GSoC’27 - How you might want to approach
How do I qualify?
I have been accepted as a contributor in GSoC’26 under the Jitsi organization. You can learn more about my project here.
I went from being unaccepted in 2025 to being accepted in 2026. I have experienced both the outcomes.
to
Understand the program
What we have knowledge about the program, can lead eventually to a better result.
What we might know
It is a program organized by Google and it pays a decent stipend based on the project size.
What we might not know
If mentors like your proposal and select you for the project, Google might not select the project to sponsor. So, you still might not get selected.
Not every org has the same pattern for contributing, applying, mentors reviewing your drafts is the common cycle. If the org has a FAQ section, read that first.
There can be no 1:1 policy. That means you should not DM or email mentors regarding any doubt. and also you should not ask the mentor to review your draft proposal. In that case, there will a community forum where every question-answer is public.
There maybe no requirement of contributions and you are still aggressively contribute which gives you zero advantage over others (you still might want to get familiar even though not a requirement, so that you can create better proposals)
How it works
The general process is;
You choose an org before the official announcement, and start contributing between Sep-Dec, Talk with mentors, ask questions in the community and get familiar with the code base.
Eventually based on the timeline (around Feb-Mar), official list of organization are announced. You get lucky if your org is selected and start creating proposal for the project you want to submit a proposal for and then before finally submitting, you ask your mentor for reviewing your draft proposals and then apply the suggestions.
Eventually Google chooses which projects they want to sponsor. And if your project gets selected and your mentors like your proposal and ranked you #1, you will get the congratulations mail!
But, that is not the fixed process:
- Read how a specific org operates and what are their expectations
- After the official announcement, if your org is not selected, don’t give up yet. Start looking for orgs that you think you can make it. (I started after the released of official org list as the org I was contributing to was not selected)
How to select org
Go to https://www.gsocorganizations.dev/, choose the stack, look the frequency of an org getting selected and also the number of projects that are accepted every year.
This is not the “perfect” path. You still can get accepted into an org where only 1 project is selected for sponsorship. But your luck surface will be to small.
Note: Few orgs gets selected over a longer period consistently. For example: RocketChat, is coming every year since 2017. Jitsi has been coming since 2017 too but they have gaps between 2019-2021 and 2023. So choose an org which has the highest possibility of getting selected in the organization list.
Just a suggestion: Few orgs are not selected if they are coming continuously for the past 5 years. But this is not applicable to all. For example: Palisadoes Foundation was not selected this year. This is just an observation and not a pattern which is applied to every org.
You selected one org, now what?
Setup the repo, read the docs, talk with previous mentors, try to reach out. Most mentors are inactive between Sep-Dec as prev GSoC period ends in Sep itself. Start learning the stack required. Setup things. Start contributing. Keep in mind that you are aiming for
“You getting selected”
and not
“You getting selected and others don’t”
so do not lean into the attitude of not helping others.
You are contributing, now what?
You do meanings full contributions, understand the project in the way and wait for the project lists to release. Try to do project related contributions which indicates that you aware of that part of the code base. Projects getting selected is also requires luck. So check previous years projects list and selected projects. Try to find a pattern if exist. For example: In Jitsi, I found the pattern that if a project is not getting selected in the previous year and still listed in the next year, they are getting selected by Google eventually. But again, it worked for me and might not work for you. So be smart in that case.
If you are unable find a pattern, choose a project you are interested in. Try to choose something which has less attention by other contributors. Google currently heavily selecting AI related projects.
Last year, while contributing to an org, I choose a project everyone submitted a proposal for. But there was a slightly uninteresting “tests” related project which had very less attention but got selected last year. So whoever submitted proposal, got selected. I still regret about that.
After selecting the project, talk to maintainers, ask questions, understand the issue better.
You choose one project, now what?
Start preparing proposal. This is very important. Start preparing proposal very early. You will get stuck a lot of times in finding correct solutions, understanding the issue and so on. Try to add as much diagrams as you can, as much demo as you can.
Look for public proposals which were selected in the previous years in your org (or others). After the project completes, every contributor either submits their code in a public repo or writes a blog. You can find more about it in the projects section in official site
In the view code, if the contributor has made their proposal public, take reference of that. You can refer to this guide created by an OWASP mentor: Google Summer of Code: Your Complete Guide to Success, Part 3
Once proposal is done, you can ask the mentors to review ur draft (if it is allowed). Or ask some other seniors or friends to review your proposal. Fix the typos, other silly mistakes. Have a decent font size and so. Submit proposal according to the timeline.
Remember that you can submit a total of 3 proposals at one time. They can be to same org or different orgs. I would suggest not to apply for one proposal for 3 orgs and would suggest to apply for 3 projects in a same org. But you are smart to figure that out for yourself.
You submitted proposal, now what?
Once you submit, try not to totally get detached from the org. Do participate in conversations, code reviews and so. Still keep contributing as mentors sometimes look for who is still active in the community or so.
Final result
if you are selected, congrats!
if not, ask mentors for feedback. If feedback is clear, try to improve those things. Don’t loose hope. If feedback is not given and you feel you have gave your best but could not rank #1, if you think you should change the org, change it. Learn, apply and submit again next year.