, entrants must reach out to us and provide a patch within 72 hours of the submission deadline. If you attempt to abuse this grace period for additional minor updates/changes, your entry will be disqualified from the contest. Judges may request logs (such as recent commits to a source repository) that reflect the update at their discretion in order to verify that nothing else changed between the originally submitted build and fix/patch. If your entry is hosted entirely off-site, you are still expected to check-in with us to disclose patches for critical issues, and be willing to provide us with a copy of the version that was originally submitted if we do not believe the issue was critical enough to warrant a patch.

However, as far as other updates/minor fixes go, we have decided we will no longer be policing off-site updates during the contest period. This wasn’t a decision we reached lightly, but ultimately, we came to see the old policy of barring entrants from publicly updating their projects until the event concludes for exactly what it was; a barbaric overreach of authority that hurt entrants more than it strengthened the integrity of the contest. Of course, Judges are still expected to evaluate whichever functional build/version was submitted to the contest by the submission or bugfix deadline, but you are free to push updates outside the entry pages and official discord server as you see fit.

Trophies and New Awards

Before we get into the meat of this section, I would like to cover a couple smaller, related changes that provide context for the more drastic changes to how we give out honors and awards. Let’s start with a little history lesson.

Starting with the 2017 Contest, along with the introduction of the aforementioned Quality Control policies, the event was split into two subevents: the Sonic Hacking Contest, which hosted all entries that were eligible to receive awards from Judges and the community, and the Sonic Hacking Expo, which hosted entries which were not eligible to receive awards. While this split was well-intentioned as far as providing a better experience to attendees, it created a perception that Expo entries were of lower quality and value than Contest entries. To some extent, this fact was codified by internal policy, as any entry that didn’t quite pass on Quality Control but wasn’t totally incompetent in execution would be “Moved to Expo” by Judges. This unfortunately meant that Expo entries were systematically overlooked by attendees and Media Panelists.

The 2024 Contest attempted to rectify this by changing the labeling and presentation of the split to the Judged and Unjudged entry system that you are all familiar with today, and leadership emphasized that both entry types would be held to an equal Quality Control standard. In practice, however, the perception that Unjudged entries were the lesser of the two remained among attendees, Media Panelists, and even among Judges internally. It’s become clear that if all entries are to be given a fair chance, we need to stop separating them in a fashion that perpetuates this assumption.

So, starting with this year’s contest, the Judged/Unjudged entry split will be made internal-only, meaning only Judges will be able to see which entries are Judged or Unjudged on the entry page, and the filter in the entry gallery will be permanently removed from public view. Furthermore, all entries are now eligible to receive Community trophies, meaning even Unjudged entries have a shot at taking home the gold. We believe these two changes will make it more clear that all entries meet or exceed the Quality Control guidelines set by each category and are deserving of attendees’ and Media Panelists’ attention.

Speaking of trophies, we have noticed in recent years that Judges’ and Community opinions on most of the special trophies awarded don’t diverge all that often. This means we’re often awarding two of what is essentially the same trophy to entries twice for no real reason. As such, we have opted to consolidate most trophies to be Community-awarded only; the only Judge-awarded trophies that will remain split from the Community trophies are the podium (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place) trophies. Additionally, the Judges’ podium will be represented by Vector, Espio, and Charmy rather than Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, largely to avoid confusion between both podiums.

However, in consolidating most of the Judge and Community trophies, we also identified several that were redundant, almost never awarded, in need of a rework, or would be better suited to a new award type (more on that later). After further consolidation, reworks, and reclassification, this is the list of trophies that each category will award at this year’s Contest:

SHC 2026 Trophies
Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles Trophies - Main Contest Podium
Vector, Espio, & Charmy Trophies - Judges' Pick Podium
Studiopolis Trophy - Best Voted by Media Panel

Quartz Quadrant Trophy - Best Visual
D.A. Garden Trophy - Best Audio
Chemical Plant Trophy - Best Level Design
Storybook Trophy - Best Narrative Execution (reworked criteria)

Professor Pickle Trophy - Most Entertaining
Polygon Jim Trophy - Most “WTF?!”
Blaze Trophy - Most Potential
Silver Trophy - Most Improved
Metal Sonic Trophy - Most Innovative (this one is new!)

In total, each category will give out 16 trophies, mostly voted on by the Community rather than Judges. This may beg the question… Why even have Judges at all then? Are they on the chopping-block next? Well… no, but I understand the concern; after all, I haven’t even told you about medals yet! Medals are a brand new, minor award type being added to this year’s contest which seek to more broadly recognize and honor specific/granular achievements in entries. Unlike trophies, where there is typically only a singular winner, medals will be given to every entry that ⅔ of Judges agree meet and exceed the criteria of the award. Of course, since they are awarded by Judges, only Judged entries are eligible to receive medals; we can only give awards to entries we’re capable of evaluating, after all.

