Most children don’t get to say they took part in an entrepreneurship festival before they’ve left primary school. In December 2022, more than 100 of them did. They came to the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival (SEF) for CodeNova, a free coding championship for kids that iCodejr ran with Sheraa. Each child had two hours to build a project on their own, and the winners collected their prizes on the festival’s main stage.
The full story of the day is in iCodejr’s announcement on Market Buzz. Khaleej Times also named the champions in its report on the festival’s closing ceremony: read the Khaleej Times story.
CodeNova 2022 at a glance
| Date | Sunday 18 December 2022, during SEF 2022 (17–18 December) |
| Venue | Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park (SRTIP), Sharjah |
| Partner | Sheraa, the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center, which organises SEF |
| Students | 100+, registered as individuals |
| Groups | Cadet (Grades 1–4), Captain (Grades 5–8), Colonel (Grades 9–12) |
| Build time | 2 hours, with a choice of themes |
| Prizes | Up to AED 3,000 in cash and gifts |
| Entry | Free |
A solo challenge
Most student hackathons are team events, and that includes iCodejr’s own Code Battle. CodeNova was different: it was an individual-format hackathon, so every child planned, built and finished a project alone. There was no teammate to lean on, and every idea on the screen was theirs.
Each student picked a theme and had a two-hour coding window. The oldest group, Colonel, could choose text-based languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C, C++ and Java, or block-based platforms such as Scratch, Thunkable and Code.org. Places filled up before the day, and every participant received a blockchain certificate of participation.
Coding at a festival for entrepreneurs
SEF 2022 was the sixth edition of the festival, created and organised by Sheraa. It brought more than 5,000 visitors, founders and would-be entrepreneurs to SRTIP over one weekend, with talks, workshops and pitch competitions for start-ups.
Putting a children’s coding championship in the middle of all that made a point. The skills founders use every day, such as spotting a problem, building a solution and explaining it to other people, are the same skills a child practises in a hackathon. Sheraa’s support meant those skills started at school age.
Winners on the main stage
The CodeNova winners weren’t sent home with a quiet handshake. Their prizes were presented at the festival’s closing awards ceremony, the same session that honoured SEF’s start-up founders and pitch winners. Hannan Moti, Founder and CEO of iCodejr, was called to the stage to announce them.
The moment most people remember came from the youngest group. Gopika, the Grades 1–4 champion, walked up with a giant winner’s sign that was bigger than she was, and the whole audience fell for her.
| Group | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cadet (Grades 1–4) | Gopika | Kanishka | Kashika |
| Captain (Grades 5–8) | Waleed | Omar | Nithilan |
| Colonel (Grades 9–12) | Mohamed | Aarush | Maksym |
"Starting at the grassroots"
“We are pleased to have the support of organisations like Sheraa that want to create skills for future entrepreneurs starting at the grassroots – at schools.” — Hannan Moti, Founder and CEO, iCodejr
Hannan added that coding sessions and hackathons do more than build creative thinking. They also teach children to work with others and to show what they can do.
Thank you
Thank you to Sheraa for welcoming CodeNova into the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival, to SRTIP for hosting, and to every parent who brought a young coder along. Above all, thank you to the students.
What came next
Updated 17 October 2026.
CodeNova was iCodejr’s third student hackathon that year. It followed Code Battle’s Dubai chapter in February 2022 and its Sharjah chapter with Sheraa in November. At the time, the team was already planning events in Abu Dhabi and the other emirates. CodeNova itself came back as a solo hackathon at Dtec in Dubai in January 2024. Code Battle went on to run chapters in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi in 2023, and brought in 450+ students from five emirates in 2024 and 53+ schools in 2025.
Code Battle 2026 takes place on 21 November 2026 at Heriot-Watt University Dubai. Entry is free, and teachers can register their school on codebattle.tech. Thinking of running a hackathon yourself? Read our guide to hackathons in the UAE for schools.
In the news
- Khaleej Times, 19 December 2022: 5,000 visitors attend the biggest Sharjah Entrepreneurial Festival so far
- Market Buzz, 4 January 2023: iCodejr hosts CodeNova hackathon for kids during Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival
Want your child coding like this?
CodeNova coders built a whole project on their own in two hours. Our live one-to-one classes help children aged 5–18 build that confidence, at their own pace.
