Fork Nairobi ’26

The best open-source work happens on stolen time.

Nights, weekends, unpaid maintenance between day jobs. Fork is ninety days where it doesn’t have to be — five builders in residence at Makerspace Nairobi, with the resources to focus on work no for-profit investor will fund.

Applications open September 2026.

How it runs

Apply, talk, move in, ship.

1

Applications open

Name, project, team size, what you’d ship in ninety days, and links to prior work.

September 2026
2

Review

We read every application. All of them, by a person, not a filter.

October 2026
3

Interviews

A conversation about the project, not a pitch. Bring the repo, not a deck.

October 2026
4

Cohort announced

Five builders. That is the whole cohort, and it stays that small on purpose.

Late October 2026
5

Move in

Full time at Makerspace Nairobi. Not remote — you relocate for the residency.

November 2026
6

Ship, then demo

Ninety days on the work, ending in a demo day with funders and collaborators.

90 days

What’s included

Everything that makes ninety days enough.

A stipend

Covering all ninety days, so the residency is the job and not a side project.

The workspace

Makerspace Nairobi, 24/7 entry, and full run of the hardware workshop.

Weekly mentorship

Time with a Cr4fts partner every week, plus introductions across the network.

Compute & credits

Infrastructure and compute credits, because frontier work is not free to run.

Demo day

The final week, in front of funders and collaborators who can actually move.

Possible funding

Exceptional projects get direct funding from Cr4fts at the end of it.

Eligibility

Who it’s for, and what we’ll ask.

Who it’s for

  • Maintainers or primary builders of a meaningful open-source project — or launching one.
  • An OSI-approved licence. Permissive or copyleft, doesn’t matter.
  • Any category: software, hardware, firmware, protocols, tools, scientific instruments, research.
  • Able to relocate to Nairobi full time. This one is not remote.

What the application asks

  • Your name and how to reach you.
  • The project, and how many of you there are.
  • What you’d ship in ninety days.
  • Links to work you’ve already done.

The space

Makerspace Nairobi, workshop included.

Right Wing, 9 Kiambere Rd. Twenty-four hour entry, the full hardware workshop, and four other people in the room who are also building something nobody asked them to.

Ninety days, and the thing finally ships.

Applications open September 2026. Five places, and we read every one.