Sonic Hacking Contest 2026 is open, with 58 entries and voting until 1 November

The yearly fan contest for Sonic ROM hacks and mods has dropped its judged and unjudged labels and sorted entries into ROM Hack, Modern 2D and 3D. Voting runs until 8am BST on 1 November.

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The Sonic Hacking Contest, the fan-run event for Sonic ROM hacks and mods that comes round every year, is open for 2026. The organisers posted that the contest was live on SHC.zone on 22 October, and voting closes at 8am BST on 1 November.

This year's field is smaller than the pile that came in. In a quality control update on 12 October, the team said 94 submissions were complete and not obvious spam, and 58 of them made it into the contest.

Three categories, no more judged and unjudged

As RetroRGB notes, the old judged and unjudged tags are gone. Entries now sit in three groups. ROM Hack covers hacks you can play on real hardware or in an emulator. Modern 2D covers work built on the newer 2D Sonic games, and 3D covers mods for the 3D ones. For those two, you need to own the game the entry is built on. Awards come from the community vote, and you need an account on the contest site to take part.

Two entries to start with

Sonic 1 But Your Past Haunts You, by Selbi, is a Mega Drive ROM hack with one rule: a pursuer follows your path a few seconds behind, and if you fall back to where you were, it catches you. Selbi credits Dark Rayman, the copy that mimics Rayman's moves a moment late, as the inspiration. The hack gives you infinite lives and swaps shields and extra lives for invincibility that stacks and shows how long it has left. An extra download makes the Final Zone boss take its full eight hits instead of one.

Sonic Mania Breakout, by Jamesith, sits in Modern 2D. It is a take on Atari's Breakout made with Sonic Mania's assets and the RSDK modding tools, with three zones (Green Hill, Studiopolis and Discovery Realm) and a choice of Sonic, Tails or Knuckles. Eight events, hosted by Cluckoid, the chicken badnik from Mania's Studiopolis boss, throw obstacles at you, and item boxes hold power-ups to get past them. There is a Classic mode that aims for the feel of the arcade original and an Endless mode that runs until game over. Jamesith has put the source code up alongside the Windows builds.

Every entry has its own page on SHC.zone with screenshots, a description and the vote buttons, so there is still time to play a handful before the deadline.

Sources

Image: Image: Selbi

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