Three days. Three cities. Three quantum challenges.

The Qiskit Fall Fest is back in the Basque Country, and this year we are going big: a full three-day hackathon running at once in all three Basque capitals (Bilbao, Donostia-San Sebástian and Vitoria-Gasteiz), where you and your team pick a challenge, build something real, and defend it in front of a panel of judges.

Here is the idea. We have taken three results that shaped the last ten years of IBM Quantum research and turned each of them into a challenge track you can actually work on. You choose the one that appeals to you — and you choose how hard you want to work on it.

• Track 1 — Quantum chemistry. Start by plotting the potential energy surface of HeH⁺. End up somewhere exact diagonalization can no longer follow you, having to argue for why your numbers should be trusted.

• Track 2 — Quantum optimization and machine learning. Begin with a small portfolio selection problem and QAOA. Then push until the shallow circuits stop working, run into barren plateaus, and find your way out of them.

• Track 3 — Hamiltonian simulation. Take a five-spin chain and keep growing it, fighting noise with error mitigation, until you reach the edge of what any classical computer can check.

Each track comes in three levels — beginner, intermediate and advanced — so you can join wherever you are comfortable. If you have never touched Qiskit, that is fine: Day 1 starts with a crash course that gives you everything you need. And at every level, you get credit for taking your circuits off the simulator and onto real quantum hardware, including our own IBM Quantum computer ibm_basquecountry.

How the three days go

Day 1 – Learn and challenges presentation (4 November). We open with a Qiskit crash course from a BasQ advocate, then a guest lecture from IBM Quantum on the three foundational works that inspire each challenge track. We present the three challenges and exactly how they will be scored. Teams are then formed online around midday, and each team indicates the city where it will join in person.

Please note: the first day can be followed either in person in Donostia (Computer Science Faculty, EHU) or online. There will be no venue for the afternoon session: each team can decide whether or not to start working on its challenge.

Day 2 – Build (5 November). This is your day. Work on your challenge from any of the three Basque capitals, with BasQ advocates around throughout for mentoring whenever you get stuck. Submit your code and your presentation at the end of it; the judges will deliberate at the close of the day.

The venues for each capital are:

• Bilbao: As Fabrik - Mondragon University
• Donostia- San Sebastián: Computer Science Faculty - EHU
• Vitoria-Gasteiz: School of Engineering - EHU 

Important: You need to choose in the questionnaire which city you will join to work on the challenge.

Day 3 – Show it off (6 November). From 9:00 to 11:00, a selected team from each city has around 15 minutes to walk everyone through the strategy you chose and why. Then we announce the winners in each city, one per challenge, and close with the award ceremony.

Who should come

Anyone curious about quantum computing: students, researchers, engineers, and the merely intrigued. The tracks are open-ended by design — we give you suggested milestones, but what really matters is the approach you choose and how well you can defend it. Some of the best submissions will not be the ones that went furthest, but the ones that worked the hardest to defend the strategy followed.

👉 Register here: Qiskit Fall Fest 2026 before 26th October 2026 at 17:00 CET

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.