European Defense Tech Hackathon held in Kyiv for the first time: meet the winners

Last week, Kyiv hosted the European Defense Tech Hackathon — Europe’s biggest defence hackathon, held in the Ukrainian capital for the first time. The event brought together over 400 participants, including dozens of military personnel from eight units of Ukraine’s Security and Defence Forces. Defender Media attended the demo day and highlighted the key takeaways.

The hackathon resulted in over 30 projects reaching the demo day stage — from counter-drone systems to GPS-denied navigation for drones and UGVs.

Top three:

1. UVAGA: Short-range FPV radar.
2. Genova: AI-powered OSINT pipeline that monitors open online platforms, clusters events, and delivers real-time, explainable threat alerts with an analyst-ready evidence trail and dashboard.
3. A1: Re-engagement of demobilised pilots with disabilities.

Participants who spoke with Defender Media noted several distinctive features of the Kyiv EDTH event. The first was the exceptional involvement of military personnel, who worked alongside hackers throughout the entire three-day event. The second was the unprecedented number of international teams — nearly half of all participants — who came to Kyiv to test their ideas with Ukrainian soldiers or to co-develop new projects together. Jury members and observers also pointed out the overall high quality of the teams’ ideas.

Rewiring European Defense Tech

Defender Media talks with partners of the European Defense Tech Hub, founders of companies from their ecosystem, and other speakers

The Kyiv European Defence Tech Hackathon was organised by the European Defence Tech Hub together with Moodro, Snake Island Institute, Inflexion, and the National University of Kyiv Aviation Institute. The organisers announced plans to hold the hackathon in Kyiv again.