AGIMA held a corporate AI hackathon for the RUNIT festival on July 5, 2026

Digital agency AGIMA told about a corporate AI hackathon that the company's employees have been running for about a month to support the RUNIT sports festival — the event is scheduled for July 5, 2026 in Meshchersky Park.

History of the RUNIT Festival

AGIMA has held the RUNIT festival every summer since 2018 — it is a sports event for the IT community. Over the years, the audience has grown dozens of times.

• The first RUNIT race in 2018 drew about 100 participants
• Later, the number of participants grew to 750, then to 2000, then to 3500
• In 2025, almost 4500 runners from the IT community received RUNIT medals, with about 5000 more people coming to support them
• The 2026 festival is scheduled for July 5 in Meshchersky Park
• According to the organizers' estimates, about 10,000 people will join the festival in 2026

Why AGIMA Launched an AI Hackathon

AGIMA has supported RUNIT in different ways each year, but in 2026 decided to do something new — a corporate AI hackathon in which the company's employees develop online games using artificial intelligence tools. According to the company, the entire AGIMA has been living with this event for a month: employees brainstorm ideas, come up with concepts, and develop projects.

The hackathon format turns preparation for a sports celebration into an additional opportunity for internal teamwork with AI tools — instead of a one-time activity before the race, the company stretches employee engagement over several weeks, combining corporate culture with a sports event that is already nearly ten years old. This format overall is becoming an increasingly popular tool within Russian IT companies — it allows you to simultaneously test new AI tools in real tasks, give employees a chance to try themselves in an unfamiliar role, and get a ready-made product prototype in a limited time, rather than just gathering a team for a one-time sports event.

How the Hackathon Relates to Festival Growth

The growth of RUNIT — from a hundred participants in 2018 to several thousand runners and supporters in recent years — has turned the festival into a notable event for the entire Russian IT community, not just for AGIMA employees. Against the backdrop of such scale, a corporate AI hackathon becomes a way for the company to stand out among other participants and organizers, adding a technological component to the sports activity.

This approach also works to retain employee attention within the company throughout the entire month of preparation, not just on the day of the race itself — hackathon participants develop games in parallel with their regular work load. For AGIMA, whose main business is built on digital development for external clients, an internal AI hackathon additionally works as a showcase of its own competencies: the results that employees achieve in developing online games using AI can later be used by the company as case studies when working with clients, demonstrating the practical application of generative tools within their own processes.

What This Means

The AGIMA case shows how Russian digital agencies use corporate AI hackathons not only as a hiring or marketing tool, but also as a way to involve employees in live projects around already existing corporate traditions — in this case, a sports festival that is nearly ten years old in 2026. If the format catches on, RUNIT may acquire a permanent technological component of its program, which will grow alongside the sports component of the festival year after year — just as the race itself has grown from a hundred participants in 2018 to thousands of runners and supporters in less than ten years.