Australian Defense Tech Hackathon
Time to Accelerate Defense Innovation!
Join us and 100+ hackers from across Australia for the first edition of the Australian Defense Tech Hackathon on February 6-8, 2026, in Canberra, Australia.
Connect with fellow defense innovators, meet potential co-founders, and work on projects that could save lives!
We'll prepare challenges based on real-world problems, and you can bring your own project and receive feedback from experienced mentors.
We'll put you in a position to deploy your project in the real world after the hackathon 🚀
Goals
1) Solve urgent defense and security challenges: Get inspired by the challenges we have prepared, together with partners in Australia and NATO, driven by real needs. You can also bring your own project—you'll get feedback from folks who have been on the front line to ensure you're solving real problems.
2) Launch new careers and companies: Whether you're breaking into the defense sector or building your own product and company, our goal with the hackathon is to put you in a position to continue towards deployment.
3) Strengthen Australia through defense innovation: Here is where Australia's top talent meets the most pressing threats. By building and shipping, we demonstrate what a fast, capable, and resilient Australia's defense ecosystem looks like.
Focus Areas
We’ll feature 10–15 challenges across domains, with this hackathon concentrating on mission-critical capabilities aligned to Australia’s strategic and operational needs, focused on:
SIGINT & OSINT
Computer Vision & Edge AI
Unmanned & Autonomous Systems (UxS)
Electronic Warfare (EW)
Modular Sensors
Drone & Counter-Drone Tech
Battlefield Economics & Scaling Production
Agenda
Friday, February 6, 2026
Kick-off Day
12:00 - Doors open, Networking
13:00 - Welcome and Opening Program
14:00 - Workshops
17:00 - Introduction to Mentors & Challenges, Last-Minute Team Formation
18:00 - Start of Hacking
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Hacking continues all day
Sunday, February 8, 2026
12:00 - End of Hacking, Lunch Break
Demo Day (Open to Visitors)
13:00 - Pitches of the winning teams
15:00 - Award Ceremony
15:30 - After-party & Networking
To give the participants time and space to focus on their projects, we'll have no visitors during the hackathon. If you're curious about the outcomes and what the teams have built, please sign up as a visitor for our demo day on Sunday.