Shipaton is back. This August and September, we’re inviting builders from all corners of the globe to ship brand-new apps and compete for a share of over $1 million worth of prizes.

There’s a lot to cover, so here’s the TLDR:

  • Ship a new app in August or September, and you could win part of over $1 million worth of prizes
  • New categories, including a brand-new student category
  • ShipKit is back with tons of discounts and deals for participants
  • Twice-a-week livestreams with expert guests and live Q&A
  • Shipaton IRL in-person events are back, all over the world
  • Register right now at shipaton.com

Alright, let’s dig into the details.

The challenge

Your challenge is simple:

  • Ship a brand-new iOS or Android app to the App Store, Google Play Store, or — new this year — the Samsung Galaxy Store, between August 1st and September 30th
  • Use the RevenueCat SDK to power at least one in-app purchase, or serve ads through RevenueCat Ads

That means a real app. In a real store. Released for the first time during the Shipaton window. Your app can be something you just started working on, or something you’ve been working on for a longer time but just haven’t shipped yet.

You can start brainstorming, building, posting, and getting people excited before August 1st. But to be eligible, your app has to be released no earlier than August 1st and no later than September 30th. We recommend shipping your 1.0 as quickly as possible to get through App Review, then pushing updates from there.

Bigger than ever

Last year, you completely blew us away. Close to a thousand new apps launched. Thousands of #BuildInPublic in TikTok and other social media. Communities all over the world hosted Shipaton IRL events. And winning teams ended up in New York, accepting their Shippy trophies on stage, with their apps lighting up a giant billboard in Times Square.

Naturally, we took that to mean that Shipaton 2026 needs to be even bigger. Here’s what’s on the line:

  • Over $700,000 in cash to date, and that number may grow as more sponsors join the fun
  • Winning apps featured on giant billboards in Times Square
  • Flights to New York City for the Shippies red carpet award ceremony (that’s right, our own award ceremony for people who ship great apps) and RevenueCat’s exclusive App Growth Annual conference
  • Press coverage for winners on 9to5Mac and 9to5Google
  • Investor exposure through the brand-new Shipaton Growth Fund

And there are even more prizes we’re still finalizing — we’ll announce those soon.

New award categories

This year’s lineup of award categories celebrates all the different ways to build a great app. Many you’ll recognize from previous Shipatons, but there are some big new additions.

Grand Prize: Build & Grow Award

The big one. This award honors the app that gains the most user traction and growth momentum during the event. We want to hear what you’ve done post-release to push your app’s growth to the next level.

[NEW] Next Gen Award (students, this one’s for you)

A brand-new category exclusively for students, designed to remove one of the biggest blockers for new builders: you don’t need a paid Apple or Google developer account to participate.

If you’re an active student, you can submit a video of your app plus your open-source code, and we’ll use that to validate your submission. High school, college, university, bootcamp, campus dev club, or another academic program: Shipaton is for you too. Learn more on the Next Gen page.

And if you’re a student organizer, teacher, professor, or part of a developer club, this is the perfect excuse to bring Shipaton to your campus. More on that below.

[NEW] Catvertising Award

Celebrates the most creative and effective use of RevenueCat Ads as a monetization method. We’re looking for clever placements, smart integration with the rest of your revenue stack, and an experience users don’t hate.

[NEW] Best Game Award

Shipaton 2026 welcomes a whole new category of developers: This award goes to the best mobile game shipped during Shipaton. We’re looking for great gameplay, art direction, and a monetization fit that suits the genre.

#BuildInPublic Award

For developers who share the most interesting parts of their development journey on social media. We’re looking for compelling lessons learned or ideas incorporated from community feedback.

HAMM Award (Help Apps Make Money)

RevenueCat exists to help apps make more money. This award goes to the project with the most robust and creative monetization strategy.

RevenueCat Design Award

For the app that best represents the craft of app development, separate from its viability as a business. We’re looking for innovative ideas and/or beautiful design and animations.

RevenueCat Peace Prize

Awarded to the project that provides the greatest social good. We’re looking for apps with big benefits to communities or society at large.

On top of all that, our category sponsors will have dedicated award categories too. More details coming soon. Check the DevPost page for full judging criteria.

Supported by the industry

This year, our sponsors have shown up big. Huge thanks to Replit, OneSignal, JetBrains, Layers, Noise, Stripe, and Samsung for coming in as category sponsors for Shipaton 2026.

We’ll share more about their categories soon, but for now, just know they’re helping us make this year’s Shipaton bigger, weirder, and more rewarding for builders. And more sponsors are joining all the time — which means bigger cash prizes and more additions to the ShipKit.

ShipKit is back

ShipKit is your bundle of tools, credits, deals, and resources to help you build faster, launch better, and hopefully save a lot of money along the way.

Some of those deals are while supplies last, so the sooner you register on DevPost, the sooner you get access as ShipKit starts to roll out.

New this year: the #ShipatonSale

If you have an app, tool, service, course, template, or anything else that could help Shipaton builders, you can run a sale for participants. Share it using the #ShipatonSale hashtag, and submit it to the Shipaton website, where we’ll list sales being run by tools and services in the community.

So even if you’re not competing, there are still ways to support the builders who are, and get your apps in front of thousands of people.

Built on community

Shipaton’s success has always come back to the community. It’s more fun when everyone can see each other building, learning, getting stuck, getting unstuck, and cheering each other on. Even with lots of prizes on the line, you’ve always supported and encouraged each other along the way, and we do our best to support that:

  • The #BuildInPublic award rewards sharing your building journey online — an amazing way to motivate yourself and inspire others
  • The Shipaton Discord is open again for discussion, questions, feedback, finding teammates, and getting help from the RevenueCat team
  • The #post-engagement-boost channel lets you share your #BuildInPublic posts and boost each other’s work so more people see what you’re building

Twice-a-week livestreams

Throughout the event, we’ll host livestreams twice a week where you can learn new skills for building, launching, and growing mobile apps. Expert guests, practical sessions, and live Q&A. So you’re not building alone for two months. You’ll have a steady stream of lessons and live support to keep you moving.

Shipaton IRL: events near you

The Shipaton community isn’t only online. Last year, builders and community organizers hosted Shipaton IRL events — meetups, co-working sessions, and launch parties — in cities all over the world. This year, we want even more of that.

Check out shipaton.com/events to find a Shipaton IRL event near you, or apply to host one yourself. Approved hosts get a Meetup-in-a-box with Shipaton swag, food vouchers, and organizer resources, and we’ll promote your event to the massive Shipaton audience.

These are perfect for new or existing developer communities, hacker clubs, and student organizers planning campus events.

Ready, set, ship!

Here’s what to do right now: go to shipaton.com, click through to DevPost, and register. That’s where we’ll share the latest news, full rules, category updates, sponsor announcements, and ShipKit access as soon as it’s ready.

Shipaton is the perfect motivator to finally build that app idea you’ve had in your brain forever or to ship something totally new, now that app development (with a little help from AI tools) is more accessible than it’s ever been.

We can’t wait to see what you build. Let’s get shipping.