HackaCon 2026 Terms and Conditions

Version: 24 June 2026

These Terms and Conditions apply to HackaCon 2026: The Conversation Hackathon (“HackaCon”, “the Competition”). By submitting an entry to HackaCon, you agree to these Terms and Conditions.

Please read them carefully before entering.

1. Promoter and organiser

1.1 HackaCon is organised by Lancaster University / FACTOR: Forensic Linguistics, Cybersecurity & Technology Research (“the Organiser”, “we”, “us”, “our”).

1.2 The Promoter is:

Lancaster University
Postal address: Forensic Linguistics, Cybersecurity & Technology Research (FACTOR), Bailrigg, Lancaster, LA1 4YW, United Kingdom
Contact email: factor@lancaster.ac.uk

1.3 HackaCon is not sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with any third-party platform, tool provider, voucher provider, social media platform, AI platform, or file-hosting service unless expressly stated by the Organiser.

2. Competition summary

2.1 HackaCon is a skill-based competition exploring whether AI can be used to create a convincingly natural, spontaneous-sounding conversation between two specific speakers: Agent Luke and Chris Nemesis.

2.2 Entrants are asked to create and submit a synthetic or AI-assisted audio recording of a conversation that appears to have taken place between Agent Luke and Chris Nemesis, even though no such conversation has taken place.

2.3 The Competition requires entrants to exercise skill, judgement, creativity, and technical decision-making. Winners will not be selected at random.

2.4 Entries that do not demonstrate sufficient engagement with the challenge requirements may receive low scores or may not be eligible for prizes.

2.5 The main Competition period when entrants can upload their Submission is:

• Opening date/time: 00:01 UTC, Saturday 1 August 2026
• Closing date/time: 23:59 UTC, Wednesday 30 September 2026

2.6 Entries received after the closing date/time may not be accepted or judged.

2.7 The Organiser’s computer/server clock will be treated as the official clock for determining whether an entry has been submitted on time.

3. Definition of “Submission”

3.1 In these Terms and Conditions, “Submission” means the material and information connected to a HackaCon entry, including submitted audio file(s), written answers, transcripts, annotations, metadata, scores, extracted features, process descriptions, Display Name, and any related submission materials.

4. Eligibility

4.1 HackaCon is open to individuals and teams, subject to these Terms and Conditions.

4.2 The person submitting the entry must be aged 18 or over.

4.3 People under 18 may contribute to a HackaCon entry, but they must participate as part of a team with at least one adult aged 18 or over. The adult submitter must submit the entry on behalf of the team and act as the adult point of contact.

4.4 School, college, club, youth group, and similar supervised team entries are welcome. Where required by a school, club, organisation, parent/guardian, or applicable policy, the adult submitter is responsible for ensuring that appropriate permissions have been obtained for under-18 contributors to take part.

4.5 The same adult may submit entries on behalf of more than one team, for example where a teacher or club leader submits entries for multiple school or club teams.

4.6 The following people may not enter for a prize:

1. HackaCon organisers;
2. HackaCon panel members or appointed judges;
3. Lancaster University staff, students, contractors, partners, or collaborators who are directly involved in designing, administering, judging, or delivering HackaCon;
4. anyone with privileged access to judging materials, unpublished reference materials, scoring processes, or non-public Competition information;
5. immediate family members or household members of anyone listed above.

4.7 Lancaster University staff and students who are not involved in organising, administering, judging, or delivering HackaCon may enter, unless otherwise stated by the Organiser.

4.8 HackaCon is open internationally, but entrants are responsible for ensuring that they are permitted to enter under the laws, institutional rules, employer policies, school policies, and other requirements applicable to them.

4.9 The Organiser may ask entrants to confirm eligibility, including whether an entry is school-based, whether the submitter is aged 18 or over, and whether the submitter has authority to submit on behalf of a team.

