HACK THE RAILS
What if night travel became our playground?
Night trains are back, and the people who will make them work are builders. On Saturday 21 November 2026, 60 hackers in 20 teams spend one day in Brussels as European Sleeper engineers for a day: real data, real problems, and a night train to catch afterwards.
One day. Free. Curated. Developers, data people, designers, ops profiles and rail fans welcome: the best teams mix people who build with people who know the problem.
When and where
Saturday 21 November 2026 · doors 10:00 · kickoff 10:30 · live demos 17:40 · awards and dinner 19:00
1000 Brussels - Venue TBD though secured > discussing 3 options.
Lunch, snacks and drinks included throughout the event.
Three tracks
1 · Night Rails: the European Sleeper track (main track)
Work on European Sleeper's real operational data and problems, in repositories set up with their team. You sign an NDA and an IP release on the day: what you build goes to European Sleeper. In return:
every participant in this track gets a night-train return ticket to Milan, Prague, Hamburg or Berlin;
the top 2 teams are invited to present to European Sleeper to work out whether their solution goes ahead to implementation.
European Sleeper manages an incredibly complex multi-border operational planning and administrative trail. Because they handle completely separate nightly corridors, they coordinate path access with 6 separate national entities, which makes them the 2nd most international operator of Europe after Austrian state-owned OBB.
The Networks (6): Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, France, and Switzerland.
Let's make their ops smoother!
2 · Trip Planner: built with Stripe
Build the challenger to SkyScanner and Omio: search, compare, combine and pay for multi-leg journeys across Europe in one flow. Are you building the next multimodal travel planning and discovery service that will take over the world? Payments run on Stripe.
3 · Wildcard
Any idea that makes night travel better. No NDA, no constraints. Maybe you'd focus on sound, food, information, light or taking showers. Surprise us.
Prizes, you said?
Best Sustainability: 1000euros cash prize from the City of Brussels
Best Business Model: Stripe credits
Best Use of Voice: ElevenLabs prize
Track 1 Night Rails / (trip planner): a night-train ticket for every track participant + top 2 teams present to European Sleeper
The jury
European Sleeper, SNCB, the City of Brussels and Collibra.
Partners
European Sleeper (title partner) · City of Brussels · Stripe · ElevenLabs · Commons Hub Brussels (Community Centre) · Ingram Technologies
We want trains.