12-14 November 2026 @ SKKG campo, Winterthur, free

The Swiss OpenGLAM working group unites cultural institutions, software developers, digital humanists, artists, Wikipedians, and other enthusiasts with a shared goal of advancing openness among galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM).

Within the collaborative environment of the GLAMhack, we engage in joint experimentation, innovation, and artistic creation, exploring the realms of cultural content and digital tools. Our focus spans research initiatives, web and mobile applications, Wikipedia, artistic creations, and a variety of other use cases aimed at fostering openness and creativity.

The 11th edition of our yearly Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon (or GLAMhack for short) will be hosted by the Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte (SKKG) in Winterthur.

This year’s theme is “Hack the Gap – Bridging Analog and Digital Worlds“

The connection between physical spaces and objects and digital spheres has grown increasingly relevant as digital technologies evolve and offer new opportunities to represent, contextualize, and make accessible our shared cultural assets.

Yet a persistent gap remains between analog collections and the digital tools, skills, and infrastructures needed to unlock their full potential. At the same time, digital content is often detached from its physical context, creating a reverse gap in which digital representations lose their tangible connection to place, materiality, and experience.

GLAMhack26 invites participants to explore both directions of this divide and experiment with creative ways to bridge it—through new forms of digitization and description, immersive and interactive experiences, or by translating digital knowledge back into physical and spatial forms.

Ultimately, the theme encourages rethinking how cultural heritage can move fluidly between the physical and digital realms, ensuring broader access, deeper understanding, and more inclusive participation.

GLAMhack 2026 info sessions

Are you new to the hackathon format and are wondering what your and/or your organization’s role in such an event could be? Would you like to understand better what this hackathon is all about and why participating makes sense? We’ve got you covered! We are organizing two online info sessions in which we will share general information about the GLAMhack and give very practical insights on what it means to get involved and which benefits you get from participating. The sessions are open for anyone interested – sign up now:

Thursday, 21 May 2026, 12:30-13:30:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/LlxWyVTgSpKXlyJkRl8ncw

Tuesday, 15 September 2026, 17:00-18:00:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/M5N2_mGQT1inAp0gB2YTrg

Pre-events on Thursday, 12 November

Skill-building workshops (Thursday afternoon)

Want to add a few new tools to your toolbox in advance of the hackathon? We’ve got you covered!

Topics in our Thursday, 12 November, afternoon pre-event workshops include:

• datasheets for cultural heritage datasets
• an introduction to publicAI and Apertus
• how to add high impact with no-code tools
• how to work with Wikidata
  
  

Opening Night (Thursday evening)

Showcasing a variety of successful projects from previous GLAMhacks, alongside exciting speakers who are experts in their fields, our opening evening is a convivial and connective moment that’s not to be missed!

Hackathon program (Friday & Saturday, 13-14 November)

Friday, 13 November

The GLAMhack will kick-off with an opening session followed by the challenge pitches on Friday morning. Afterwards, the participants will form groups and start hacking. Lunch and dinner as well as snacks in between will be provided at the hackathon location.

Saturday, 14 November

Participants will continue hacking and towards lunch start preparing their final presentations. The hackathon will end with the presentation of the final results of each group on Saturday afternoon followed by an apéro. All supporters and sponsors are warmly invited to join the final presentations as well as the apéro.

Datasets

At the heart of GLAMhack26 is the SKKG Sammlung Digital. Soon, more than 60,000 objects—complete with metadata and images—will be released under an open license, enabling broad and creative reuse. The dataset will be accessible through a SPARQL endpoint, following the Linked Art data model.

Participants are also encouraged to bring and work with their own datasets, or explore our curated list of open datasets from Swiss GLAM Institutions for additional inspiration.

Our GLAMhack 2026 Workhub

Propose your challenge ideas in advance of the GLAMhack on our hackathon platform, which we work with extensively for the duration of the hackathon.