4.10 Failure to confirm eligibility when reasonably requested may result in disqualification.

5. No entry fee

5.1 There is no entry fee and no purchase is necessary to enter HackaCon.

5.2 Entrants are responsible for any costs they choose to incur in preparing or submitting an entry, including any costs associated with software, tools, subscriptions, devices, internet access, or third-party services.

5.3 The Organiser will not reimburse entrants for any costs incurred in preparing or submitting an entry unless expressly agreed in writing in advance.

6. How to enter

6.1 To enter, entrants must submit their entry through the official HackaCon submission portal by the closing date/time.

6.2 Entries submitted by email, post, social media, file-sharing link, or any method other than the official submission portal may not be accepted unless the Organiser has agreed this in writing.

6.3 The submission portal will ask entrants to:

1. provide a Display Name;
2. provide contact details;
3. provide any required eligibility confirmations;
4. describe their creative and technical process;
5. upload their audio file;
6. agree to these Terms and Conditions.

6.4 The Display Name is the name that may appear publicly on the HackaCon scoreboard and in results. It can be a real name, pseudonym, team name, school/team name, or “Anonymous”. Entrants who do not want to be identifiable should choose a non-identifying Display Name.

6.5 Entrants may optionally provide a real name or adult/team-lead name for administration purposes. This will not be made public unless the entrant has also included it in their Display Name or otherwise agreed to its publication.

6.6 Entrants must provide a valid contact email address. This email address will not be made public. It will be used for essential HackaCon administration, including eligibility checks, judging or submission queries, winner notification, certificate arrangements, and prize arrangements.

6.7 If entering as a school-based team, the adult submitter should use a school email address where possible.

6.8 Each individual or team may submit one Competition entry. An adult submitting on behalf of multiple school, club, or youth-group teams may submit one entry per team.

6.9 If multiple entries or duplicate entries are submitted by the same individual or team, the Organiser may decide which entry, if any, will be judged.

6.10 The Organiser is not responsible for entries that are lost, delayed, corrupted, misdirected, incomplete, inaccessible, blocked by filters, affected by technical failure, or otherwise not received properly by the submission portal.

7. Submission requirements

7.1 The submitted audio file must attempt to create a convincingly natural, spontaneous-sounding conversation between Agent Luke and Chris Nemesis.

7.2 The entry must satisfy the core HackaCon task requirements published on the HackaCon website, including that:

1. the voices should sound as much like Agent Luke and Chris Nemesis as possible;
2. the conversation should sound as naturally human-like and spontaneous as possible;
3. at some point in the conversation, Chris should say something for the benefit of the door guards, Alex and Sam, urging them to let Luke into the Nemesis Nightclub;
4. at some point in the conversation, Luke should refer to something from his supposedly shared childhood with Chris;
5. the submitted file must comply with the file size and format requirements.

7.3 Permitted file formats are: mp3, wav, mp4, flac, m4a, ogg, webm, and wma.

7.4 Maximum file size: 100MB.

7.5 It is recommended that entries are around one to two minutes in duration. Entries substantially longer than three minutes may be judged only in part.

7.6 Entrants should upload only the final file they want judged.

7.7 Entries must not include unlawful, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, defamatory, privacy-invasive, threatening, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate material.

7.8 Entries must not knowingly include private, confidential, sensitive, unlawfully obtained, or identifying information about real people unless the entrant has the necessary permission to include it.

7.9 Entries must not include malware, tracking technologies, hidden files, or any material intended to interfere with the Organiser’s systems, judges, staff, participants, or third parties.

7.10 The Organiser may reject, remove, or disqualify any entry that it considers, in its sole discretion, to be offensive, unlawful, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, defamatory, privacy-invasive, technically unsafe, corrupted, inaccessible, ineligible, or otherwise inappropriate.

7.11 The Organiser’s decision to reject, remove, or disqualify an entry is final, and the Organiser is not obliged to enter into correspondence about rejected, removed, or disqualified entries.