The reason we’re adding these is because we realized that sometimes it’s not really fair to pick just one winner. For example, if several entrants release a decompilation or port of a game to another console/PC, is it really fair to give only one of them the distinction of the “Best Technical” award? Of course not! We should be recognizing everyone that invests the level of effort required for such a project; trying to rank reverse engineering work of that nature is hardly fair. Medals also lessen the chance of so-called pity awards being given out, where an entry receives an award simply by being the only valid choice to receive it in its category, even if the execution is… questionable.

Most of the trophies that are absent from the above list were simply adapted to be a medal instead. There are also a couple medals with entirely new criteria, some inspired by retired trophies, and a couple silly ones for good measure as well. See for yourself:

SHC 2026 Medals
Hexadecimal Medal - Entry has Earned the Distinction of Technical Achievement
Radiant Emerald Medal - Excellent Special Stage/Alternative Gameplay Design
Rivals Medal - Excellent Multiplayer
Emerl Medal - Excellent/Unique Character Implementation
EggRobo Medal - Excellent Boss Fights
Motobug Medal - Excellent Enemy Design
Metallic Madness Medal - Excellent/Unique Level Gimmicks
Mania Medal - Fresh Take/Twist on Old Concepts
Spinball Medal - Excellent Entry Based on a Game Not Commonly Modified
Casino Night Medal - Highly Replayable/Addictive Entries

Hidden Palace Medal - Unexpected Entries of Exceptional Quality
Visual Mode Medal - Entry Features Excellent UI and Presentation
Hang Castle Medal - Excellent Horror/Halloween-themed Entries (Excludes Sonic.EXE)
Metropolis Medal - Challenging Entries of Exceptional Quality

Big the Cat Medal - Entry Pays Respects to Big the Cat
Next Gen Medal - Entry Contains One or More Insane/Entertaining Glitches
Mushroom Kingdom Medal - Entry Contains Pesky Plumbers
Yuji Naka Medal - Entry Feels Like it's Breaking the Law Somehow (not literally)

The last thing I want to cover in regards to awards is we have decided to expand the criteria for receiving an Honorable Mention. In addition to honorable mentions being awarded to entries that come close to receiving a trophy, Judges are now permitted to nominate any entry, Judged or Unjudged, to receive an honorable mention for the purpose of highlighting achievements that fall outside the scope of trophies and medals. We feel this is a sensible change that will allow us to better acknowledge outstanding entries that fall outside what we can reasonably anticipate through the addition of new awards, and should also make up for the fact that Unjudged entries aren’t eligible to receive medals, as they can function in lieu of them if there’s a consensus that an entry deserves acknowledgement for what it achieves.

Voting System Overhaul

With the above changes to the award format, we decided it would also be wise to review our voting systems. The way medals are awarded necessitates that we determine recipients using an approval-based voting calculation, but what about voting for Community trophies? Is there anything we can improve there?

The answer is a resounding yes, because as it turns out, First Past the Post (the voting system we currently have in place) is a fundamentally poor way to capture the nuance of opinions when voters are asked to choose between more than two options. For example, if an entry gets 12 votes for a trophy out of 50 total votes, but the other 38 votes are split across several other entries, the one with 12 votes will win despite the fact that 38 people picked something else. Perhaps those 38 people would’ve chosen what ended up winning as a 2nd or 3rd pick, or perhaps not; we have no way of knowing, and that’s frightening.

We recognized that if we’re going to put more emphasis on the Community’s voice by making the vast majority of trophies Community-awarded, we need to make sure we’re capturing the nuance of your opinions better. As such, starting this year, voting for trophies will move to a ranked-choice system, similar to how votes for the podium trophies are currently calculated. For each trophy, voters will select their top three preferred entries that they believe deserve the award. Their 1st pick will be given 3 points, the 2nd pick 2 points, and the 3rd pick 1 point. Whichever entry has the highest number of points wins the trophy, with the 2nd and 3rd place winners receiving an Honorable Mention instead (except for, of course, the podium trophies). We believe that this will better reflect Community opinions with becoming a completely unruly, over-engineered voting system.

Some of you might be asking “Why not go with a rated-choice voting system instead? I saw a Veritasium video that says those are mathematically superior to ranked-choice!”, to which I would reply you must be fun at parties, but you are technically correct; ranked-choice voting systems do have edge-cases that rated-choice systems do not, and if we were discussing this in a political context, I would agree that the security of rated-choice makes it the better fit.

