Macathon

Save The Dates: November 6 & 7, 2026

Group photo of first, second and third place Macathon 2025 winning teams.

The Entrepreneurship Department is proud to announce the 2025 Macathon winning teams! First Place: Edible Rice – Evelyn Bond ’26, Shelly Bai (Dec) ’25, Tobias Hibbard ’27; Second Place: Jeets Jesters – Bruno Guiduli ’26, Eric Wentz ’26, Martin Bernsten ’26, Theo Darci-Maher ’27, Sanjeet Devidayal ’26, Ethen Kantu ’26; and Third Place: Salchipapa – William Acosta Lora ’27, Berni Perez de Nucci ’28, Karla Martinez ’27, Patricia Escobar ’28, Nayla Trigueros ’28. Thank you to our supportive and amazing mentor judges for another fabulous year!

Macathon is a twenty-four hour idea-building competition that connects students with alums.

Edible Rice takes first place in Macathon 2025

For twenty-four hours, students worked through the night—whiteboards filling, laptops glowing, and teams huddling around last-minute prototypes—as they raced to identify real-world problems and build solutions that matter.

Macalester News November 2025

Macathon, an overnight innovation and creativity contest, brings student teams of 3-6 participants together to put their liberal arts education into action.

Each team develops a unique solution to a real-world problem and competes for over $2,000 in cash prizes. The catch? There is no prep work allowed; everything for the competition must be produced within the 24-hour period.
Each team is provided access to space, resources, and alumni judges.

Alumni from around the world bring unique experiences and expertise to the competition as both mentors and evaluators of the teams’ work.
The competition culminates with a 7-minute presentation.

The presentation outlines the proposed problem and solution. Teams are assessed based on their identification, understanding, and articulation of a real-world problem, their proposed solution, an early prototype, and the quality of their final presentation.
The three highest-scoring teams in the final will be awarded cash prizes!

Team Musasabi - Dave Mao Award recipients

A special thank you to Dave’s family for setting up a fund to continue his dedication to Macathon students.

Remembering Judge Dave Mao ’97

Dave brought joy and laughter to this event with his wit and hilarious stories. He was the judge who would stay all night to help the students. In 2023, a special Macathon prize was started in his honor, the Keeping It Real—Dave Mao Special Award.

Dave Mao Fund

Photo: At Macathon 2025 the Dave Mao ‘Keeping It Real Prize’ went to Team Musasabi – Jill Chung ’28, Yaoki Kitahara ’28, Hazel Huang ’29, Tenzin Bhutia ’28, and Eddie Piao ’28 for demonstrating a spirit of playfulness, joy, and possibility.

Macathon Judges

Each year, Macalester hosts a diverse group of alumni/guest judges from across the US to mentor and evaluate the teams. Macathon thrives because of this group’s passion for entrepreneurship and innovation. They bring enthusiasm, expertise, and encouragement to our students.

Past Macathon Judges

It’s the 12th Annual Macathon!

Over the next 24 hours you’re going to push yourself to combine big ideas with really quick thinking. Student are challenging limits in terms of creativity, technical ability, and lack of sleep

Students are solving the hardest problems

Macalester is unique because it has a program like Macathon!

There’s no atmosphere like Macathon—a longstanding Macalester competition that gives teams of students 24 hours to come up with a solution to a problem, prototype a product, and build a convincing presentation for a panel of alumni judges.

What will you learn?

Behind the Scenes | Team: The Goonies

Follow a Macathon team through their 24 hour experience. Thank you to The Goonies for capturing the fun and exciting vibe of this incredible Macalester event!

You can be a part of Macathon!

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