5th Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2027

The Youth Tech Fest Cyprus is an annual youth-focused technology, education and innovation festival held in Limassol. The 5th edition takes place on 6 February 2027 at The Warehouse by IT Quarter, Limassol. Its flagship coding competition is the Roblox Games Hackathon, where young participants (ages 9+) design and build their own games in a fun, mentored and supportive environment. The wider programme includes a Cubing Tournament, Chess Festival, Formula1/4x4 STEM Racing and the Youth Unicorn StartUp pitch competition, alongside hands-on edutainment zones covering XR/VR, robotics, gaming, science and art. Organised by Exec Club Cyprus (Alstrad International Ltd) and founded by Sean Alimov, the festival offers free access with a strong focus on social inclusion.

Competen.CY 2026

Competen.CY is Cyprus's competitive, beginner-friendly hackathon - a fast, high-energy sprint where students, developers and designers build, solve and compete live. Over the event you'll take on three back-to-back games: The Quiz (CTF) on web and backend fundamentals, Fix Me, a race to squash bugs in a broken codebase, and the flagship CyTiles Gamethon, a real-time territory battle on a hex map. Everything runs online and streams live, with mentors, a buzzing Discord community and a helpful bot at your side. It closes with a broadcast awards ceremony - podium, interviews and surprise prizes. All Passion. No Pause. Come to invent, connect and launch something amazing.

BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0

Applications are open, the prize money is now itemised, and the Open Day has moved to 3 November. The BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 runs 27–29 November 2026 in person at the IDEA Innovation Centre, Likourgou 36, Nicosia 1011. This entry is being updated because three things changed since it was first listed. 1. The Open Day is 3 November, not 30 September. It runs remotely on Tuesday 3 November 2026 at 17:30. This is the session where the Bank walks through the challenge briefs and the technical specifications, and it is the cheapest hour anyone can spend before committing a team to the weekend. 2. There is also a physical info session on 26 October. The University of Nicosia Department of Computer Science hosts one on Monday 26 October 2026, 18:00–18:30, Room B213, Main Building, 46 Makedonitissis Avenue, Nicosia. Speaking are Lia Ioannou (Head of IT Performance & Relationship Management, Bank of Cyprus), Christos Nicolaou (Enterprise Architect) and Maria Procopiou (Tech Lead) — covering the hackathon's objectives, how to take part, and the technologies involved. Open to students, developers, professionals and anyone interested. 3. The €16,000 is now broken down, and two of the five prizes are sponsor-specific.

• 1st prize — €7,000
• 2nd prize — €4,000
• 3rd prize — €2,000
• Best use of Jinius APIs — €2,000
• Best Smart City solution (Municipality of Nicosia) — €1,000

That last detail matters more than the headline figure. €3,000 of the pot — nearly a fifth — is reserved for two specific briefs, and both are winnable without beating the strongest team in the room. A team that builds against the Jinius APIs deliberately, or that aims squarely at a Nicosia municipal problem, is competing in a much smaller field than the one chasing first place. Registration is open at bochackathon.net/apply. The challenge tracks, thirteen in all, with AI threaded through most of them: AI for Good, Fintech for Smart Cities, Open Banking & Embedded Finance, Fintech for SMEs & Entrepreneurship, Cybersecurity & Trust in Fintech, Sustainable Finance & Green Banking, RegTech & Compliance Automation, Inclusive Fintech & Financial Wellbeing, Energy Fintech & Smart Grid Finance, Fintech for Insurance, Fintech for Health, Fintech for Social Innovation, and AI & Fintech for Real Estate. Who can enter. Developers, startups, professionals and students. Existing teams and newly formed ones both compete, and the organisers are explicit that you do not have to be technical — mentors, sponsors and supporters are invited on the same footing. Deliverable is a solution taken up to Minimum Viable Product stage. The run-up, if you want to arrive informed. Wiki Finance Expo Cyprus (6 November, Parklane Limassol, free entry) and the 27th NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum (19 November, Four Seasons Limassol) put most of this island's payments industry in two rooms in the three weeks beforehand — including a fair number of the people who end up judging. The DORA, NIS2 and PSD3 conversations at the latter are the clearest available signal of what a Cyprus-licensed institution currently considers an expensive problem. The 27–29 November running times above are indicative — the published material confirms the dates and the venue but not the hour-by-hour schedule. Confirm at the 3 November Open Day.

BridgeSTEAM Nicosia 2026

Two days of coding for 14-to-16-year-old girls, free, and no previous experience required. BridgeSTEAM returns to Nicosia on 14–15 November 2026 at the PwC Experience Centre, run by the Girls in STEAM Academy — a non-profit initiative of the Be an Ally Foundation. This is the programme's sixth year, and it is open to girls aged 14 to 16 from anywhere in Cyprus. Applications close on 4 November 2026, through the Academy's registration form. Participation is free. What the two days contain.

