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- 🚨 From Berlin, for Europe.
🚨 From Berlin, for Europe.
Fostering Defense Innovation for European Sovereignty
Fynn van Rießen, Benjamin Wolba & Janick Bayer
July 14, 2026
Last week, we hosted the first Berlin Defense Tech Week. Beyond a single hackathon, we organized 9 core events across the city, turning Berlin into a weeklong meeting point for Europe’s defense tech community.
Have a look at some of the outcomes below, and follow us on LinkedIn as we share more projects, teams, and announcements from the week.
In July, we are hosting two more workshops to help you bring your product into the defense market and to make the right first hires.
Next up is the European Defense Tech Festival: From August 20–23, we’re taking over a secret airfield just outside Berlin for four days of field testing and demoing. If you’ve built something at one of our hackathons and are ready to take the next step, this is for you!
After the festival, our hackathon series returns with events in Hamburg, Pristina, Lviv, and Singapore, with more locations to follow.
Applications are open until July 31 for a fully funded 14-day hacker house in Tallinn, organized with EWOR and Creative Destruction Lab Estonia. From September 9–24, 20 founders and builders will work on the infrastructure Europe needs to become more resilient.
Last, our EDTH co-founder Benjamin Wolba recently appeared on the Defence Forward podcast to discuss how frontline experience, rapid testing, and cross-border collaboration can move defense technology from ideas to deployment.
For even more events, read below or check out our full event calendar.
Also below:
Danish startup Triton Depth raises DKK 7.5 million to scale AI-powered underwater surveillance for ports and critical subsea infrastructure
How Europe keeps interceptor drones up to date — an article by Nicholas Wallace
The new Merkblatt zur Kriegswaffeneinstufung von Loitering-Munition und Drohnen — helping defense startups navigate Germany’s export and licensing maze without waiting months for answers to common classification questions
How Ukraine built a war fighting state — a blog post by Austin Vernon
What Came Out of Berlin Defense Tech Week
By the end of the first Berlin Defense Tech Week, we had hosted 9 core events across the city. We organized the week together with DroneAid Collective, Marienpark Berlin, and Berlin Partner, with MITS Capital as our key partner and support from more than 30 partner and media organizations.
Some parts of the week built on already familiar formats from our hackathons: together with our long-standing partners DroneAid Collective and Pilotix, 36 participants assembled 18 analog FPV drones, now ready for quality control.
The week also led to new opportunities beyond the hackathon. southwestX announced an incubation opportunity worth up to €100K for one Berlin team, while MITS Capital announced a new investment in Dropla on stage.
Berlin Partner shared its take on the week, including how its AMBER cluster contributed workshops and challenges around additive manufacturing and startup funding. Read their recap on LinkedIn.
We’ll share more projects and outcomes from Berlin on LinkedIn over the coming days.
🚨 Europe’s Largest Gathering of Defense Tech Builders
For more than two years, we’ve been running defense tech hackathons all across Europe and beyond ...
Hundreds of builders, operators, founders, engineers, investors, and military personnel came, and dozens of new projects and companies emerged. Now it’s time to see what they’ve actually built!
From August 20–23, we’re hosting the first European Defense Tech Festival together with HANGAR: Start-up Zentrum at an airfield just outside Berlin. Here is what you can expect:
Agenda
August 20 — Kickoff & Networking
We open the hangar doors for workshops, industry showcases, early demos, and conversations across the European defense tech ecosystem.
August 21 — Build & Prepare
Teams refine their systems and demos with direct feedback from operators, mentors, and industry experts.
August 22 — Field Testing & First Demos
Teams move onto the airstrip to test drones, autonomous systems, counter-UAS concepts, communications, sensors, and tracking systems under live conditions.
August 23 — Final Demo Day
The strongest teams and startups demonstrate their systems live in front of military representatives, procurement officials, investors, operators, industry leaders, and media — followed by one final afterparty before the hangar doors close.
📍 Secret Airfield near Berlin, Germany | August 20–23, 2026
Event website: https://eurodefense.tech/festival/
Registration on Luma: https://luma.com/edtf-2026
Hackathons Worldwide
🇩🇪 Hamburg, Germany | August 28–30, 2026
The weekend after the festival, our European Defense Tech Hackathon series continues in Hamburg. More than 100 participants will spend the weekend working on real defense challenges, with direct feedback designed to help promising projects continue beyond Sunday.
Register here: https://luma.com/edth-2026-hamburg
🌍 Where else will we be?
The following hackathons are already confirmed, and you can sign up now!
Upcoming Online Events (as part of our EDTH Community)
July 21 | 18:00 CEST
A practical conversation about positioning defense products, navigating military procurement, and selling to ministries of defense.
July 29 | 19:00 CEST
A practical session on making your first hires, choosing between employees and contractors, and building an early team without exhausting your runway.
Get free access to all EDTH Community events for one year, including hackathon demo days, webinars, networking sessions, and our flagship New Defense Summit.
🚨 Build Europe’s Resilient Future in Tallinn
From September 9–24, EDTH, EWOR, and Creative Destruction Lab Estonia are bringing 20 exceptional founders and builders to Tallinn for a fully funded 14-day hacker house focused on European resilience.
We’re looking for ambitious people working on sovereign compute, resilient communications, energy intelligence, supply-chain autonomy, and cyber resilience. Participants will receive access to leading mentors, domain experts, potential customers, and investors. The strongest teams may qualify for the EWOR Fellowship and €500,000 in funding.
You can apply with an existing project or simply a strong new idea. Applications close July 31. Reply to this newsletter for the application link, and share it with someone who should be building Europe’s critical infrastructure.
Read the announcement here.
Further Reading
Danish Defense Tech Startup Raises DKK 7.5 Million for Underwater Surveillance
Danish defense tech startup (and EDTH alumni) Triton Depth has raised DKK 7.5 million in seed funding led by EIFO and The Creator Fund. The company is developing seabed-mounted acoustic sensors that use AI to detect and classify activity around ports, cables, and other critical underwater infrastructure.
The technology is already being tested in Danish ports. The new funding will support larger deployments, further product development, and the datasets needed to improve its detection models.
Read the full story.
How Europe keeps interceptor drones up to date
Drone technology is advancing faster than conventional procurement cycles. Nicholas Wallace looks at how Europe can field interceptor systems today without ending up with obsolete defenses tomorrow — and how these systems can keep pace as threats evolve.
The new Merkblatt zur Kriegswaffeneinstufung von Loitering-Munition und Drohnen
The BMWE’s updated factsheet on loitering munitions and drones clarifies when a system qualifies as a war weapon under German law. It gives defense startups a faster first orientation through Germany’s export and licensing maze without waiting months for answers to common classification questions.
How Ukraine built a war-fighting state
Austin Vernon argues that Ukraine’s adaptation is not only a technology story, but also one of better incentives and resource allocation. Here is one interesting excerpt:
