​​Time to Accelerate European Defense Innovation 🚀

​​​Join us and 100+ hackers from across Europe and beyond for the European Defense Tech Hackathon on March 13-15, 2026, in Brussels, Belgium—right after the EDF Info Days and in parallel to BEDEX 🦾

​​​Connect with fellow defense innovators, meet potential co-founders, and build projects with real-world impact that could save lives.

​​​We’ll bring challenges rooted in pressing defense and security problems, and you’re welcome to bring your own ideas.

​​​Throughout the event, you’ll get hands-on guidance from seasoned mentors—and after the hackathon, we’ll help you take your project closer to real-world deployment 🚀

​Challenges

​We'll focus on solving urgent security challenges, including countering Shahed and fiber-optic drones, GNSS-denied localization, low-cost sensing and tracking, secure identification, mesh networking, and battle damage assessment.

​Work on reducing operator exposure, address edge health monitoring, and full-spectrum data fusion for defense and civil protection—and we'll also include a policy-focused challenge track.

​​​​​Goals

​​​​1) Solve urgent defense and security challenges: Each hackathon features a fresh set of challenges sourced directly from frontline partners in Ukraine, the UK, and across the EU—driven by real needs, not theory.

​​​​2) Launch new careers and companies: Whether you're breaking into the defense sector or building your own product and company, we connect you with jobs, funding, and pathways toward real-world deployment.

​​​​3) Strengthen Europe through defense innovation: Here is where Europe's top talent meets the most pressing threats. By building and shipping, we demonstrate what a fast, capable, and resilient European defense ecosystem looks like.

​​​Visitors

​​​To give 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 Monday.

​​​Agenda

​​​Friday, March 13, 2026

​​​Kick-off Day

​​​12:00 - Doors open, Networking

​​​13:00 - Welcome by Organizers

​​​14:00 - Workshops, Team Formation, and Networking

​​​17:00 - Presentation of Mentors and Challenges, Networking

​​​18:00 - End of Kick-off Day

​​​Saturday, March 14, 2026

​08:00 - Doors open, Start of Hacking

​​​Hacking all day

​​​Sunday, March 15, 2026​

​​10:00 - Testing of Presentations

​​​12:00 - Lunch Break, End of Hacking

​​​Demo Day (Open to Visitors)

​​​13:00 - Pitches of the winning teams

​​​15:00 - Award Ceremony

​​​15:30 - After-party & Networking

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​If you want to become a partner write to [email protected]