# Social Summer of Code 2026 — Full Guide

> Social Summer of Code (SSoC) is a large-scale open source program — Edition 5, 2026 — where contributors work on real projects and earn points on a live leaderboard. This platform hosts the leaderboard, project directory, contributor profiles, analytics, and certificate delivery. It is static and database-free; leaderboard data is published as machine-readable files.

## About

Social Summer of Code (SSoC), Edition 5, is an open source program that runs from 2026-03-01 to 2026-08-15. Contributors submit pull requests to participating projects; each merged, correctly-labelled PR earns points, and contributors are ranked on a public leaderboard. The platform also recognises mentors and project admins, and issues verifiable certificates.

## Key facts

- Program: Social Summer of Code 2026 (Edition 5)
- Dates: 2026-03-01 to 2026-08-15
- Projects: 300
- Participants: 50000
- Mentors: 5000
- Website: https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com

## How scoring works

Contributions are scored by a difficulty label applied to each merged pull request. Core difficulty levels and their configured point values:

- Easy: 20
- Medium: 30
- Hard: 40

The leaderboard is the authoritative source for current scores. Scoring runs periodically; the last-updated time is in the summary data file below.

## Pages

### Leaderboard
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard

Live contributor rankings by total points, with a podium and Hall of Fame.

### Projects
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/projects

Directory of participating projects, plus tabs for contributors and for mentors & project admins.

### Top Projects
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/project-admins

Project-admin hall of fame — top projects by PRs, contributors, and merge time.

### Timeline
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/timeline

Programme growth over time: snapshot navigator, contributor deep dives, and project deep dives.

### Analytics
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/analytics

Programme-wide analytics dashboard: KPIs, retention, cohorts, trends, and a custom explorer.

### Certificates
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/certificates

Certificate lookup by email/phone or ID, with verification and download.

### Events
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/events

Programme events and speaker sessions.

### Profile
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/profile

Individual contributor profile: PRs, score, and level breakdown.

### PR Validator
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/validator

Check whether a pull request qualifies for scoring (repo, merge status, labels, dates, blacklist).

### Security & Privacy
https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/security

Platform architecture, database-free design, PII separation, and a participant safety guide.

## Machine-readable data

These files are published at the site root and contain the underlying data as JavaScript globals (parseable as JSON after the leading assignment):

- Summary — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/summary.js: Programme totals — PRs, points, bonus points, and last-updated timestamp.
- User scores — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/user-scores.js: Per-contributor scores keyed by GitHub username.
- PR list — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/pr-list.js: Every scored pull request with author, project, and label.
- Project admin metrics — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/pa-metrics.js: Per-project-admin aggregate metrics.
- Timeline history — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/timeline-history.js: Snapshot-by-snapshot programme history.
- Badges — https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/leaderboard/badges.js: Contributor and project badges.

## How to participate

- Participant registration: https://forms.gle/VqDrcNfzfKFCCrkr5
- Mentor registration: https://forms.gle/VqDrcNfzfKFCCrkr5
- Project Admin registration: https://forms.gle/VqDrcNfzfKFCCrkr5

## Community and contact

- Discord: https://discord.gg/Nh7hF2TPFs
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/socialsummerofcode
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/socialsummeroc
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/socialsummerofcode
- Email: socialsummerofcode@gmail.com

## Platform and privacy

The site is a static, database-free single-page application. Public leaderboard data is served as static files; private registration data is never deployed. See https://portal.socialsummerofcode.com/security for the full architecture and data-protection details.