London 2025: Time to Accelerate European Defense Innovation.

Join us and 200+ hackers from all across Europe and beyond for the European Defense Tech Hackathon in London on September 25-28, 2025, in London, UK, as part of London Defence Tech Week.

Connect with fellow defense innovators, meet potential co-founders, and work on projects that have the potential to save lives.

We’ll prepare challenges based on real-world problems, and you can bring your own project. You’ll get feedback from experienced mentors, and we’ll put you in a position to deploy your project in the real world after the hackathon.

Challenge Tracks

Challenge Track by STARK: Mission-Effective Software for Unmanned Systems

This track challenges you to develop mission-effective software that enables unmanned systems to operate responsibly in complex, high-pressure environments. Your code will not only empower these systems to act but also ensure their actions are predictable and aligned with tactical objectives. We’re looking for innovative solutions that allow human teams to command and control unmanned groups with unprecedented effectiveness. This challenge is broken down into three key areas:

Tactical Execution: Develop software that pushes the boundaries of what unmanned systems can achieve. This includes solutions for navigation in GPS-denied environments, dynamic mission planning, and advanced target recognition.

Responsible Autonomy: Design systems that operate transparently and with accountability. This could involve creating intuitive interfaces for effective human-machine teaming or implementing onboard decision-making under strict rules of engagement.

Unmanned Group Coordination: Build the software that allows multiple unmanned systems to work together cohesively. The focus is on creating dynamic systems that can adapt in real-time to changing conditions and shared objectives.

SurrealDB Technical Kit for Hackathon Teams

SurrealDB will provide a technical kit to the teams which they can use in their projects. It offers geospatial queries, time-series analytics, vector search for text and images, and graph relationships. These tools can support tasks such as finding matches in drone imagery, preparing data for retrieval-augmented generation, or building telemetry systems for UAV and UGV swarms.

To help teams get started, SurrealDB will provide starter repositories, a short workshop on Thursday, September 25 at 14:00, and mentors on site. A prize will go to the most innovative use of SurrealDB.

Agenda

Thursday, September 25, 2025

12:00 – Doors open, Networking

13:00 – Program

14:00 – Workshops, Team Formation, and Open-ended Networking

18:00 – Start of Hacking

Friday, September 26, 2025

Hacking continues all day

9:00 – Breakfast

12:00 – Lunch

18:00 – Dinner

Saturday, September 27, 2025

Hacking continues all-day

9:00 – Breakfast

12:00 – Lunch

18:00 – Dinner

Sunday, September 28, 2025

10:00 – End of Hacking, Project Submission

Lunch Break

Demo Day (Open to Visitors)

13:00 – Pitches of the winning teams

14:30 – Award Ceremony

15:00 – After-party & Networking

To give the participants time and space to focus on their projects during the hackathon, we’ll have no visitors during the hackathon. If you’re curious about the outcomes and what the teams have built, please sign up as a visitor for our demo day on Sunday.

Goals

1) Solve urgent defense and security challenges: Each hackathon features a fresh set of challenges sourced directly from frontline partners in Ukraine, NATO, and across the UK and EU—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 top talent from the UK, Europe, and beyond meets the most pressing threats. By building and shipping, we demonstrate what a fast, capable, and resilient defense ecosystem looks like.