From Prototype to The Festival

Fostering Defense Innovation for European Sovereignty

AuthorAuthor

Fynn van Rießen & Benjamin Wolba
July 28, 2026

More than 400 people have registered for the first European Defense Tech Festival!

From August 20–23, we’re taking over an airfield just outside Berlin for four days of field testing and live demos. If you’ve built a prototype and are ready to test it with operators, this is for you!

After the festival, our hackathon series returns to Hamburg and continues around the world through the autumn. For all upcoming events, read below or check out our full event calendar.

Our next EDTH Community Workshop is already tomorrow, on July 29. Together with Kooku, we’ll discuss who to hire first, when contractors make more sense, and how to build an early team without exhausting your runway.

Applications are also open until July 31 for our fully funded 14-day Hacker House for European Independence in Tallinn. From September 9–24, 18 founders and builders will work on the infrastructure Europe needs to become more resilient. More below.

More from EDTH:

  • Together with Under Fire News, we are launching a joint subscription: access to all EDTH events through EDTH Unlimited, plus Under Fire News’s in-depth, independent reporting on defense technology and the war in Ukraine. The bundle costs less than subscribing to both separately. Subscribe here.

  • EDTH is also a community partner for Deep Tech London, which takes place from October 5–11. Our sponsor code gives the EDTH community priority access to Summit tickets for £50. You’ll find the details below.

  • The NAFO Truck 3.0, funded through our Kyiv Defense Tech Week campaign, has now been delivered to the 411 UAS Hawks. See our update from the handover on LinkedIn. Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen. Through dust to victory!

🚨 Europe’s Largest Gathering of Defense Tech Builders

More than 400 people have already registered for the first European Defense Tech Festival.

Think of it as an "ILA light": An industry exhibition inside an aircraft hangar, combined with outdoor flight testing and live technology demonstrations.

​Registered participants come from companies such as STARK, TYTAN Technologies, Comand AI, Destinus, Dryad Networks, Palladion Systems, Airbus Defence and Space, MBDA, Thales and Rheinmetall — alongside participants from NATO, the Bundeswehr, the Royal Navy, the Finnish Border Guard, the Ukrainian military and the Argentine Ministry of Defence.

Registration on Luma: https://luma.com/edtf-2026

🚨 Build Europe’s Resilient Future in Tallinn

We are organizing the first Hacker House for European Independence together with EWOR and the Creative Destruction Lab Estonia.

We want to give founders working on technologies that keep Europe independent even more support: a Hacker House for European Independence in Tallinn, Estonia, from September 9–24, 2026. 

Two weeks, 18 handpicked founders, and the resources a prototype needs to become a company, including direct introductions to customers, a peer group building similar technologies across Europe, and a pitch day in front of VCs ready to invest in technologies supporting European sovereignty.

Who this is for 

Founders building sovereign compute, AI edge computing, resilient communications, energy grid security, space technology, or GPS-denied navigation. 

What participants get 

  • Direct introductions to the customers most founders can never reach 

  • A pitch day in front of VCs who fund category-defining companies 

  • Mentors and domain knowledge from EDTH, EWOR and the Creative Destruction Lab 

  • Accommodation and food covered, 0% equity taken 

  • A fast-track into the EWOR Fellowship with a chance of up to €500,000 in funding

Applications close 31 July.

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.

🇺🇦 Lviv, Ukraine | September 18–20, 2026

From September 18–20, more than 200 participants from across Europe and beyond will meet in Lviv to work on real defense challenges. The hackathon is an official side event of Defense Tech Valley 2026, which takes place in Lviv directly beforehand on September 16–17. Teams will receive direct feedback from military personnel with hands-on operational experience.

More from EDTH

EDTH Unlimited × Under Fire News

Together with Under Fire News, we are launching a joint subscription that combines EDTH Unlimited with Under Fire News. EDTH Unlimited gives you access to hackathon demo days, webinars, online networking sessions, and the New Defense Summit. Under Fire News adds daily, independent reporting on defense technology and the war in Ukraine, including in-depth articles, a notebook of breaking developments, and weekly interviews.

At €220 per year, the bundle saves you €33 compared with subscribing to both separately. Get the bundle here.

Deep Tech London: £50 Summit Tickets and Expo Applications

EDTH is a community partner for Deep Tech London, a city-wide festival running from October 5–11, anchored by a 750-person Summit in Shoreditch on October 8.

The EDTH community has priority access to £50 Summit tickets. To claim yours, open the Summit registration, click “enter it here” below the “Request to Join” button, and enter the access code EDTHLDN.

If you’re building in deep tech and want to showcase your work, you can also apply to exhibit. An exhibitor table costs £250 and includes three full-day tickets, space on the exhibition floor, and a company listing in the networking directory. A limited number of subsidized places are available for teams that have not yet raised a round.

NAFO Truck 3.0 Delivered to the 411 UAS Hawks

The NAFO Truck 3.0, funded through our Kyiv Defense Tech Week campaign, has now been delivered to the 411 UAS Hawks. Together with HELP99 and 50 States for Ukraine, we reached the fundraising goal and got the vehicle to the unit.

Thank you to everyone who donated, shared the campaign, and helped make it happen. See the update from the handover on LinkedIn. Through dust to victory!

Heads-up

Watch out if you’re attending defense tech events in Ukraine:

On July 24, a Russian ballistic missile struck a training ground in the Kyiv region where a defense exhibition was taking place, killing at least ten people and injuring around 100.

Ukrainian prosecutors are now investigating both the attack and whether proper security measures were taken in organizing the event. For anyone attending or organizing defense-industry events in Ukraine, the attack is a stark reminder that event security is part of operational security.