​​Time to Accelerate Defense Innovation in Africa 🚀

​​​Join us and 100+ hackers for the South African Defense Tech Hackathon on July 17-19, 2026, in Cape Town, South Africa 🦾

​​​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, the EU, and beyond—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

​​​If you’re curious about the outcomes and what the teams have built, you can join the Demo Day on Sunday as an EDTH Community visitor by selecting a Community Visitor ticket.

​Not yet part of the EDTH Community?

​Get free access to all EDTH Community events for one year, including hackathon demo days, webinars, networking sessions, and our flagship New Defense Summit

​Sign up to become a member here: https://community.eurodefense.tech/

​​​Agenda

​​​Friday, July 17, 2026

​​​12:00 - Doors open, Networking

​14:00 - Workshop Session #1​

​15:00 - Workshop Session #2

​​16:00 - Workshop Session #3

​​17:00 - Presentation of Challenges and Mentors

​​18:00 - Start of Hacking, Team Formation & Networking

​​​Saturday, July 18, 2026

​​​Hacking all day and overnight

​​​Sunday, July 19, 2026​

​​10:00 - Testing of Presentations

​​​12:00 - End of Hacking

​​​Demo Day (Open to Visitors)

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

​​​15:00 - Award Ceremony

​​​15:30 - After-party & Networking

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