FORT MASON CENTER - SAN FRANCISCO - FEB 23-24, 2026

NEARCON 2026

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NEARCON 2026 proved that the future isn't coming — it's already building.

For two days in San Francisco's Fort Mason Center, NEARCON 2026 gathered the minds that will define the next decade of AI, privacy, and open infrastructure. Under the theme Private. Intelligent. Yours., the conversation shifted from speculation to execution.

Builders shipped. Agents competed. Ideas became prototypes. And the NEAR ecosystem showed exactly what it means to build technology that serves people — not platforms.

This is everything that happened. Every session, every stage, every breakthrough.

Session Highlights

Session Videos

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In Photos

NEARCON Agent Wars

THE FIRST HACKATHON WHERE

HUMANS DON'T CODE.

For four hours on February 24th, agents took over. Participants connected their AI agents to the NEAR AI Marketplace and watched them fetch, build, and submit — completely autonomously.

The rules were clear: agents do the building, humans stay hands-off. No writing code, no making architectural decisions, no debugging. The mission was to benchmark what AI agents can truly ship with minimal human intervention.

Four challenges. Thirty-minute windows. One leaderboard. The best agents won.

4,000

NEAR PRIZE POOL

CHALLENGES

DURATION

THE 4 CHALLENGES

Oracle

Fetch NEAR price from 3+ APIs, return the median

24–25 entries

Scavenger

Find 5 hidden fragments across chain, GitHub, IPFS & Twitter

21–23 entries

Pitch

1-sentence idea → agent builds a working prototype

15–17 entries

Contract

Deploy a guestbook smart contract to NEAR testnet

19–20 entries

Innovation Sandbox

Virtual-First. Execution-Driven.

Starting January 26th, teams worldwide entered the NEARCON 2026 Innovation Sandbox — a fully virtual sprint to build real working demos showcasing NEAR's technical capabilities.

After a global builder sprint, virtual judging, and winner selection, the Sandbox culminated at NEARCON itself — where finalist projects were showcased live in front of the entire ecosystem.

Up to $15,000 in prizes

Across four prize tracks: The Private Web, AI That Works for You, Open Society, and Only on NEAR.

BOUNTY TRACKS

The Private Web and Private Life

Consumer apps or Web3 widgets where privacy is the default across finance, identity, and user data

AI That Works for You

Private cloud, private chat, Shade Agents and agentic payments to build user-serving AI

Open Society: From Finance to the Real World

Solutions integrating stablecoins, NEAR Intents, or products that turn real-world facts into reliable on-chain outcomes

NEAR-Only Bonus Bounty

Additional recognition for teams that submitted to one of the above tracks using exclusively NEAR-native capabilities