8. Use of AI tools and third-party services

8.1 Entrants may use AI tools, voice synthesis, voice conversion, speech editing, audio editing, scripting, prompting, acting, manual editing, or any other lawful method to create their entry, unless otherwise stated by the Organiser.

8.2 Entrants are responsible for ensuring that their use of any tool, platform, dataset, model, subscription, software, audio material, music, effect, script, voice, or other third-party service complies with applicable law and with the relevant third-party terms.

8.3 The Organiser does not endorse, approve, verify, or accept responsibility for any third-party tool, platform, service, or model used by entrants.

8.4 Entrants should not include confidential prompts, trade secrets, proprietary workflows, private data, or sensitive information in written process descriptions unless they are allowed to share that information.

9. Reference samples and HackaCon materials

9.1 Registered participants may be given access to reference samples, character information, task materials, images, written descriptions, or other HackaCon materials.

9.2 These materials are provided only for the purpose of creating and submitting a HackaCon entry.

9.3 Entrants must not use, publish, distribute, sell, share, upload, repurpose, or make available HackaCon reference samples, generated HackaCon voices, or other restricted HackaCon materials for deception, impersonation, harassment, fraud, commercial exploitation, model/dataset release, or any purpose outside HackaCon without written permission from the Organiser.

9.4 Entrants must not use HackaCon reference samples or generated HackaCon voices in any way that implies a real statement, endorsement, instruction, admission, or communication by a real person.

9.5 Entrants must not attempt to identify, contact, impersonate, harass, or otherwise target any person associated with HackaCon materials, reference samples, generated voices, or judging materials.

9.6 The Organiser may withdraw access to HackaCon materials at any time if misuse is suspected.

10. Judging

10.1 Entries will be judged by the HackaCon organisers, panel members, appointed reviewers, and/or computational assessment tools.

10.2 Judging may include both human assessment and computational analysis, including automated analysis of voice similarity, naturalness, content, and other acoustic, linguistic, interactional, or technical features.

10.3 The published judging criteria are expected to include:

1. voice similarity;
2. naturalness;
3. content;
4. creative flair.

10.4 Each criterion will carry equal weighting unless otherwise stated on the HackaCon website.

10.5 The Organiser may update, clarify, or supplement judging procedures before the submission deadline where necessary to ensure fairness, technical feasibility, or consistency. The Organiser will not knowingly change judging criteria in a way that unfairly disadvantages entrants who have already submitted.

10.6 The Organiser may contact entrants for clarification, eligibility checking, technical checking, or judging-related questions.

10.7 The Organiser is not obliged to request a replacement file, corrected file, additional information, or clarification before judging or rejecting an entry.

10.8 Incomplete, corrupted, inaccessible, incorrectly formatted, late, duplicate, misleading, non-compliant, or otherwise ineligible Submissions may not be judged.

10.9 Judging decisions, rankings, prize allocations, eligibility decisions, and disqualification decisions are final.

10.10 The Organiser is not obliged to provide individual feedback, detailed scores, judge comments, or reasons for decisions. The Organiser may choose to provide feedback on an individual ad hoc basis. A decision to provide feedback on one entry does not imply or create an obligation to provide feedback on any other entry or Submission.

11. Prizes

11.1 Full prize details are listed on the HackaCon Prizes page, which forms part of these Terms and Conditions.

11.2 At the time of publication, the prize pool includes Amazon.co.uk digital vouchers, FACTOR Challenge Coins, and FACTOR prize bags. Highest Ranked Prizes will be awarded to the top twenty Submissions by overall score. Special Category Prizes will be awarded as described below and on the HackaCon Prizes page.

