Newsmatics' Second Hackathon Showcases Student Innovation in Brno
Actionable Intelligence | Predictive News Analytics
On February 27-28, Newsmatics hosted its second Hackathon in Brno, Czechia, where students tackled data visualization, trend analysis, prediction & forecasting, content discovery, protection against misinformation and fake news, and other related topics in a 24-hour challenge. Held at Masaryk University, 11 teams transformed raw news data into innovative digital tools.
The winning team, Radek 12, took home the grand prize of 25,000 CZK for their PolyTics project, which uses data from Polymarket and the Newsmatics News Index to help users understand the context of different events more easily.
With over 40 participants, our second hackathon once again fostered an atmosphere of creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving. Our judges were impressed by this year's projects, and we are already considering a follow-up event in 2027.
Congratulations to all teams, and a big thank you to all participants, mentors, judges, the Faculty of Informatics and KYPO, Masaryk University, for making Newsmatics Hackathon 2026 a success! Check out the event photos and videos below.
Hackathon winner: Radek 12
- Team leader: David Halmazňa
- Team: Oskar Klíma, Anna Hronová, Tomáš Halmazňa, Štěpán Husa.
- Product Name: PolyTics
- Topic: Combining data from Polymarket & Newsmatics
- Aim: To offer a digital tool that analyzes betting dynamics for specific Polymarket events, detecting spikes, volatility, and anomalies. It provides users with more information, context, and explanations using news articles from the Newsmatics News Index and LLM-generated analyses. Watch presentation
2nd place: Spaghetti Coders Reborn
- Team leader: Štěpán Vondráček
- Team: Lukáš Dadák, Stanislav Zámečník.
- Product Name: Daemonsthenes
- Topic: Strategic intelligence for the modern debater
- Aim: To provide an AI-powered debate preparation tool that helps users develop winning strategies by combining opponent research, real-time news intelligence, and LLM-generated argumentation. Watch presentation
3rd place: Stack Underflow
- Team leader: Patrik Košťál
- Team: Lukáš Juřina, Jan Zářecký, Vít Vohralík.
- Product Name: Timeliner
- Topic: Visualizing the occurrence of topics
- Aim: To analyze when a theme begins to emerge, how frequently it appears over time, and to conduct a causality analysis to identify the events or factors that triggered its emergence. Watch presentation
Check out our photos
Hackathon on Czech TV (ČT24, February 28, 2026)
Notable mentions:
- Team leader: Vít Chramosta
- Team: Ondřej Marek, František Čech, Tomáš Burian
- Product Name: Defent
- Topic: Predictive Analysis & Forecasting
- Aim: The primary objective is to identify the stages leading up to genocide or conflict by applying a specific mental model to news data.
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- Team leader: Oleksandr Panov
- Team: Roman Andriichuk, Andrei Kazantsev, Igor Mirosnicenco, Maksim Obukhov
- Product Name: Poligraph
- Topic: Content Discovery
- Aim: The main objective is to address the recurring issue of politicians making promises and then forgetting about them. The tool uses artificial intelligence and the Newsmatics News Index database to help voters and journalists determine whether a politician can be trusted.
- Team leader: Eduard Hviždak
- Team: Vratislav Vojtek, Shahadat Hussain
- Product Name: Mapinx
- Topic: Data Visualization
- Aim: The challenge of making sense of 300 million articles is addressed by the project. The project adds a geographical dimension to data visualization, enabling users to filter events such as fires, protests or floods.
- Team leader: Ali Al-Sorehi
- Team: Matej Opálený, Oliver Galas
- Product Name: Data Visualization Tool
- Topic: Data Visualization
- Aim: The presented platform aims to address the question of whether specific groups amplify certain narratives and the influence of political bias on news coverage. The primary goal is to demonstrate how narratives evolve across different news outlets by identifying sentiment patterns and detecting bias.
- Team leader: Michal Bahna
- Team: Jakub FIala, Adam El-Dunia, Tomáš Všetečka
- Product Name: Newsmatics ‘26 - Newsfeed
- Topic: Content Discovery
- Aim: The project aims to improve content discovery by a) organizing and filtering articles using data to enable filtering by specific themes; b) tracking user actions to provide better-tailored article recommendations using a recommendation engine; and c) developing a tagging mechanism to process data, categorize it into themes, and create user-preference weights.
- Team leader: Michal Raček
- Team: Benjamín Lapoš, Liliana Gejdošová, Filip Polacik
- Product Name: NewsCheck
- Topic: News Credibility Assessment
- Aim: This Chrome extension verifies the credibility of any news article without leaving the page. It offers sentence highlights, flagging factually incorrect sentences and paragraphs, providing clear explanations and reliable sources. It also offers page statistics, showing a credibility score and a breakdown of the article's political classification.
- Team leader: Andrej Bugár
- Team: Jakub Hummel, Natália Ligačová, Jana Kmošková, Jakub Wolek
- Product Name: BubbleBurst
- Topic: Content Discovery
- Aim: This tool is designed to help readers explore different perspectives across the political spectrum by discovering new content. As either a browser extension or a web application, it enables users to analyze news content.
- Team leader: Martin Tuček
- Team: Dušan Veľký, Adam Džadoň, Michal Jakubík
- Product Name: Blindspot
- Topic: 5. Protection Against Misinformation, Fake News, or Propaganda
- Aim: The proposed platform addresses the challenge of an environment defined by information asymmetry. The average citizen has difficulty staying informed amid chaotic news feeds and personal biases. The platform enables content discovery and is specifically designed to help users identify "blind spots" and navigate floods of news.
Want to learn more about the event?
Want to see what information the participants were given before the hackathon? Click below and see!
Event details