Refund & Cancellation Policy

The short version

Cancel 7 or more days before the event and you get a full refund. After that we have already committed mentor time and prize budget against your slot, so refunds are not available — except if we cancel the event, in which case everyone is refunded in full.

1. Cancellation by you

When you cancel	What you get back
7 or more days before the event (on or before 15 October 2026)	100% refund
Less than 7 days before the event (after 15 October 2026)	No refund
After the event has started, or no-show	No refund

To cancel, email support@firsthack.in from the address you registered with, including your ticket code. We confirm cancellation by email — treat that confirmation, not the request itself, as the cancellation.

2. Cancellation by us

If FirstHack 2026 is cancelled entirely by the organisers, every participant who has paid receives a 100% refund, processed within 7 working days of the cancellation announcement, with no action required from you.

If the event is postponed rather than cancelled, your registration carries over automatically to the new date. If the new date does not work for you, you may request a full refund within 7 days of the postponement being announced.

3. Failed and duplicate payments

Money debited but registration not confirmed. This is usually a delayed bank confirmation and resolves on its own. If your registration has not appeared within 30 minutes, email us with your payment reference — if the payment did reach us we will confirm your slot manually, and if it did not, your bank auto-reverses it within 5–7 working days.

Paid twice by mistake. Duplicate payments for the same participant are refunded in full, always, regardless of the dates above. Email us with both payment references.

4. How refunds are paid

Refunds go back to the original payment method only — the same UPI ID, card or account used to pay. We cannot redirect a refund elsewhere.
We initiate approved refunds within 3 working days of approving the request.
Your bank then takes a further 5–7 working days to credit it. That part is outside our control.
Refunds are for the full amount paid. We do not deduct payment gateway charges from your refund.

5. Where refunds do not apply

Removal from the event for breaching the code of conduct — plagiarism, harassment or abuse.
Not submitting a project, or your team not placing in the results.
Losing access because of your own connectivity, hardware or power issues.

6. Questions or disputes

Email support@firsthack.in or call +919955009888. We respond to payment and refund queries within 24 working hours.

If you are unhappy with how a refund was handled, reply to the same email thread asking for it to be escalated. Please come to us before raising a chargeback with your bank — a chargeback freezes the amount for weeks and we can almost always resolve it faster directly.