South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT said on Monday it will recruit mentees for the "2026 Open Source Contribution Academy" from May 12 to June 14.

The Open Source Contribution Academy is a practice-focused programme in which participants learn know-how from leader-level developers and contribute to real projects. Any student or developer with basic software development skills can apply.

This year, 11 projects are available for participation, including Apache Zeppelin, Node.js, Chromium and LLVM. Selected mentees will receive about 13 weeks of online and offline mentoring from 27 core developers for each project.

This year, the academy will newly introduce a contribution course using AI code analysis and optimisation tools such as Claude Code and GPT.

After the programme ends, teams with strong results will receive four awards in total, including the minister's award from the ministry and the president's award from the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), along with prize money. Applications can be submitted on the Open Source Hub.

Nam Cheol-gi (남철기), director general for software policy at the ministry, said experience contributing to global open-source projects is an irreplaceable capability for developers and, at the national level, a foundation for securing technological sovereignty. He said he hopes the academy will help Korean developers become leading players in the global open-source ecosystem.