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Check Out Our Amazing KendoReact Free Hackathon Winners!

by Kathryn Grayson Nanz
April 17, 2025 Web, React 0 Comments


See some of the stunning projects to come out of the Dev.to challenge with KendoReact Free and what else we’ve been up to.

In case you missed it, things have been pretty busy over here with Progress KendoReact. Last month, we launched our brand-new free React library—opening up 50+ KendoReact components for you to use completely free, no signups or trials required. To celebrate this big news, we also partnered with dev.to to host a hackathon challenge!

We challenged hackathon participants to build an app that included at least 10 KendoReact Free components. Then, to sweeten the deal a little, we added additional prizes for submissions that integrated generative AI technology or Progress design tools (ThemeBuilder, Kendo UI Figma Kits, Progress Design System resources). Participants were competing for a $3,000 grand prize, as well as two $1,000 prizes in the “AIm to Impress” and “Delightfully Designed” categories.

During the challenge window (from March 12 – 23, 2025) more than 100 entries were submitted from 90 unique participants! Users built some truly creative and amazing applications with our components: AI-enabled product expiration trackers, tomato gardening trackers, pickleball resource guides, vacation planners and so much more.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, I highly encourage you to check out all the entries and the incredible things our participants built. They were all so good that it made it especially hard to choose winners … but, unfortunately, we couldn’t give everyone the grand prize.

Our top prizes went to the following projects:

But That’s Not All …

However, if you thought that’s all that happened during the hackathon, you’d be missing out! Other highlights included:

A Super-Fun Livestream

Sam and I teamed up to host a one-hour livestream takeover on the dev.to homepage! We demo’d a couple different ways to spin up a new app and get started with KendoReact components using two popular methods (Next.js and Vite), and then Sam showed us how to turn that React app into a desktop application using .NET. Check out the recording on our YouTube page!

Tips and Mentoring from a Progress Champion

One of our Progress Champions, Chen Weizhi, graciously volunteered his time to be a mentor for hackathon participants. In addition to publishing several blogs about mentoring, tips for creating quality submissions and takeaways from the hackathon, he also individually mentored 15 participants! He regularly posts blogs on dev.to, so if you’re not following him yet … well, what are you waiting for?

Our Big JS World Announcement

Of course, how could I not mention getting to make our KendoReact Free (and hackathon) announcement live on stage at JS World in Amsterdam?! We got to celebrate our big launch with tons of JS devs—and Kendo UI users—from all around the world. 🙂

Curious about KendoReact Free? It really is free. Install it now and start playing around on your own fun project!

KendoReact, React
About the Author

Kathryn Grayson Nanz

Kathryn Grayson Nanz is a developer advocate at Progress with a passion for React, UI and design and sharing with the community. She started her career as a graphic designer and was told by her Creative Director to never let anyone find out she could code because she’d be stuck doing it forever. She ignored his warning and has never been happier. You can find her writing, blogging, streaming and tweeting about React, design, UI and more. You can find her at @kathryngrayson on Twitter.

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