11.3 Highest Ranked Prizes are expected to be awarded as follows:

Rank	Prize(s)
First place	£600 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher; FACTOR Challenge Coin serial number 001; FACTOR prize bag
Second place	£500 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher; FACTOR Challenge Coin serial number 002; FACTOR prize bag
Third place	£400 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher; FACTOR Challenge Coin serial number 003; FACTOR prize bag
Fourth place	£300 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher; FACTOR Challenge Coin serial number 004; FACTOR prize bag
Fifth place	£200 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher; FACTOR Challenge Coin serial number 005; FACTOR prize bag
Sixth to twentieth place	FACTOR prize bag

11.4 Five Special Category Prizes are expected to be awarded. One Special Category Prize will be awarded to the highest-ranked school-based Submission, subject to eligibility checks. For this purpose, a school-based Submission means an entry submitted by an adult using a school email address on behalf of pupils/students in a school or comparable supervised educational setting.

11.5 Four additional Judges’ Special Recognition Prizes will be awarded to Submissions that do not receive a Highest Ranked Prize but are judged by the panel to be especially noteworthy. These may recognise, for example, unusually creative methods, strong naturalness, interesting technical approaches, effective interactional detail, or other features that the judges consider significant. The exact category labels will be assigned during judging to reflect the Submissions received.

11.6 Each Special Category Prize is expected to include a £200 Amazon.co.uk digital voucher, a FACTOR Challenge Coin, and a FACTOR prize bag.

11.7 It is possible for a school-based Submission to receive both a Highest Ranked Prize and the school-based Special Category Prize.

11.8 Prizes are awarded at the Organiser’s discretion according to the published judging process.

11.9 Prizes are as stated. They are non-transferable, non-exchangeable, and have no cash alternative unless the Organiser decides otherwise.

11.10 The Organiser may substitute a prize with another prize of equal or greater value if circumstances outside its reasonable control make this necessary.

11.11 The Organiser is not responsible for inaccurate prize details supplied by any third party connected with a prize, voucher, retailer, platform, delivery provider, or other external service.

11.12 Amazon vouchers will be issued as Amazon.co.uk digital vouchers sent by email. Amazon.co.uk Gift Cards are subject to Amazon’s own terms and conditions, including redemption restrictions, expiry dates, account requirements, country restrictions, platform restrictions, and availability restrictions. Amazon.co.uk states that its Gift Cards may only be redeemed toward eligible products on www.amazon.co.uk or other Amazon stores designated by Amazon. International winners should assume that Amazon.co.uk digital vouchers must be redeemed and spent through the UK Amazon website and may not be usable on their local Amazon website.

11.13 The Organiser is not responsible for a winner’s inability to use an Amazon.co.uk digital voucher because of country, account, platform, currency, delivery, customs, issuer, product availability, or other restrictions outside the Organiser’s control.

11.14 Winners will be contacted using the contact email address submitted through the entry form.

11.15 Winners and rankings are expected to be announced on the HackaCon scoreboard in late October 2026.

11.16 Prizes are expected to be dispatched or arranged in early November 2026.

11.17 If a winner does not respond to reasonable contact attempts, does not confirm eligibility, does not provide necessary prize information, or cannot accept the prize, the Organiser may withdraw the prize, offer it to another entrant, or reuse it for future events.

11.18 Any prizes that remain unclaimed after 31 December 2026 will be reused for future events.

11.19 If a winner is selected for a physical prize, they may be asked to provide a postal address after judging. Postal addresses are not collected in the submission form. If a winner does not provide a postal address when asked, the Organiser may be unable to send the physical prize.

11.20 Entrants may be given the option in the submission form to decline any physical prize they may win. Declining a physical prize will not prevent an eligible winner from receiving an Amazon.co.uk digital voucher if they have won one.

11.21 Physical prizes may be posted internationally where reasonably practicable, but the Organiser may decline to send a physical prize where postage, customs, legal restrictions, institutional restrictions, cost, delivery risk, or other practical issues make this unreasonable or impracticable.

11.22 The Organiser is not responsible for customs charges, import duties, local taxes, delivery restrictions, postal delays, lost deliveries, or address errors caused by information supplied by the winner.

