About the hackathon
Two days, one hall full of ideas.
Games that change more than the virtual world
As the organizers of the GAMECHANGER hackathon, we are convinced that video games have enormous educational potential. Thanks to their interactivity, engaging mechanics, and the possibility of learning through experience, they can effectively support the acquisition of knowledge and the shaping of attitudes. That is why we decided to join forces across the games industry, the education community, and the younger generation to jointly create solutions that respond to the real challenges of the modern world.
The central theme of the hackathon is countering disinformation.
We want to harness the potential of games to help young people recognize manipulation, verify information, make informed decisions, and navigate the digital world safely. From December 9 to 11, 2026, the Column Hall (Sala Kolumnowa) of the Polish Sejm will become a space for collaboration between professional game creators, teachers, and young people. Over 2 days, several interdisciplinary teams will jointly design concepts, mechanics, and scenarios for games or interactive educational tools.
This will not be an ordinary hackathon.
Every team will include experienced developers from the games industry, participants of the “Girls in the Game” (“Dziewczyny w grze”) scholarship program, teachers, and students. Each will bring a different perspective to the team:
- game creators – knowledge of designing engaging experiences,
- teachers – an understanding of didactic needs in the context of media education,
- and young people – the viewpoint of those who will actually use the proposed solutions.
During the hackathon, participants will turn their ideas into concrete solutions: from developing assumptions and concepts to creating first prototypes.
The event will have a competitive character, and a jury composed of representatives of the games industry, the education community, the public sector, and students themselves will select the most compelling project.
The hackathon will culminate in a presentation of the teams’ results and a debate on the role of games in modern education, the development of critical thinking, and digital competencies.
Our ambitions, however, reach beyond 2 days of joint work.
We believe that the ideas born during the hackathon can become the beginning of solutions that will find practical use in schools.
The GAMECHANGER hackathon is much more than jointly creating games about disinformation. Above all, it is an experience built on collaboration, knowledge exchange, and mutual inspiration, in which every participant will have the chance to learn something new, meet different perspectives, and develop their own skills.
Piotr Matecki
Video games are a place where young people shape their sensitivity, develop their knowledge and communication skills, and build social relationships. They are the most influential medium of our time. It is up to all of us – citizens, parents, teachers, consumers, politicians – to include this medium in the process of education. In this way, we can harness its power to make school more attractive and effective, and to raise students' social and professional competencies. Games break down generational, cultural, and social barriers. Let us use them to make the school curriculum more accessible.
dr Dominika Urbańska Galanciak
Developing these competencies is one of the most important tasks of modern education. They not only open up career opportunities in the creative sector for young people, but above all prepare them for the challenges they will face in the future, regardless of the professional path they choose. We do not know exactly what career opportunities will await today’s students. This makes it all the more important to create educational solutions together with them, taking into account their perspective, needs, interests, and dreams.