However, this is a modding contest, not an election; the edge-cases of ranked-choice are so exceedingly rare that we don’t feel there’s cause for concern, and when they do arise, they’re easier to resolve. Not to mention, if we applied a rated-choice system to the context of a modding contest, we might run into issues with voters being overly generous and giving near-equal ratings to every entry they believe qualifies for the trophy, which might actually be worse at capturing nuance than First Past the Post. This scenario would never emerge that way in a political context given the more polarizing nature of it, but here it is far more likely. There’s also something to be said for having a simpler voting system from a usability and user experience perspective; rated-choice might cause unnecessary friction in a way the system we’ve opted to implement does not.

Opening Up the Media Panel

This is a big change that requires… a lot of background, so I would like to turn this portion of the announcement over to Donnie, long-time judge and Media Panel Manager, to explain what’s changing and why:

“Hai! It isn't often that I communicate with you through here, I know. Nevertheless, I do hope you'll stick with me with this part of the announcement as some context and background info is going to be needed so you have full transparency in regards to what is going on. So...in case you don't know me, let me first begin by introducing myself. I'm Donnie AKA SSF1991. I've been a part of the Sonic Hacking Contest since 2012! I've been a regular Judge for over 10 years, and I've also been Media Panel Manager for at least a few years now! I'm the one that gets the schedule organized by finding out streamer availability and what times they wish to have. This actually begins 2 months before Contest Week, so it's usually among the first things we do to prepare for the Contest every year. Eventually we get the schedule organized, Cinossu puts it up there, and it's ready for your viewing when the time comes!

Unfortunately, things have gotten rather dire with the Media Panel in its current state. What may seem fine on the surface has been...not good behind the scenes, to put it politely. With each passing year, we've had more and more streamers either cut back on streaming during Contest Week or pull out entirely, creating larger gaps of nothing in the schedule (we don't mind having small gaps here and there, but I'm not kidding when I say that we were very close to having a very barren schedule and the worst in over a decade). We've been trying to expand the number of Media Panelists, including last year, but it has been increasingly difficult because, for every Media Panelist we bring on, two more end up leaving, so despite our best efforts the Media Panel has been gradually shrinking.

It's also not uncommon for at least a third of Media Panelists to be too busy to participate. And unfortunately, we've come to realize that actually getting communication and engagement from our Media Panel is...difficult. Now, I do want to be clear that no one is to blame for this and I don't want to see any angry mobs harassing them. Our Media Panelists have busy lives outside of the Contest and there aren't any contracts involved where they absolutely have to stream. Also, I'm one of the very few people on the Contest Staff that the Media Panelists know, due in large part to me being the one that usually contacts them yearly (though I've had a few others on the Contest Staff help over the years) and also because quite a few of them know me outside of the Contest. So, it's completely understandable why this is going on. But it does present a lot of challenges with actually getting the Media Panel schedule organized (it really does take 2 months to actually get the schedule organized!) and said challenges have been building up for years now.

Last year was basically the climax of it all, where all the problems I spoke of became so bad that we couldn't ignore it anymore, and the final straw that has resulted in a major overhaul of the Media Panel that will be implemented starting this year. We don't want to rock the boat too much, but the Media Panel as it has been for 13 years is just no longer sustainable. Thankfully, the rest of the staff came up with a solution. We still plan to feature the Media Panelists we've had on board our Media Panel for years as usual. However, there is no longer going to be a schedule that they have to abide by. This means that streamers will have more freedom to stream during Contest Week as much as they want and whenever they want without restrictions. We also hope this eases the pressure of our Media Panelists, both in regards to streaming and in regards to communication. It means that they don't have to worry about hearing from me to request their times anymore, and it also means that a huge part of my SHC workload will be gone, freeing me up to do other things for the Contest. Of course, we will promote our Media Panelists like we always have so you're aware when they're streaming entries.

However...this new Media Panel won't be limited to the content creators we've been affiliated with for years! Starting this year, we'll also be promoting content creators streaming entries during Contest Week that aren't directly associated with the Media Panel at all! The only requirement is that you promote your stream with the hashtag #SHC2026Live so we can see it! If you manage to pass our vetting/curation process, then we'll not only highlight your stream on social media. This should modernize the Media Panel, it gives our social media more usage, and above all: it will breathe a ton of new life into the ranks of the Media Panel.