12. Certificates

12.1 Eligible judged Submissions will receive a digital certificate of participation.

12.2 Certificates will be issued using the certificate name provided by the entrant, or the Display Name if no separate certificate name is provided.

12.3 Certificates may include the entrant’s Display Name, certificate name, participation status, category, ranking, and/or other HackaCon result information.

12.4 Entrants should not include full names of children on certificates unless the adult submitter has the appropriate permission to do so.

12.5 The Organiser may refuse, edit, or query certificate names that appear offensive, misleading, identifying inappropriately, or otherwise unsuitable.

13. Scoreboard, announcements, and publicity

13.1 HackaCon results may be published on the public HackaCon scoreboard page.

13.2 The public scoreboard may include entrants’ Display Names, ranks, scores, judging categories, prize status, and other information about the Competition results.

13.3 Entrants who do not want to be personally identifiable should choose a non-identifying Display Name, such as a pseudonym, team name, or “Anonymous”. Where multiple entrants choose “Anonymous”, this may be appended with a number, for example “Anonymous_001”.

13.4 The Organiser may publish de-identified, aggregated, or summarised information about entries and results in research outputs, reports, presentations, publications, teaching/training materials, stakeholder briefings, online materials, media, and public engagement about HackaCon and related research.

13.5 The Organiser may use Submissions, or extracts from Submissions, in public talks, lectures, workshops, conference presentations, online materials, media, or public engagement about HackaCon and related research. Where practical, public use will avoid unnecessary publication of direct personal identifiers beyond the Display Name chosen by the entrant.

13.6 The Organiser may contact entrants about publicity, interviews, follow-up questions, or future opportunities only where the entrant has agreed to optional follow-up contact or where contact is otherwise necessary for administering HackaCon.

14. Rights, permissions, and licence

14.1 Entrants retain any rights they hold in their Submission.

14.2 By entering HackaCon, entrants grant Lancaster University/FACTOR a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, store, format-shift, transcribe, annotate, analyse, quote, display, play, publish, share, and otherwise use their Submission for the purposes described in these Terms and Conditions.

14.3 These purposes include running HackaCon, judging entries, awarding prizes, reporting results, producing the public scoreboard, conducting research, preparing publications, presenting findings, creating teaching/training materials, engaging stakeholders, public engagement, and controlled reuse relating to AI-generated speech, synthetic dialogue, voice similarity, conversation, interactional naturalness, deepfake detection, and related forensic/security issues.

14.4 Entrants confirm that, to the best of their knowledge, they have the necessary rights and permissions to submit their Submission, including any scripts, voices, sounds, music, effects, performances, prompts, tools, or other elements included in it.

14.5 If a Submission includes the voice, likeness, performance, or identifiable characteristics of any real person other than the entrant, the entrant confirms that they have the necessary permission to include and submit that material.

14.6 Entrants must not submit material that infringes copyright, performers’ rights, database rights, trade marks, moral rights, privacy rights, confidentiality obligations, data protection law, contractual obligations, or any other rights of third parties.

14.7 The Organiser may reject, remove, or stop using a Submission if it receives a rights complaint, privacy complaint, safeguarding concern, legal concern, or other objection relating to that Submission.

14.8 The entrant is responsible for any claim, complaint, cost, or consequence arising from their breach of these Terms and Conditions, including any breach of rights, permissions, confidentiality, privacy, or legality.

15. Research use, controlled sharing, and dataset development

15.1 HackaCon is both a competition and a research/data-development activity.

15.2 The Organiser may store, copy, transcribe, annotate, convert, analyse, score, and otherwise process Submissions for the purposes of running HackaCon, judging entries, awarding prizes, reporting results, and conducting research into AI-generated speech, synthetic dialogue, voice similarity, conversation, interactional naturalness, deepfake detection, and related security/forensic issues.

