Symfony Launches Four-Week AI and MCP Hackathon Ahead of 1.0 Releases

Developers have until 22 November 2026 to submit working AI applications to a four-week online hackathon launched by Symfony. The free Symfony AI & MCP Hackathon runs from 26 October to 22 November 2026 and is open to participants worldwide, individually or in teams. Symfony announced the event alongside the release of Symfony AI 1.0.0-BETA1, the first pre-release leading towards version 1.0.

The hackathon gives developers an opportunity to test Symfony AI and the official PHP Model Context Protocol (MCP) SDK through working projects before their respective stable releases. In a 26 October announcement, Christopher Hertel, Symfony AI core team lead, explained that the beta establishes the intended feature set while development shifts towards fixing defects and stabilising APIs. Symfony's backward-compatibility commitment will begin with the final 1.0 release, leaving the current testing period open for changes identified through developer feedback.

Participants are free to choose their project ideas, AI providers and data stores, with no fixed challenge categories. Possible applications include AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and MCP servers or clients that expose or consume tools and resources. Symfony is encouraging practical implementations that reveal integration issues, unexpected behaviour or limitations that may not emerge from isolated testing.

Each team must submit a publicly accessible code repository that others can clone and run, accompanied by a 90-second video demonstrating the application. Submissions close on 22 November 2026 at 18:00 CET (17:00 UTC), and participants can update their entries until the deadline. Projects will be assessed for creativity, working functionality, effective use of Symfony AI and MCP, and code quality. The organisers have not yet announced the jury or prizes.

Hugging Face is providing $20 in Inference Providers credits per developer for prototyping, with coupons available through the team dashboard after registration. The event also has support from SensioLabs, Upsun, Sulu and JetBrains. Developers can register through the official hackathon website, where submission information and judging criteria are available.

The technologies being tested also have documented connections to Drupal development. The Drupal AI module has an implemented architecture decision in its 2.x development documentation that uses Symfony AI Platform for model communication through Drupal's plugin system. Separately, the Drupal MCP Server module uses the official PHP MCP SDK to expose Drupal tools and resources to AI clients. These existing technical relationships make the upcoming compatibility work relevant to Drupal contributors, although Symfony has not announced a Drupal-specific hackathon track.

Developers encountering problems during the event can submit reproducible reports through the Symfony AI issue tracker or the PHP MCP SDK issue tracker. Both projects are approaching their first stable releases, and Symfony is seeking implementation feedback while changes remain possible. Registration and project submissions remain open until the November deadline.