So in general, what does this mean for you? Ultimately, it depends on how much you relied on the Media Panel schedule. I really want to make it clear that the Media Panelists we've had for years are still going to be around and you will still be able to watch them like usual. There just won't be restrictions from a schedule anymore, and they won't be all that there is to offer now. However, we also want to make it clear that your feedback is very much appreciated and even needed. Not only is this the first major change to the Media Panel in 13 years (so something like this might have been long overdue!), odds are high that this fresh coat of paint will have some hiccups. So, we highly recommend you let us know how you all feel about this. If you all like the idea, and a few years of polish and adjustments to the overhaul work out well, maybe we can migrate over to this hashtag system completely. We'll see, but it's not set in stone at this current time. For now, I want to salute our current and former Media Panelists for their cooperation and trust in us. The Sonic Hacking Contest wouldn't have gotten this far if it weren't for our Media Panelists spreading the word and putting a spotlight on our entrants, so thank you so much! This is a new era for the Media Panel as a whole, and I really hope you're all looking forward to it. \=)” - Donnie

Thank you, Donnie. As he said, there will no longer be an official streaming schedule and streamers who are not formally a part of our media panel will have the option of promoting their streams with the tag #SHC2026Live on Twitch, YouTube, and other social media platforms. Ideally, we would also like to give the website’s stream player UI an overhaul to support overlapping streams and highlighting streams from featured creators. However, we are still working out the specific details of implementation with Cinossu and the rest of the website team, so we cannot make any promises just yet. We will keep you all posted on this.

Before we move on, I would also like to make mention of one final change that is somewhat related to opening up the media panel as well. In the past, Judges have been permitted to assist or even co-host Media Panelist streams. In fact, Donnie himself has been a regular guest of Johnny’s livestreams practically every year that he did live coverage of the event. However, it appears at one point that it was internally codified that Judges themselves were not allowed to stream as members of the Media Panel.

This is… puzzling to say the least, because if allowing Judges to stream during contest week is some kind of integrity issue… why would co-hosting on someone else’s stream be any better? Especially when the host of said stream is not under any obligation to bite their tongue when sharing opinions the way Judges are? If it’s not obvious, we thought this was ass-backwards.

So, starting this year, this restriction is no longer in place; as long as Judges follow the code of conduct, they can stream during contest week if desired, so you might see some familiar faces running streams this year.

The Contest Date

The important dates for the 2026 Sonic Hacking Contest are as follows:

Submissions Open: To Be Determined
Submission Deadline: September 6th
Contest Period: October 3rd - 11th

Of course, we still need to make many changes to the website before we are ready to start accepting submissions, so stay tuned for further updates and a smaller announcement once submissions are open.

Conclusion

In summary, the changes to this year’s contest include:

• Quality Control and Submission Guidelines are being tightened up
• We will no longer police off-site updates
• AI-authored audiovisual assets are prohibited, and other forms of AI tool use require disclosure that will be evaluated by Judges on a case-by-case basis
• Most trophies are now awarded by the community, aside from the split Judge and Community podiums and the Media Panel’s Studiopolis Trophy
• We added a new award type called medals, which are awarded to entries in a more generous and equal fashion
• Many trophies have had their criteria reworked or were adapted to medals instead
• Honorable Mentions have been expanded to allow Judges to nominate any entry to receive one if it deserves recognition for achievements beyond what trophies or medals can acknowledge
• Voting on trophies will move to a ranked-choice system to better reflect the Community’s voice
• The media panel will no longer operate on an officially coordinated schedule and will instead move to an open coverage model
• Non-media panelists will be able to promote their streams with the official tag #SHC2026Live

The list might seem small when presented this way, but it captures the single largest set of changes that this contest has seen in nearly a decade, and I'm looking forward to it. Before we go, I want to also give my thanks to ItsEasyActually, who prior to retiring from his position as a Head Judge for the 3D category brought forth several proposals that inspired the revitalized format for this contest; we, of course, had to compromise and adapt a lot of what he proposed to something the current staff could find common ground on, but none of this would’ve happened without him taking the time to challenge the status quo. Cinossu also deserves thanks for inspiring the introduction of Medals and the expansion of Honorable Mentions and the new voting system as well.

We are continuing to work behind the scenes to improve things internally and ensure this contest runs like a well-oiled machine. We are likely to push an update to the Judges’ Code of Conduct soon in accordance with this. We are also still looking for additional 3D Judges, so if you’re qualified and interested in that role, apply here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaRSUFf0l4I0VVkSVhiahymkizYSvEa1qal6WJWDr2XIRUaQ/viewform

I believe that’s everything we have to cover. I definitely expect to see a variety of reactions to everything we’ve announced today, and I believe most of them will be positive. The future of the Sonic Hacking Contest is looking bright, and I can’t wait to see what you all cook up for it this year! So, without further ado…

Ready?

Set!

PROCRASTINATE!