15.3 Submissions may be shared with approved researchers, partners, or stakeholders under controlled conditions for research, evaluation, education, forensic/security analysis, or deepfake/synthetic-speech detection work.

15.4 Controlled conditions may include access controls, data-sharing agreements, confidentiality requirements, limits on onward sharing, requirements not to attempt to identify contributors, restrictions on publication, restrictions on redistribution, and/or other safeguards considered appropriate by the Organiser.

15.5 Submissions may be used to develop, evaluate, document, or release controlled-access datasets relating to AI-generated speech, synthetic dialogue, voice similarity, conversation, interactional naturalness, and deepfake/synthetic-speech detection.

15.6 The Organiser does not intend to release Submissions as an unrestricted public dataset unless this is separately assessed and approved through appropriate Lancaster University processes.

16. Personal data and privacy

16.1 Lancaster University is the data controller for personal data collected through HackaCon.

16.2 Personal data will be handled in accordance with applicable UK data protection legislation and Lancaster University’s data protection policies and privacy information.

16.3 These Terms and Conditions summarise how personal data may be used for HackaCon, but they should be read alongside Lancaster University’s relevant privacy information.

16.4 Personal data collected through HackaCon may include Display Name, optional real name, contact email address, organisation/school information, eligibility information, certificate name, written answers, uploaded audio files, metadata, scores, annotations, transcripts, extracted features, correspondence, and any postal address later provided by prize winners.

16.5 Contact details will not be made public.

16.6 Contact details may be used for essential HackaCon administration, including confirming eligibility, checking entry details, asking judging or submission questions, contacting winners, arranging certificates, and arranging prizes.

16.7 Postal addresses are not collected in the submission form. If a physical prize is awarded, the winner may be asked to provide a postal address after judging. Postal addresses will be used only for prize administration unless otherwise stated.

16.8 Submissions may contain personal data, including voice data and written information supplied by entrants. Submissions may also be analysed computationally, including through feature extraction and automated assessment.

16.9 Contact details and prize/certificate administration data may be kept separately from research data and may be deleted earlier when no longer needed.

16.10 Administrative contact, certificate, and prize-dispatch data will normally be reviewed for deletion after HackaCon administration is complete, unless retention is required for audit, legal, research, or administrative reasons.

16.11 Submissions may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary for HackaCon administration, judging, reporting, research, verification, and controlled reuse.

16.12 Entrants can request withdrawal of their Submission by emailing factor@lancaster.ac.uk.

16.13 Where possible, the Organiser will stop using identifiable Submission data after withdrawal. However, it may not be possible to remove information that has already been anonymised, aggregated, judged, published, included in completed outputs, used in completed analyses, or shared under controlled access arrangements before the withdrawal request was received.

16.14 For further information about how Lancaster University handles and secures personal data, entrants should refer to Lancaster University’s Privacy Notices, how Lancaster University protects your data, your rights, and Lancaster University’s Data Protection Officer’s contact details.

17. Withdrawal

17.1 Entrants may request withdrawal by emailing factor@lancaster.ac.uk.

17.2 Withdrawal requests should include enough information for the Organiser to identify the Submission, such as Display Name, contact email address, and approximate submission date.

17.3 Withdrawal before judging may mean that the entry is not judged and is not eligible for prizes.

17.4 Withdrawal after judging, publication, controlled sharing, or inclusion in completed outputs may be limited, as described in section 16.

17.5 Withdrawal from optional follow-up contact does not automatically require withdrawal of the Submission from judging, research, reporting, controlled reuse, or other uses permitted by these Terms and Conditions.

18. Optional follow-up contact

18.1 Entrants may be asked separately whether they agree to optional follow-up contact.

18.2 Optional follow-up contact may include follow-up questions, interviews, surveys, related research, future HackaCon activity, FACTOR events, or related research opportunities.