• Hands-on coding and digital-skills workshops — the Academy's wider BridgeSTEAM format covers programming, robotics and AI
• Career guidance sessions on the educational and professional routes into tech, led by a qualified trainer
• Women working in STEAM talking directly about their studies, their career decisions and what the job is actually like
• An educational workshop on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, framing technology as something aimed at a social problem

The stated emphasis is as much on communication, teamwork and confidence as on the technical content — which is the honest description of what moves a 15-year-old from I could not do that to an application form. The track record. The Academy says it has supported more than 3,200 girls since 2021, with alumnae going on to international programmes including TechGirls in the United States and to job-shadowing placements with Cypriot employers. BridgeSTEAM itself has run in Limassol, Larnaca and Nicosia; the most recent Limassol edition ran in September 2026, and a Larnaca edition is scheduled for December 2026 for the same age group — dates not yet published. Why it sits on a hackathon calendar. Because the pipeline problem is upstream of the hackathons. Cyprus runs a dense autumn of competitive builds — DevFest Cyprus on 31 October, NASA Space Apps in Limassol on 14–15 November, Competen.CY and BoC Fintech 7.0 at the end of the month — and the gender split in those rooms is set years earlier, by whether a fourteen-year-old ever got put in front of an IDE with someone expecting her to use it. This is that intervention, and it costs nothing. The daily running times above are placeholders — the programme is a two-day daytime schedule, but exact hours are confirmed to accepted participants. Apply by 4 November.

NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026 (Limassol)

The world's largest annual hackathon has a Limassol node again — and this year it lands on 14–15 November, not early October. The NASA Space Apps Challenge runs for 48 hours across 450+ local events worldwide on the same weekend, and Limassol is one of the pins on the map. The 2026 theme is "The Next Frontier". The format, plainly. NASA and its Space Agency Partners publish a set of challenges — 14 of them for 2026 — written by actual subject-matter experts and tied to real open data. You pick one, form a team, and have the weekend to build something: code, a model, a visualisation, a design, a piece of storytelling. There is no single "correct" deliverable, which is why non-coders are genuinely useful here. Team size: 2–6. Six is the hard cap. The teams that do well are mixed — someone who can code, someone who can read the science, someone who can present it in two minutes without a slide deck full of axes. Cost: free. This is a NASA-funded programme (Science Mission Directorate), run locally by volunteers. There is no ticket. The deadline that actually matters. To be eligible for Global Judging you must be registered on the official Space Apps site — registration stays open through 15 November, i.e. you can technically sign up during the event, but do it before you turn up so your team and project get attached to the right local event. Register for the Limassol location specifically, not just "Space Apps 2026", or your submission does not count toward the local node. Where. The Limassol event is listed as in-person. The address attached to the Limassol node is 1 Ioannou Tsirou Street, Limassol 3021 — the IMS Private School campus, which has hosted the local edition before. Confirm the room and the start time on the official local-event page before you travel — local hosts publish their own schedule there, and it can shift by a few hours either side of the nominal 09:00 Saturday start. Why this one is worth the weekend. Three reasons specific to Cyprus:

1. It is the only open, free, no-theme-restriction hackathon on the island in mid-November. The BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November) and Competen.CY 2026 (28 November) are both a full fortnight later — there is no clash, and Space Apps is decent practice for both.
2. Global judging is real. Local winners are nominated upward; Global Finalists get their work in front of NASA and partner-agency people. Cyprus has sent teams since 2013 and has put teams through this pipeline before.
3. The data is the prize. Even if you place nowhere, you leave with hands-on time in NASA's open Earth-observation and planetary datasets — which is the same raw material behind the space/EO work now being funded locally through C-SpaRC and the Cyprus Space Office.

Bring: your own laptop, a charger, and a challenge already chosen. The challenge summaries are live now — reading them the night before is the single highest-leverage hour of the whole weekend.

9th SkillsCyprus National Skills Competition 2026

Three days, not one — and three of the twenty-two specialities are straight ICT. SkillsCyprus 2026, the ninth National Skills Competition, runs Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 October 2026 at the State Fair in Nicosia. It is free to walk into, and it is the qualifying event for the Cypriot national team heading to EuroSkills Düsseldorf 2027. This listing is a correction of the dates. The competition occupies the full 29–31 October window, not 29 October alone. Both the official competition site at skillscyprus.gov.cy and the OEB announcement give the three-day run. The programme has also grown. Earlier announcements put the competition at 18 specialities; the official site and OEB now both say 22 specialities, laid out across roughly 20 competition zones built to mimic real working conditions. Tasks are written with industry experts and company representatives rather than by the organisers alone. For anyone reading this site, the relevant three are:

