I have been invited for a coding competition in Hungary by a well known company. The company says I need to apply for a tourist visa. But I noticed on the embassy site that there is a conference visa as well.
I am a bit confused. I am sure I don't need a business visa because this is just a fun activity and there is no prize money as such. But will a tourist visa be fine ?
There is no formal distinction between visas for tourism or business purposes in the Schengen countries. There's just a single kind of visa: uniform type C short-stay visas, with a single application process.
In the visa application, you have to explain why you're going, but you won't be held responsible for classifying the application into rigid "tourism" and "business" categories. Sure enough there are checkboxes for "purpose of travel" in the standard application form, but that's just for convenience and ease of processing, so that straightforward tourists or business travelers won't have to word an explanation of their own -- not because the answer there selects between different sets of rules. You can always enclose a more detailed free-form explanation to clarify your answer.
