🎯 The Challenge

Join BlueQubit's quantum hackathon, run together with MidQWest 2026, the student-led Midwest Quantum Hackathon on the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) campus! It is one of the MidQWest challenge quests. Most participants will compete online, and some will join in person in Chicago. The competition is open to all experience levels, from quantum enthusiasts to seasoned researchers.

In 2025, Google's Quantum Echoes experiment (Nature, 2025) reported a verifiable quantum advantage. Its Willow chip measured out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs), which track how quantum information scrambles. Google estimates it did this about 13,000× faster than the best known classical method on one of the world's fastest supercomputers. You take the classical side.

• The task: hidden quantum circuits, most of them too large to simulate exactly. For each one, estimate one OTOC per qubit by running the circuit on BlueQubit by ID. You never see the graded circuits themselves. Open sample circuits come with QASM you can download and simulate any way you like.
• Scoring: each circuit is its own problem, scored on how well your estimates correlate with its exact values. The later, harder circuits count more.
• AI is encouraged: the challenge is built for AI agents. You steer, and your agent runs the simulations.

Circuit sizes, points and the full details are released at kickoff.

New to OTOCs? Start with our OTOC tutorial.

📅 Schedule

All times are Central Time (CT).

• Hacking starts: Saturday, November 21, 2:00 pm CT (circuits and full challenge details are released at this time) 🚀
• Hackathon duration: 24 hours
• Hacking ends: Sunday, November 22, 2:00 pm CT (final submissions due)

⚡ Quick start

1. Before the event: create a BlueQubit account and join this hackathon. Online, you compete individually. To join in person, pre-register for MidQWest too. There, a team of up to 5 shares one account, and solo hackers are welcome.
2. At kickoff: redeem your $30 credit coupon (Account → Billing → Redeem Coupon). The code is coming soon.
3. Work in Hybrid mode or on your own computer. In Hybrid mode, the SDK and your API token are already set up, and Claude Code is installed and ready to go.
4. Submit one CSV per circuit on that circuit's problem, with a short note on your method. Up to 20 submissions per problem, and your best one counts.
5. Deadline: 2:00 pm CT, Sunday, November 22.

Step-by-step notes for your AI agent are added here at kickoff.

🆘 Questions and help

Email rhik@bluequbit.io, or ask in the #midwest-2026 channel on the BlueQubit Discord. Asking the organizers is always allowed, including for online participants.

🎟️ Credits

Each participant (or in-person team) gets $30 in BlueQubit credits at kickoff. The coupon code is coming soon. You'll redeem it at Account → Billing → Redeem Coupon. Track spending on the usage page. Small jobs are free.

💬 Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who can participate? Students, researchers, hobbyists, and quantum enthusiasts (18 or older) from anywhere can join online. In person, MidQWest is open to any undergraduate or graduate student at a Midwest university, free of charge; pre-register for MidQWest to get schedule, room and logistics details.

2. Can I participate with a team? Only in person. Online participants compete individually, and only the account holder is recognized. In person, you can come with a team or join MidQWest's team-matching sessions at the event, and solo hackers are welcome. A BlueQubit team has at most 5 people sharing one account, and MidQWest expects most teams to have 4 or 5.

3. How is this related to MidQWest? MidQWest 2026 is a weekend-long, student-led hackathon in UIC's Student Center East (750 S Halsted St, Chicago, IL 60607) on Chicago's Near West Side, co-organized by student quantum organizations at UIUC, UChicago, Purdue, Purdue Northwest, UW–Madison and UIC, with challenge quests, workshops and mentorship. This BlueQubit challenge is one of its quests, and it is also open online worldwide. Everyone appears on the Leaderboard tab under the "World" view, and MidQWest participants also appear under the "UIC" view.

4. Do I need prior experience in quantum computing? Not really. Knowing what a quantum circuit and an expectation value are will get you started, and MidQWest runs workshops on the fundamentals for in-person participants. Experience with quantum simulators and approximation methods will give you an edge.

5. How long does the challenge last? 24 hours, from 2:00 pm CT on November 21 to 2:00 pm CT on November 22.

6. What kind of problems can I expect? Estimating OTOCs of quantum circuits, one problem per circuit: open sample circuits and hidden graded ones. See "The Challenge" above.

7. How do I prepare?

• Get comfortable with quantum circuits and expectation values. BlueQubit's tutorials are a good place to start.
• Work through our OTOC tutorial: what OTOCs measure, why they're hard to simulate, and how to run exact, MPS and Pauli-path simulations on BlueQubit.
• For background, read Google's Quantum Echoes paper, Observation of constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity (Nature, 2025).
• Read up on approximate methods such as matrix product states and Pauli propagation.

8. Which tools can I use? The graded circuits can only be run by ID, on the BlueQubit platform or with the BlueQubit Python SDK. For the sample circuits, you can also download the QASM files and use any tools you like. AI assistants are welcome on every problem.

9. How are winners selected? By total points across all problems, with each problem counting your best submission. Ties are broken by time penalty: the lower total time from the start to your best submission on each problem wins.

10. How do I keep track of my compute? On the usage page.

11. Is there a participation fee? No. Registration is free!