Opportunity brief
An alert just fired. Checkout is failing. Can your team find out why before the clock runs out?
KEEP ALIVE '26 is a national incident response championship for students who have been learning DevOps. You've practised Linux, Docker and Kubernetes. Now test it on the field: read the alerts, dashboards, logs and traces of a live microservices system, find what broke and why, and explain how you would fix it.
It runs on the same incident platform as Panic at the Pod, the live Kubernetes incident challenge by CNCG Noida, our Community Partner. KEEP ALIVE takes that format nationwide, built and scaled for students. It is hosted by GDG on Campus IIIT Nagpur at TantraFiesta 2026, the national technical fest of IIIT Nagpur.
Why take part
- ₹25,000 in cash prizes for the top three teams and the Sharpest RCA award
- Investigate real incidents on a real observability stack: Grafana dashboards, Prometheus metrics, logs and traces
- No production experience needed. A 30-minute hands-on session at the finale teaches every tool you will use
- After the finale, the platform team walks everyone through all 10 incidents and how they were solved
- Goodies and certificates for every finalist, and merit certificates for the winners
- Bring your senior: one recent graduate (2024 to 2026) of your college can join your team
Round 1: The Night Shift (online, 11 to 18 October)
- One 30-minute assessment per team, taken once from the team leader's account
- Multiple-choice questions on DevOps and observability, one incident to investigate from screenshots of dashboards, logs and traces, and two short written answers
- Proctored and taken in full screen. No AI tools, no search and no second device
- The top 15 teams reach the finale. The next 10 teams form the waitlist
Stay updated: Follow the GDG on Campus IIIT Nagpur WhatsApp Channel for Round 1 reminders, results and finale updates → https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbDuHCW2ZjCp5G6QHc3K
Finale: KEEP ALIVE Live (on campus, 26 October, IIIT Nagpur)
- A hands-on session on the platform, Grafana and the report form, with one practice incident
- Phase 1, First Responder: 6 incidents in 90 minutes
- Phase 2, Deep Dive: 3 intermediate incidents and 1 critical, cascading incident in 90 minutes
- You never change the system. You read its signals and submit a short solution report for each incident: the root cause, the evidence and the fix
- Each team presents its findings to the judges in a 10-minute slot
Who can join
- Teams of exactly 3, all from the same college
- UG, PG and diploma students from any branch or year
- Up to one alumnus per team, graduated in 2024, 2025 or 2026. Working alumni are welcome
- PhD students and research scholars are not eligible
- Made for students with atleast 6 to 12 months of DevOps learning: if you have used Linux and Docker, run kubectl and opened Grafana a few times, you are ready
Important dates (IST)
- Registration closes: Sunday, 18 October, 11:29 PM
- Round 1 window: Sunday, 13 October, 9:00 AM to Sunday, 18 October, 11:59 PM
- Finalists and waitlist announced: Monday, 19 October, 6:00 AM
- Finalists confirm their seats: by Tuesday, 20 October, 11:59 PM
- Finale: Monday, 26 October, at IIIT Nagpur
Prizes
- Winner: ₹12,000
- 1st runner-up: ₹7,000
- 2nd runner-up: ₹4,000
- Sharpest RCA award: ₹2,000, for the most accurate root causes among teams outside the top 3
Good to know
- Travel and stay for the finale are arranged by each team. Every team brings at least 2 laptops
- AI tools, search and documentation are allowed in the finale, but every team must be able to explain what it submits