Jem for The DEV Team

Posted on Aug 14

Join our DEV Weekend Challenge: Dog Days Edition! $1,000 in Prizes Across FIVE Winners. Submissions Due August 17 at 6:59 AM UTC.

#weekendchallenge #devchallenge #hackathon #programming

We're back with another DEV Weekend Challenge, a short bite-sized challenge planned to fit into your weekend. We know the submission window is tight, so we've set the timing to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, you'll have the majority of your Saturday and Sunday to participate.

International Dog Day is coming up on August 26, so this weekend we're handing the keyboard over to our best friends. 🐕

We'll select one overall winner and four prize category winners who utilize a specific technology as part of their challenge submission.

Let's get to it!

Our Prompt

Build something for, about, or inspired by dogs.

Please interpret this prompt however you'd like. A training log for a new puppy? A breed identifier? A generative art piece built from the silhouette of your own dog? A game where you are the dog? Any angle is fair game, and we have no objection to submissions honoring cats, lizards, or ferrets who happen to live with a dog.

Prize Categories

Alongside our overall winner spot, we have four prize categories for participants who incorporate a specific technology into their project. You don't need to use any of these tools to be eligible for the overall winner spot, but if you're curious about any of the tech, this is a great excuse to give one a try.

Best use of Snowflake
Best use of Solana
Best use of ElevenLabs
Best use of Google AI

Pro Tip: since prize category winners are drawn from a smaller pool of submissions, your odds of taking home a prize are meaningfully higher.

Note: You may use multiple technologies in a single submission to qualify for multiple categories, but participants are limited to one win per challenge.

Judging Criteria

All submissions will be judged on the following:

Relevance to Theme: Does the project clearly connect to the challenge theme?
Creativity: Is the concept original or is it an interesting take on a familiar problem?
Technical Execution: Is the project functional, well-built, and easy to use?
Writing Quality: Is the submission post clearly written and engaging?
Use of Prize Category Technology (optional): If pursuing a prize category, does the submission meaningfully incorporate the chosen technology?

Prizes

Five winners will each take home:

$200 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV badge

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.

How To Participate

Publish a post on DEV using the submission template below. Your post should give us an overview of what you built, why you built it, and a demo of your project.

Weekend Challenge Submission Template

Challenge Guidelines

A few rules to keep in mind, in line with our recent challenge program updates:

One submission per person. This challenge has a single prompt, so you get one submission. A single project can still qualify for as many prize categories as you'd like.
New projects only. Your project needs to be built within the challenge window. Please don't dust off something you built last spring.
Nothing after the deadline counts. We review commit history as part of judging. If you keep building after submissions close, note in your readme what happened before the deadline and what came after, or the submission may be disqualified.

Please review our judging criteria, rules, guidelines, and FAQ page before submitting so you understand our participation guidelines and official contest rules such as eligibility requirements.

Need Help?

Check out our official challenge page for resources to help you get started with tech from our prize category partners.

Important Dates

Launch Time: August 14, 2026 2:00 AM UTC
Submissions Due: August 17, 2026 6:59 AM UTC

Here's what that looks like across a few timezones:

Timezone	Launch Time (Local)	Submissions Due (Local)
PDT	Thursday, Aug 13 at 7:00 PM	Sunday, Aug 16 at 11:59 PM
EDT	Thursday, Aug 13 at 10:00 PM	Monday, Aug 17 at 2:59 AM
GMT	Friday, Aug 14 at 2:00 AM	Monday, Aug 17 at 6:59 AM
CEST	Friday, Aug 14 at 4:00 AM	Monday, Aug 17 at 8:59 AM
IST	Friday, Aug 14 at 7:30 AM	Monday, Aug 17 at 12:29 PM
JST	Friday, Aug 14 at 11:00 AM	Monday, Aug 17 at 3:59 PM
AEST	Friday, Aug 14 at 12:00 PM	Monday, Aug 17 at 4:59 PM

Winners will be Announced on Thursday, September 10.

Questions about the challenge? Drop them in the comments below.

Good luck!!

Top comments (26)

FrancisTRᴅᴇᴠ (っ◔◡◔)っ • Aug 14

Wof Wof :)

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Aug 14

Good luck!

John • Aug 14

Seems like a fun challenge to take part in. I posted a entry for this event, my second ever Dev challenge , taking me out of my comfort zone of c# coding and back into html. Hopefully my submission is better than my "artwork" 😅

Feel free to have a quick try of my demo/game and upload a art submission, and let me know how it is. Goodluck to all participants of the challenge event,

Nicola Fiore • Aug 14

😍

Nazar Boyko • Aug 16

My entry is up: GOOD DOG, a game where you spend three days in a shelter as a real adoptable dog. Twelve real Minnesota listings, checked by hand. You cannot speak, so you bark, whine or stay quiet, and you watch it land wrong.

One of the twelve was adopted on Saturday while I was building it, so the game had to learn to say that instead of saying she is still waiting.

dev.to/nazar-boyko/good-dog-you-ar...

Submitting for Best Use of ElevenLabs and Best Use of Google AI. Good luck everyone.

Amandeep Singh • Aug 16

My entry is up: "Your browser can segment, animate and encode MP4 now. I used it to make my dog talk." 🐕

Upload a dog photo, get a talking-head video back, entirely client-side: neural
background segmentation (ONNX), a WebGL lip-sync rig, and real H.264 export via
WebCodecs. No backend, no uploads.

dev.to/singhamandeep007/making-a-d...

Submitting for Best Use of ElevenLabs and Best Use of Google AI. Would love
feedback if you give it a try!

Talha Ramzan • Aug 14

A dog-themed weekend challenge right before International Dog Day is
such a fun touch. The "one win per challenge but multiple category
eligibility" structure is a nice way to balance fairness with giving
people room to experiment with more than one prize tech.

Tight timeline (Fri to Mon) makes it feel approachable too, easy to
convince yourself "I'll just try something small" instead of overthinking
a huge project. Curious to see what people build with ElevenLabs for a
dog-themed submission, that's an interesting pairing.

Good luck to everyone participating!