Funda’s hackathon once again brought colleagues together to explore bold ideas, build prototypes, and learn something new. This year, teams worked on everything from faster deployments and modernising legacy tooling, to creative product concepts designed to inspire home seekers in completely new ways.
In this recap, seven engineers share what they worked on, what challenged them, and what made Funda's 2026 hackathon so much fun.
About Funda's hackathon
During our hackathon everyone's welcome to join — not just engineers. Over a short period of time, teams form around ideas and bring them to life through prototypes and demos. Some projects focus on customer-facing innovation, while others improve the foundations that help teams ship better and faster every day. It’s about experimentation, collaboration, and learning – topped with demos, a lot of cheering, and of course: awards.
Which idea did you pitch (or join)?
David (Site Reliability Engineer): ‘Project Evergreen, with the goal to keep our evergrowing software garden fresh and healthy. The bigger Funda grows, the more important it becomes to keep our tooling and workflows modern and maintainable.’
Melisa (Site Reliability Engineer): ‘My idea was centered around using a new tool for deploys. It’s the kind of tooling that can make everyday engineering smoother – like faster deploy actions, clearer insight into what’s running where, and easier rollbacks when needed. I thought of it a bit late, but David was open to it and we combined forces. That flexibility is exactly what makes the hackathon fun: you can pivot quickly and still end up with something meaningful and demo-worthy.’
Lars (Frontend Engineer): ‘We worked on improving how we communicate with customers during incidents. The goal was to make it easier for Support to keep people informed, and to create a clearer, more consistent and reliable experience whenever something is not working as expected. It's the kind of work that directly impacts trust, which made it very motivating.’
See also: Funda AI-hackathon 2024 recap with three engineers
What challenges did you run into?
Görkem (Flutter Developer): ‘The biggest challenge was the time limit: it wasn’t easy to make a working demo exactly as planned in such a short timeframe, especially when you want it to feel like a real product experience.’
Marijn (Frontend Engineer): ‘For me, the biggest challenge was getting so many people to work on the same thing without getting out of scope. Hackathons move fast, so you need to stay aligned on what matters most. But that speed is also what makes it fun: you can go from idea to something visual and concrete really quickly. In the end it worked out really well, and everybody brought something really valuable to the table.’
Melisa (Site Reliability Engineer): ‘The biggest challenge was visualising how our solution would integrate into our existing infrastructure. It’s not something we can simply build on top, it would replace part of our infrastructure. So we had to think about where our infra and the tool would connect, and how big the migration effort would be. Luckily we found solutions for almost everything, and mapping out a realistic end setup helped make the project more credible.’
Which award did you win?
Görkem (Flutter Developer): ‘We won the Ready to Roll award for being most ready to be rolled out tomorrow. Our demo was working quite nicely, and I think that helped a lot. In a hackathon, getting to something that actually works end-to-end is already a big achievement.’
Melisa (Site Reliability Engineer): ‘We won the Tech Flex award for the boldest tech move, which we didn't expect. Our project wasn't the most shiny, but it does address a pain point directly, and is a pretty elegant piece of tech that's also not a huge effort to realistically implement.’
Marijn (Frontend Engineer): ‘We won the people's vote award, because people really loved what we built. I think the idea resonated because of our playful and inspirational approach.’
Jelle (.NET Developer): ‘We won the Makelaar Magnet award for adding the most value for agents. It was great to work on something that clearly resonated with people. The concept felt practical and relevant, and it was fun to turn that into a demo within the hackathon timebox.’
Melvin (Backend Engineer): ‘Our project won three awards: Funda Fortress, Wow Factor, and Crown Jewel. I think our concept stood out because of the value for both searchers, sellers and agents.’
See also: Decoding Funda's tech stack: the reasons behind our choices
What made Hackafun 2026 especially fun or memorable?
Jelle (.NET Developer): ‘I didn’t pitch an idea myself, but joined one of the pitches as a developer. That’s one of the things I really like about the hackathon: you can simply jump into something that sounds interesting, contribute your skills, and work with people you might not normally team up with.’
Lars (Frontend Developer): ‘The hackathon didn’t really consist of a full 24 hours, because the kick-off, dinner and presentations took up a substantial part. But that’s also what makes it fun: the timebox forces you to focus, cut scope, and still deliver something meaningful.’
Melvin (Backend Developer): ‘I really liked that we had ideas ranging from super technical to super business-oriented. People from all departments joined the hackathon and that made it very special.’
Until the next one 🚀
Whether teams focused on creative product ideas or foundational engineering improvements, our 2026 hackathon was a reminder of what happens when you give people space to explore: you move fast, learn a lot, and build things that spark new conversations across the company. Big thanks to everyone who pitched, joined teams, built prototypes and demos, and helped make another hackathon a success. See you next edition!
Question?
Do you have a burning question for one of our colleagues after reading this blog? Feel free to reach out to us via email.