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When Is Code Week 2026? How to Take Part, Certificates and a Ready-Made Lesson Plan

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Türkçe oku

Short answer: EU Code Week 2026 runs from October 10 to 25, 2026. October 10 is a Saturday and October 25 a Sunday. In school days, it covers the weeks of October 12-16 and October 19-23. In Türkiye, Code Week is run by the Ministry of National Education (MEB) General Directorate of Innovation and Educational Technologies (YEĞİTEK). To take part, all you need to do is run a single activity one class period long and add it to the codeweek.eu map. You don't need computers, and you don't need to be a coding expert. When the activity is over, you create the participation certificates for your students yourself.

In this post you'll find the steps to take part, the requirements for the three certificates, a ready-made lesson plan each for schools with and without a computer lab, and bulletin board ideas.

What is Code Week?

Code Week is a coding movement supported by the European Commission and run by volunteers. Its goal is to make coding and digital skills accessible to everyone from an early age. Schools, libraries, associations and individual teachers organize activities and add them to a shared map.

Türkiye has taken part since 2018. According to the Codeweek Türkiye page, the activities are run on behalf of the European Commission by European Schoolnet, of which the Ministry is a member. The Türkiye representatives are Buket Gülnar and Merve Şaban, and the contact address is codeweekturkiye@eba.gov.tr. The same page states the participation requirement plainly: "Any teacher and/or administrator who wants to organize a coding activity can take part in Code Week." So there is no subject restriction. A math teacher, a Turkish teacher or a classroom teacher can organize an activity too.

2026 theme: The Europe-wide theme is "Building Resilience, Connecting & Empowering Communities in the Age of AI." A national theme is also set in Türkiye. The 2025 national theme was "Yeşil Vatan" (Green Homeland). While preparing this post (October 8, 2026), we could not find an announcement of the 2026 national theme on the official pages. If your school receives an official letter, go by the theme there, and keep an eye on the codeweekturkiye.eba.gov.tr page.

How do you add an activity?

  1. Create an account. Sign up through the "Login / Sign up" link on codeweek.eu. You can switch the site language to Turkish at the top of the page.
  2. Add the activity. Fill in the form on the "Register activity" page. The form asks for a title, description, date, location and the participants' age group. Many school activities on the map have Turkish titles, so you can write the title and description in Turkish.
  3. If your school's name doesn't show up in the list, choose the street name and number, or the nearest address. The map uses an address database, and some school names in it are out of date.
  4. Wait for approval. You get an email when the activity is approved or rejected. The email only comes when the status changes, so if none has come, the activity is most likely still being reviewed. If a few days have passed and the activity still doesn't appear on the map, you can email info@codeweek.eu with your country and the activity name.
  5. No separate report after the activity. Since June 2025, the reporting questions are already part of the registration form. If you want to correct details like the number of participants, you can update them from the activity list in your account. You also get the participation certificate from the same page.

Sample text for the form:

Three certificates and their requirements

Certificate Who creates it? Requirement When?
Certificate of Participation The teacher who organized the activity Having added and completed the activity. One certificate is issued per activity. After the activity ends
Certificate of Excellence The Code Week team 10 activities from 10 different organizers linked to a Code Week 4 All alliance, or activities from at least 3 countries in the alliance Early the following year
Super Organiser The Code Week team Organizing and adding at least 10 separate activities at your school, at your institution or online Early the following year

The Code Week pages say that the Excellence and Super Organiser certificates for a calendar year are issued early the following year. One page says January-February, and the frequently asked questions page says around March.

How do you get the participation certificate? You enter the participants' names in the certificate form, and a separate certificate is created for each name. A certificate can't be edited after it's created, so if a name is misspelled you have to create that certificate again. Before entering students' names on a site abroad, check your school's parental consent practice. If you don't want to enter names, you can fill in the participation certificate template from Code Week's Teachers toolkit yourself in class.

Getting a Certificate of Excellence as a school (Code Week 4 All): One teacher adds their activity and starts a new alliance. When the activity is approved, an alliance code arrives by email. This teacher shares the code with the other teachers at the school, and they enter it when adding their own activities. If 10 activities from 10 different organizers are linked to the same code, everyone in the alliance gets the certificate. In practice this means: if 10 teachers at your school each run a one-period activity and use the same code, all of them get the Certificate of Excellence. Code Week 4 All lasts until the end of the calendar year, so activities can be added until December to an alliance started in October.

Ready-made lesson plan 1: no computer lab (40 minutes)

The recommendation machine

We made this activity for the AI focus of the 2026 theme. It uses paper to act out the simple idea behind the "you might also like this" recommendations in video and music apps on a phone. Recommendation systems can work in different ways. The one acted out here is the best-known method, which looks at the choices of people with similar tastes.

Materials: One small slip of paper per student, the board. Grades: 5-6.

