Qt;Athon 2025: Meet the Winners of Our Global Student Coding Competition

In the fall of 2025, Qt Group hosted its second Qt;Athon—an online global coding competition for students. This time Qt;Athon was hosted in collaboration with Extenly. The event brought together 138 student teams from 32 countries, all challenged to push their creativity and technical skills. 

Qt;Athon was organized in two rounds. In Round 1, participants had 24 hours to solve three coding tasks. The top 10 teams and individual students then advanced to Round 2, where they were presented with two full-scale project briefs: Mega Global Space Tec’s New Space Suit by Qt and Multi-Camera Surveillance by Extenly. Contestants were asked to build one of these based on the provided specifications.  

Qt;Athon 2025 Winner: Team Cute from RWTH Aachen University 

The winning project came from Team “Cute”, represented by Yaroslav Riabtsev, a Master’s student in Software Systems Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Competing solo after his team dropped out, Yaroslav built a technically solid Multi-Camera Surveillance application focused on stream viewing, monitoring, and real-time event detection. 

His solution combined: 

• A C++23-based core backend 

• A CLI tool for headless operation 

• A Qt 6 desktop GUI, implemented with Widgets 

• Integrated OpenCV functionality for event and ROI (region of interest) detection 

This architecture showcased strong engineering design—modular, modern, and well-structured for both GUI and non-GUI deployments. 

💡 Check out the project on GitHub: https://github.com/ninjaro/yodau 

Both Yaroslav’s solo effort and his technical choices caught the judges’ attention. As Nick Bennet, Staff Software Engineer at Qt Group, commented: 

“Interesting use of Widgets over QML. The author showed a good handle on widgets and even the Qt ecosystem at large. Using c++ 23 compiler is sign of modern c++.” 

Yaroslav came into the competition with some prior Qt exposure, particularly with QML and the KDE ecosystem. Reflecting on his journey, he shared: 

“During the final year of my Bachelor's degree, I experimented with QML and Kirigami for desktop applications with friends, but then I switched to pure C++. I like the KDE framework and all the signals and stuff.” 

His familiarity with Qt and KDE—paired with his modern C++ skills—clearly influenced the robustness and depth of the final application. As the winner of Qt;Athon, he is awarded a Steam Deck gaming console, an Xbox gift card, and personal mentoring from a Qt expert.  

Second and Third Place Winners 

Second Place: Team Contemplators 

The second place in this year’s Qt;Athon went to Team Contemplators, formed by Ahmed Rizwan (Queen’s University, Canada), Muhammad Hannan Javed (University of Hong Kong), and Taimoor Bin Nasir (Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan). Their project, Qt Camera Surveillance, is a lightweight Qt 6 desktop application designed for real‑time monitoring of multiple camera streams. The team focused on creating an intuitive and responsive interface for viewing, managing, and analyzing live video feeds. 

Third Place: Team Estudos Qt IFBA

Third place was awarded to Team Estudos Qt IFBA, represented by Luan Pinheiro and Vinicius Santos Systems Analysis and Development students from the Federal Institute of Education in Brazil. Their submission, MGST Space Suit Projects, consists of two Qt‑based applications built to simulate and manage space suit systems. Developed with Qt 6, C++17, and CMake, the project features a QML‑driven mobile‑style tricorder app that displays suit levels and mission data, paired with a helmet interface that mirrors the same information inside a spacesuit visor. A standout capability is the IoT communication layer using the MQTT protocol, enabling real‑time data transfer from the tricorder to the helmet for synchronized suit monitoring.

Both, Luan and Vinicius joined Qt;Athon to push their technical boundaries—Luan saw it as a chance to put his ongoing Qt and QML research into practice and challenge himself in a new environment, while Vinicius aimed to gain real‑world development experience and strengthen his teamwork and problem‑solving skills. Although both had prior exposure to Qt, the competition allowed them to deepen their understanding of the framework and apply it more fully in a complete project.

💡 Check out the project on GitHub: https://github.com/luan-p1nheiro/qtathon-mgst-space-suit 

Shaping Tomorrow’s Qt Talent 

Qt;Athon is part of our broader University and Talent Network, launched in June 2024 to support and grow the next generation of Qt talent. For many finalists, the competition served as their first real introduction to Qt, and their interest in continuing to learn and explore the framework was clear throughout the event. 

Alongside Qt;Athon, the network has already enabled a variety of collaborations with universities worldwide—from classroom projects to hands‑on workshops and guest lectures. These efforts give students practical experience while helping them connect with the wider Qt community. 

As we look ahead, we aim to broaden these opportunities even further. More ways to participate, more partnerships, and more visibility into the great work coming from students around the world are all on the horizon. We’re excited to continue supporting the next generation of Qt talent. 

📎 Useful Links 

• Qt University and Talent Network 
• Educational Licenses 
• Qt Academy 
• Explore Qt Academy courses from the course catalog