Jalandhar (Ens): India’s flagship student innovation challenge, the Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2026, brought thousands of young innovators from across the country to a common platform to develop solutions to real world challenges. At Lovely Professional University (LPU), the road to the national hackathon began with Gear UP Season 5, the university’s internal gateway for SIH 2026, which saw more than 6,000 LPU students form 900+ teams and tackle over 200 problem statements across hardware and software domains. The 36 hour hackathon marked the largest edition of Gear UP, organized on the LPU campus, creating a large scale internal innovation platform through which student teams developed and refined their solutions ahead of the SIH selection process.
This year, 226 problem statements across 18 themes formed the basis of the Smart India Hackathon challenge, giving participating teams a wide range of real world areas to work on. The problem statements covered 172 software and 54 hardware challenges, with themes spanning smart automation, disaster management, blockchain and cybersecurity, med-tech, bio-tech and health tech, smart education, agriculture and rural development, space technology, robotics and drones, transportation and logistics, renewable and sustainable energy, clean and green technology, smart vehicles, heritage and culture, travel and tourism, and other emerging areas.
Gear UP Season 5 adds to LPU’s growing innovation record, supported by a continued focus on giving students opportunities to build, test, and compete beyond the classroom. This is central to the university’s Edu-Revolution, which places practical exposure and application at the core of the student experience.