• Web Development (Ανάπτυξη Εφαρμογών και Ιστότοπου)
• IT Software Solutions for Business
• IT Network Systems Administration

The rest of the floor is the usual broad SkillsCyprus spread — graphic design, mechanical design (CAD), plumbing and heating, cooking, restaurant service, entrepreneurship and more. If you have never been, that mix is the point: the ICT booths sit next to the welding bays, and the comparison is unusually instructive. Format. These are individual competitions, not team builds — one competitor per speciality, scored against a published task over the three days. Eligibility is capped at 24 years old (born after 31/12/2001). The competition is organised biennially by the Cyprus Productivity Centre (KEPA) under the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance, under the auspices of President Nikos Christodoulides. One caveat on the times above. The organisers publish the dates but not a precise daily schedule; the 09:00–17:00 bracket in this listing marks the days, not the hours. Check skillscyprus.gov.cy for the daily timetable and for the declaration-of-participation deadlines, which are posted there rather than in the press announcements. Why it is on this list. It is not a hackathon — nobody ships a prototype over a weekend here. It is on the list because Web Development and IT Software Solutions are national-level competitive events with a European final attached, and because the EuroSkills 2027 team selected in Nicosia at the end of this month is the closest thing Cyprus has to a public ranking of its young technical talent.

Zubr Capital Young Hackathon 2026

Idea to prototype to investor pitch, in one day, for nothing. The Zubr Capital Young Hackathon returns to Cyprus on Saturday 24 October 2026, and this edition is given over entirely to AI products. Last year's debut was a general startup sprint; this one narrows the brief to building something AI-powered, validating it, and pitching it to investors before the room empties. Who it is for. University students in Cyprus and early-stage founders. You do not need a team or an idea to apply — the format is built around assembling teams on site and starting from a hypothesis. Entry is free, registration is required, through league.zubrcapital.com/hackathon-cyprus. What actually happens in the day. The series compresses the first months of a startup into a single sitting: identify a problem worth solving with AI, test the hypothesis, build a working prototype, work out where the solution breaks, and present it to investors. The organiser's own framing of the skill being taught is blunt — which problems are worth solving with AI, how to test hypotheses, how to assess the solution's limitations. Mentoring comes from Zubr Capital's own investment side; the 2025 Cyprus edition put Oleg Khusaenov (founder and CEO), Nikita Krivelevich (investment director), Anna Khechoyan (investment manager) and several Zubr partners in the room as mentors and judges. The precedent, which is the best guide to what to expect. The first Cyprus edition ran on 23 October 2025 at the Parklane resort in Limassol, 11:00–21:00, with Russian as the working language, limited places, registration closing four days ahead and a short interview before acceptance. The series then ran an AI edition in Almaty on 19 September 2026 that drew 130 students and 16 startup teams in a single day. Warsaw has also hosted one. What is not yet published, and worth checking before you plan around it. The venue for 24 October, the running times (the 11:00–21:00 above is the 2025 schedule, not a confirmed 2026 one), the working language for this edition, the prize structure and any registration cut-off. Given 2025 closed applications four days early and screened by interview, treat the deadline as earlier than the event date rather than the day before. Why it is worth a Saturday. This is the only free, one-day, investor-facing AI build in Cyprus this month, and it lands five weeks before the BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November, IDEA Innovation Centre, €16,000 in prizes) — which is long enough to turn a 24 October prototype into a November entry. The backdrop is not subtle either: 43% of Cyprus CEOs named skills shortages a major threat to their business in 2026, and Zubr's pitch is explicitly that the gap is in judgement about AI rather than access to it. Register early; places on the 2025 edition were capped and interviewed.

EU-CONEXUS ENABLES Hackathon (Cyprus)

The EU-CONEXUS ENABLES Hackathon at Frederick University, Cyprus has moved to 20–21 October 2026 (previously listed as 13–14 October) and registration is now open. It is the Cyprus node of the EU-CONEXUS European university alliance's network-wide hackathon series. Theme: "Decarbonising Port Operations through Smart Energy and Digital Twin Solutions" — practical, scalable ways to cut emissions in port and maritime operations using smart energy and digital twins. Who can join: undergraduate, Master's and PhD students, researchers/academics and others. Teams of 3–5 multidisciplinary participants. Registration is individual via the organisers' online form, where you choose to attend one day or both. Note: the alliance's hackathon listing gives 20–21 October, while the participation-day options on the registration form read 21 and 22 October — check with the organisers before booking travel. No registration deadline has been published.

