Kick-off with Minsk Python Meetup, 2025

By 2025 the community had already run Hacktoberfest gatherings in 2020, 2021, and 2024. The fifth October we showed up for opened with an online kick-off hosted by Mikalai Saskavets — part rules briefing, part community pep talk, and part curated map of Python repositories waiting for thoughtful pull requests.

• When: Wednesday, 1 October 2025, 20:00–23:30 UTC+3
• Format: online
• Host: Mikalai Saskavets
• Listed with: MLH
• Slides: mpm-hf-2025

What the evening covered

The kick-off walked through Hacktoberfest from first principles: an annual October celebration of open source that started in 2014 (DigitalOcean with GitHub, later partners such as Intel and Appwrite), aimed at supporting projects and bringing new people into contributing.

Practical “how to join” steps came next — register on the Hacktoberfest site, open PR/MRs during October, and target repositories that opted in (a hacktoberfest topic on the repo, or a hacktoberfest-accepted label on the PR/issue). Meaningful work only: whitespace-only “fixes” do not count; maintainers must accept contributions; public repos only; you can show up as a contributor or as a maintainer.

There was also a short reminder that Minsk Python Meetup has a longer open-source streak than Hacktoberfest alone — for example helping organise Wagtail Space Minsk 2018, when Wagtail core contributors visited Minsk. Hacktoberfest years already on the community calendar: 2020, 2021, 2024, and again in 2025.

Rules for Hacktoberfest 2025

Timing and placement mattered more than ever:

• PR/MRs had to be created between 1 and 31 October (across the Hacktoberfest timezone window). Work opened before 1 October did not count, even if it merged in October.
• The target had to be a public, non-archived repository.
• The project needed the hacktoberfest topic, or the PR/MR needed the hacktoberfest-accepted label — Hacktoberfest stayed opt-in.
• Spam / invalid labels, draft PRs, and repos that break Hacktoberfest values did not count.
• A contribution counted when it was merged, labeled hacktoberfest-accepted, or approved in review. After checks, a 7-day review period applied; PRs still in review on 31 October could roll into November and still count.

Rewards in 2025

Universal merch had already faded: from 2023 onward Hacktoberfest leaned on digital Holopin achievements (shipping worldwide was expensive, slow, and environmentally heavy). In 2025 every participant still earned a Holopin badge; an exclusive t-shirt was reserved for Super Contributors — people among the first 10,000 to land six accepted PR/MRs. The lasting benefits the talk emphasized were the usual ones that outlive swag: real contribution experience, networking, and sharper skills.

Curated Python repositories (30+)

The distinctive local angle was a hand-picked list of more than thirty Python repositories — projects that already took part in Hacktoberfest, wanted to take part, or would welcome PRs. They were grouped so people could choose by “how opted-in” a project looked, not only by fame.

Group 1 — topic + active PRs/issues

Popular, active projects that already carried the Hacktoberfest topic:

• aiohttp — async HTTP client/server
• multidict — multidict data structures
• yarl — URL parsing and building
• PyJWT — JSON Web Tokens
• fpdf2 — PDF generation
• gradio — quick UIs for ML models
• ipython — interactive Python shell
• pylint — static analysis

Group 2 — topic present, quieter PR traffic

Still opted in via topic, but with less visible Hacktoberfest buzz — often a good place for careful, useful contributions:

• idna — internationalized domain names
• pytest — testing framework
• azure-core / azure-servicebus — Azure SDK pieces
• filelock — file locking
• pytest-mock — mocking plugin for pytest
• tenacity — retries
• factory_boy — test data factories
• platformdirs — cross-platform directories
• virtualenv — isolated environments
• huggingface-hub — Hugging Face model hub client
• sentry-sdk — Sentry integration
• sympy — symbolic math
• black — code formatter
• toml — TOML parser
• pykeepass — KeePass databases
• Babel — i18n / l10n
• pyflakes — lightweight code checks
• python-gitlab — GitLab API client

Group 3 — no topic yet, but active and label-friendly

Projects without a hacktoberfest topic on the deck date, but with enough activity (and labels) that a solid PR could still be steered toward acceptance:

• rich — rich terminal output
• pillow — imaging
• RapidFuzz — fast fuzzy matching
• minio — S3-compatible object storage client
• ipykernel / notebook — Jupyter pieces
• realtime — Supabase Realtime client
• PyGithub — GitHub API client

Takeaway

Hacktoberfest remains a chance to sharpen skills, give back to libraries you already use, and meet other developers — with Minsk Python Meetup happy to have you among the people who actually ship contributions. Join the community spaces below if you want company for the next October.

Sources & links