Back in Bavaria. Bigger than ever.

After organizing three major hackathons in 2024 in Munich, Copenhagen, and Paris, we returned to where it all began: Munich.

Alongside the Munich Security Conference on February 13-16, 2025, we ran our most ambitious hackathon yet. Over 250 hackers, builders, and mentors came together for 48 hours of rapid prototyping to develop solutions to urgent security challenges, from counter-drone systems and AI-driven navigation to electronic warfare. The weekend pushed the limits of what open defense innovation can deliver.

In The Press

Sifted: European Defence Tech Hackathon: inside the Munich event shaping future innovators.

The Counteroffensive: Mobilization challenges worry miltech staff

Tagesspiegel Background (German): Europas Verteidigung braucht mehr Innovation

Defence-Network.com (German): European Defense Tech Hub: Innovation für Europas Verteidigung

Kickoff Day

Our hackathons attract a broad, international audience, from founders building startups in Ukraine to students and professionals new to defense. That’s why we take the first day to get everyone started and on the same page.

We were excited to have Dr. Robert Fink, CTO of Helsing, open the Munich hackathon with a keynote about the values that drive Helsing.

Helsing was one of our earliest supporters, and it was a pleasure to invite Robert to share more about the values that set Helsing apart, such as doing whatever it takes to succeed.

We prepared a few workshops for the hackathon participants:

• building an FPV drone by DroneAid Collective,
• a primer on Electronic Warfare by HIGHCAT,
• AI-driven real-time decision-making by Eyeson,
• a sensor fusion workshop by Helsing,
• first aid training by Viktoriia Honcharuk,

Hackathon Winners

With 250+ participants across 45+ teams tackling 50+ critical challengeswe’veve brought together engineers, STEM graduates, and professionals for an intense weekend!

We had 34 teams working on a broad range of challenges we had prepared together with our partners, from building underwater reconnaissance systems to intercepting Shahed drones and helicopters, and coordinating swarms in GPS-denied environments.

Winning teams:

1st place “Tiresias – multi-sensor fusion for infantry identification and threat assessment” by Marco Conticini, Dr. Janet Brinz, Khadijah Ismail, Michael Rowley, Luke Wirtanen.

2nd place (shared) & special Quantum Systems award “hamilTUMian – efficient search algorithms for drone swarms” by Julian Deller-Yee, Philipp Jurašić, Ria Rosenauer, Felix Schwarzfischer.

2nd place (shared) “Odile. Vision – AI Decision Support Systems for the battlefield” by Kyrylo Moroziuk, Arsenii Sibilov, Georgiy Shurkhovetskyy, Fedir Shamov.

3rd place “Real-time multi-drone scene understanding for close field combat support” by Daniel San José Pro, Xabier Irizar, Juan Carlos Climent Pardo, Alvaro Ritter.

Special Helsing award “Radar emission data analysis” by Moritz Schöne, PhD, Lukas Hahn, Hector & Nic Schick.

Special Quantum Systems award “SQUID (System for Quantum UAV Identification & Deterrence) – Optical detection for drones” by Caspar Lusink, Dima, Fawzi ELGHAZOUI, Tetiana Klymenko.

All hackathon projects tackled real-world defense challenges gathered from our partners, addressing situational awareness, drone coordination, and AI-powered decision support.

We don’t have prize money at our hackathons, and that’s on purpose because we want to encourage our teams to focus on building real solutions rather than chasing prize money.

Still, we want to honor the teams that have made the most progress during the hackathon and have the best chances to continue toward deployment. Our evaluation criteria included:

• Are you solving a real problem?
• How effective will the solutions be?
• How original and innovative is your solution?
• How mass-manufacturable will it be?
• How much progress and drive have you demonstrated during the hackathon?

Thanks to our jury, Ragnar Sass, Bryan Sardoch, Daniel Fuller, Viktoriia Honcharuk, Daniel Kneifel, Max Makarchuk, and Daniel A for evaluating the hackathon submissions!