  1. Options (5 min). Write 8 numbered options on the board, for example: 1 soccer, 2 chess, 3 drawing, 4 music, 5 books, 6 video games, 7 cycling, 8 cooking.
  2. Collecting data (7 min). Each student writes the numbers of their three favorite different options on their slip, from smallest to largest (for example 2-5-7). Slips written in order are much faster to scan on the table. No names on the slips, only a letter or a number, so each student can recognize their own. Collect the slips and spread them out on a table. This is the class's "data set." Then have the class raise hands for each option and write the count next to the option on the board. You'll need these numbers for the machine's fallback rule and for the discussion.
  3. Set up the machine (5 min). 3-4 students become the "recommendation machine." Write the rule on the board:
    • Tell me two options.
    • Find the slips that have both of these options written on them.
    • Recommend the third option that appears most often on those slips.
    • If there is a tie, recommend whichever of the tied options was chosen most in the whole class.
    • If you find no slips at all, recommend the option chosen most in the whole class.
  4. Rounds (15 min). The student who is going to play a round first takes their own slip from the table and puts it back when the round ends. If the slip stays on the table, the machine will find it and read the hidden answer from it. The student says two of the three options on their slip and keeps the third hidden. The machine applies the rule and makes a recommendation. The student reveals the hidden option, and "hit" or "miss" is written on the board. Play 4-5 rounds, and change the students in the machine every round. It's normal for most rounds to come out "miss." This is not the activity failing, it's the material for the discussion.
  5. Discussion (8 min). Close with these questions:
    • Did the machine know you? No, it only looked at the slips of people similar to you.
    • Can the machine ever recommend an option nobody in the class chose? It can't. It's impossible to recommend what isn't in the data.
    • Why did most rounds miss? 30 slips is very little data. That's why apps want the data of millions of people.
    • What would happen if everyone wrote "soccer"? The machine would recommend soccer to everyone. Things that few people choose stay invisible. Look at the numbers on the board and find which option stayed invisible in your class.
    • Why didn't we write names on the slips? What changes if an app that uses your data also knows your name?

On the computer: The rule applied step by step here is an algorithm, and the slips on the table are the data set. Real apps apply the same idea with the data of millions of people and far more complex methods, but the limits are the same: the system only knows what is in its data, and it drifts toward the majority's choice. It makes a good introduction to AI and data ethics.

Warning: If the students in the machine start applying their own guesses instead of the rule, stop and read the rule again together. The idea that "the machine doesn't guess, it applies the rule" is the core of the activity.

As a backup, or for a second class, each of the 10 activities in our post unplugged coding activities can be added as a Code Week activity. The one closest to the AI theme is activity 9 (AI with cards and biased data).

Ready-made lesson plan 2: with a computer lab (40 minutes)

A program that draws a square, then a loop

For a class doing block-based coding for the first time, the safest Code Week lesson is this:

  1. Introduction (5 min). Open a free block-based environment (for example the Turtle section of Blockly Games, or Scratch). Show the block list, the code area and the stage. Have the computers and the site open before class starts, or startup will eat 5-10 minutes.

    If you use Scratch: In Scratch the sprite walks but leaves no trail. Add the Pen extension with the Add Extension button at the bottom left, and put the "pen down" block at the start of the program. If you don't say this up front, half the class gets stuck saying "it isn't drawing." In the Turtle section the pen is down from the start, so this step isn't needed.

  2. Sequential program (15 min). The sprite should draw a square. Students stack "move forward, turn right" blocks four times, one under the other.

  3. Loop (15 min). Rewrite the same square with the "repeat 4 times" block. Then ask for a triangle. Students find the turn angle by trying: 90 degrees for the square, 120 for the triangle. Expected mistake: students who know a triangle's interior angle try 60 first, and the shape doesn't close. After this attempt, talk about how the turn angle is 180 minus the interior angle.

  4. Wrap-up (5 min). Ask "How many blocks would we write without the repeat block?" For the square the answer is 8 versus 3. Then ask "How many blocks for a hexagon?": 12 in sequence, 3 with repeat, a 60 degree turn.

The detailed flow and common mistakes are in the "First four classes" section of our post What is block-based coding?. To work without creating accounts, see the list of free tools in the same post.

If you have two class periods, do the recommendation machine in the first and the lab in the second. That way the class sees both unplugged and computer-based coding in the same week. You can add them to the map as two separate activities.

Bulletin board ideas

Most of the boards that come up when you search for "kodlama haftası pano" (code week bulletin board) are made of ready-made printouts and logos. A board filled with the students' own work looks better and takes less preparation:

Posters and logos: The Communication toolkit on the "Presentations and Toolkits" page of codeweek.eu has official logos, a badge, flyer, poster, presentation and document templates, and social media examples. The Teachers toolkit has logos, a participation certificate template for students and a presentation introducing Code Week. If you put a logo on your board, use the official files from these toolkits.

Frequently asked questions

I don't know how to code. Can I take part? Yes. The Codeweek Türkiye page says every teacher and administrator can take part. The recommendation machine activity above requires no coding knowledge at all.

Are computers or internet access required? No. Code Week's activity guide also counts unplugged activities. To add the activity to the map, you only need to go online once yourself.

How many students are needed? A single class is enough. A 40-minute lesson with one section counts as one activity on the map.

I missed the week. What can I do? Code Week 4 All alliances last until the end of the calendar year. If there is an alliance at your school, you can add an activity to it until December.

We don't have a robotics kit. Can we do a robotics activity? Yes. In activity 10 of our post unplugged coding activities, students act out a sensor, a controller and an LED to show how a robot works. If you teach the Robotik Kodlama (Robotics Coding) course, our post What happens in a Robotics Coding class? has the flow of the first weeks.

Sources

Sources accessed: October 8, 2026.