18.3 Entrants can decline optional follow-up contact or later ask not to be contacted for these purposes.

18.4 Essential HackaCon administration contact is not optional. The Organiser may contact entrants where necessary to administer the Competition, check eligibility, ask judging/submission questions, contact winners, arrange certificates, or arrange prizes.

19. Disqualification and misconduct

19.1 The Organiser may disqualify an entrant or reject/remove a Submission if it reasonably believes that the entrant has:

1. breached these Terms and Conditions;
2. submitted false, misleading, incomplete, or unverifiable information;
3. submitted unlawful, offensive, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, defamatory, privacy-invasive, confidential, or rights-infringing material;
4. attempted to manipulate, disrupt, tamper with, overload, or compromise the submission portal, judging process, website, dataset, or other HackaCon systems;
5. attempted to impersonate another person or organisation;
6. misused HackaCon reference samples, generated voices, or restricted materials;
7. used HackaCon materials for deception, impersonation, harassment, fraud, or purposes outside HackaCon;
8. failed to confirm eligibility or respond to essential administrative contact;
9. acted in a way that could bring HackaCon, FACTOR, Lancaster University, partners, judges, entrants, or stakeholders into disrepute.

19.2 The Organiser may reject automated, bulk, fraudulent, malicious, corrupted, incomplete, inaccessible, or technically unsafe entries.

19.3 The Organiser’s decision on disqualification, rejection, removal, and eligibility is final.

20. Changes, suspension, and cancellation

20.1 The Organiser may suspend, amend, or cancel HackaCon if circumstances arise outside its reasonable control, or if necessary to protect fairness, safety, legality, security, research integrity, safeguarding, data protection, or operational feasibility.

20.2 The Organiser will not change the Competition in a way that unfairly disadvantages entrants unless this is necessary because of circumstances outside the Organiser’s reasonable control or to address serious legal, ethical, security, or operational issues.

20.3 If the Competition is amended, suspended, or cancelled, the Organiser will take reasonable steps to communicate this through the HackaCon website and/or by email where appropriate.

21. Liability

21.1 The Organiser is not responsible for entries, emails, files, or communications that are lost, delayed, misdirected, corrupted, blocked, incomplete, inaccessible, or not received due to technical, network, platform, device, software, human, or third-party error.

21.2 The Organiser is not responsible for failures or restrictions caused by third-party tools, AI platforms, software providers, file formats, email providers, voucher providers, postal providers, hosting providers, internet service providers, or other third parties.

21.3 Entrants are responsible for protecting their own systems, accounts, files, data, and devices when creating or submitting an entry.

21.4 Nothing in these Terms and Conditions excludes or limits the Organiser’s liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

22. Complaints and queries

22.1 Questions about HackaCon or these Terms and Conditions should be sent to factor@lancaster.ac.uk.

22.2 Complaints about administration should be sent to factor@lancaster.ac.uk with enough detail for the Organiser to understand and investigate the issue.

22.3 The Organiser is not obliged to enter into correspondence about judging decisions, rankings, score allocations, prize allocations, eligibility decisions, or disqualification decisions.

23. Accessibility

23.1 If you require these Terms and Conditions, the submission form, or HackaCon materials in a different format for accessibility reasons, please contact factor@lancaster.ac.uk.

23.2 The Organiser will take reasonable steps to support accessibility requests where possible.

24. Governing law

24.1 These Terms and Conditions are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

24.2 Any disputes arising from or in connection with HackaCon will be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, except where mandatory law provides otherwise.

25. Conflicts and updates

25.1 These Terms and Conditions apply alongside the HackaCon website, challenge description, criteria, timeline, submission portal instructions, Prizes page, and any other official HackaCon materials.

25.2 If there is any inconsistency between these Terms and Conditions and other HackaCon materials, these Terms and Conditions will take precedence unless the Organiser expressly states otherwise.

25.3 The latest published version of these Terms and Conditions will apply.

25.4 Entrants are encouraged to save or print a copy of these Terms and Conditions at the time of entry.