European Defense Tech Hackathon – Paris

Time to Accelerate European Defense Innovation 🚀
Join us and 200+ hackers from all across Europe and beyond for the European Defense Tech Hackathon on June 12-14, 2026, in Paris, France, right before Eurosatory.
We're thrilled to co-organize this hackathon with the team behind the Adopt AI Summit (Dec 3-4, 2026, at Grand Palais)—matching AI expertise with real-world deployment needs in the defense sector.
Wanna come as a visitor? Join our EDTH Community here: https://community.eurodefense.tech/
Goal
We want to bridge the gaps between technologists, the public sector, investors, and operators in dual-use and defense technology. This hackathon will demonstrate the talent and drive of the European ecosystem.
Get inspired by the challenges we have prepared, or feel free to bring your own project. You'll get feedback from folks who have been on the frontline to ensure you're solving real problems.
Our goal with the hackathon is to put you in a position to continue towards deployment.
Who joins the hackathon?
Hackers
Hackers are the people actually building. They form small teams, pick a problem, and spend the weekend turning ideas into working prototypes. It starts on Friday with team formation, gets intense on Saturday, and ends on Sunday with our Demo Day where they show what they’ve built.
Mentors
Mentors are the ones helping the hackers with all the relevant expertise to build a defense tech project. They share real-world context and help teams avoid dead ends, whether it’s sharpening the problem, pressure-testing assumptions, or making something actually deployable.
Visitors
To give participants time and space to focus on their projects, there will be no visitors during the hacking phase (until Sunday 12 pm).
If you’re curious about the outcomes and what the teams have built, you can join the Demo Day on Sunday (from 1 pm) 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/
Challenges
We'll focus on solving urgent security challenges: stopping Shahed-class and fiber-optic drones, tracking targets across messy sensor setups, and keeping systems working when everything is jammed.
Think low-cost sensing, AI that can tell what’s coming and where it’s going, and interceptor logic that goes from detection to action.
Comms that don’t rely on infrastructure, making sense of data from everywhere—RF, cameras, thermal, you name it—and autonomy that actually reduces operator load.
Agenda
Friday, June 12, 2026
Kick-off Day
12:00 - Doors open, Networking
13:00 - Welcome by Organizers, Keynote
14:00 - Workshops, Team Formation, and Open-ended Networking
17:00 - Presentation of Mentors and Challenges
18:00 - Start of Hacking
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Hacking continues all day
Sunday, June 14, 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