At the 2026 final of the Quantum Technologies Competition held as part of TEKNOFEST, 18 teams selected from among 142 teams and 535 participants will compete. 10 teams in the software category and 8 teams in the hardware category have reached the final.
The software final will be held on 28-30 August at the Bilişim Vadisi Gebze Campus. The teams will develop solutions to the problem of dynamic allocation optimization in water resources and distribution networks and will be evaluated in a 24-hour test. The hardware final, meanwhile, will take place on 26-28 August at the TÜBİTAK Gebze Campus; the teams will carry out various calibration and performance measurements on a quantum processor chip.
In both categories, the first-place team will receive 200 thousand lira, the second-place team 175 thousand lira and the third-place team 150 thousand lira. In the hardware category, the advisors of the top-performing teams will also receive awards of 15 thousand, 12 thousand and 10 thousand lira, respectively.
Why it matters
For the finalist teams, the competition requires not only presenting an idea but also running the solution within a limited period and validating it through measurements on a quantum processor chip. In this respect, the event brings together software development in quantum technologies with hardware tuning and performance evaluation within the same framework. While the problem concerning water resources and distribution networks will test the software teams’ technical skills through a directly applicable planning challenge, the success of the hardware teams will depend on the measurement results. The key question that remains is how well the finalists will perform in these two different types of tests and which teams and advisors will receive the awards.
Background
TEKNOFEST is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 3 news reports mentioning it in the past 90 days; the most recent one is dated 25 August 2026. The development here will be added alongside those records in our archive; readers can follow the previous articles bearing the same name in the archive to see the timeline as a whole.