EUDIS Defence Hackathon Autumn 2026 — Cyprus

Registrations are open. The 5th edition of the EUDIS Defence Hackathon runs on 15–17 October 2026 as eight simultaneous onsite hackathons across Europe — Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. Cyprus was selected by the European Commission (DG DEFIS) as one of the eight host locations; the local node runs in Nicosia, organised by C.D. Multimedia Services Ltd under the auspices of the Ministry of Defence and the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Theme: "Autonomy on the Battlefield." The Cyprus node runs three challenge tracks:

• GNSS-denied navigation — autonomous systems that keep operating without satellite positioning, using onboard sensors and real-time perception.
• Swarm coordination — multi-agent drone or robot swarms that complete a mission together with minimal human control.
• C-UAS interceptor — the locally defined challenge: protecting critical infrastructure against hostile unmanned aircraft.

Field testing. Unusually for a hackathon, work is taken outdoors: testing takes place at the USRL Orounda Airfield with military personnel present, so teams see their system run in conditions closer to the ones it is built for. Prizes and support: over €10,000 in prizes at the Cyprus node, plus access to the EUDIS mentorship programme and extended ecosystem support running through 2028, followed by the EU-wide pitching competition. Who can take part: teams of two or more — engineers, startups, SMEs, researchers, developers and defence professionals. Teams are expected to arrive with an existing prototype, MVP or working demonstrator (roughly TRL4 and above); this is not a from-scratch weekend build. Every team member registers individually. Ukrainian teams qualify without the EU residency requirement, and selected teams from outside Cyprus may receive travel and accommodation support. How to apply: registration is via the organisers' form at tally.so/r/eqOPAE; places are limited and applications close on 2 October 2026. Participation is free. EUDIS is the EU Defence Innovation Scheme, run under the European Commission. The Spring 2026 edition, themed "Defending Airspace," drew 582 participants across eight European cities.

European AI Hackathon 2026 — Cyprus (Pharos-CY)

A four-week, mentor-led AI hackathon run by Europe's EuroHPC AI Factories with NVIDIA — and Cyprus' own AI Factory Antenna, Pharos-CY, is one of the factories it is organised for. Participation from Cyprus is remote: the only on-site venue is Stuttgart. Dates and shape. The event runs 6 October to 29 October 2026, but it is not 24 days of hacking. It is four structured session days with three weeks of self-organised team work in between:

• Day 0 — 6 October (virtual): cluster dry run. You get your code running on the machine before anything else starts.
• Day 1 — 13 October (virtual): team introductions, breakout rooms with assigned mentors, first progress presentations.
• 14–26 October: teams and mentors keep working between sessions. No scheduled programme.
• Days 2–4 — 27, 28 and 29 October (hybrid): the build phase proper, online or on-site at HLRS, Nobelstraße 19, 70569 Stuttgart. Finishes 29 October, 17:00.

Organisers. Co-organised by Austrian Scientific Computing (ASC), the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), the Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet AGH, the OpenACC organization and NVIDIA, for the AI Factories AI:AT (Austria), HammerHAI, Gaia AI Factory and the AI Factory Antenna Cyprus Pharos-CY. Who it is for. SMEs, start-ups, industry practitioners and researchers building AI-driven products and services. Mentoring is by NVIDIA engineers plus additional expert mentors. Free of charge. Hard entry requirements — read these before applying:

• Minimum three team members, all committed to full participation across every session day.
• All members must be based in the EU or a EuroHPC JU member country (Cyprus qualifies).
• You bring your own project. Teams must be "fluent with the code or project" they arrive with — this is an acceleration and optimisation event, not an idea competition.
• Projects must carry an attached licence; permissive open-source is preferred.

Topics on the published agenda: agentic AI applications including contract intelligence, energy grid balancing, code modernisation, quality inspection and predictive maintenance. The catch, stated plainly. The application deadline was 31 August 2026; organisers say late applications are accepted subject to capacity, so if you are reading this on 1 October you have five days to Day 0 and you are asking for a favour, not registering. Note also that the organisers' own HLRS and HPC-portal listings name only AI:AT, HammerHAI and Gaia — Pharos-CY appears in the openhackathons.org description and as a logo on the official ASC event page, but no Cyprus on-site venue and no Cyprus-specific track has been published. Treat the Cyprus link as institutional (the Cyprus Institute's CaSToRC coordinates Pharos-CY) rather than as a local event you can walk into. Why it still belongs on this list. This is the second time in 2026 that Pharos-CY has appeared among the AI Factories behind a NVIDIA-mentored European training event — the European Agentic AI Bootcamp (20–22 July 2026) drew over 250 participants with Pharos-CY named the same way. Pharos-CY's own mandate commits it to running "tailored programs, workshops, and hackathons" as a national AI training hub, with access to the DAEDALUS EuroHPC supercomputer. For a Cypriot SME, the practical read is this: the route to NVIDIA engineers and EuroHPC compute now runs through a Nicosia-coordinated project, and it is free — but you have to already have a codebase worth accelerating. Watch for the next cycle rather than scrambling at this one.

WRO Cyprus 2026 - National Robotics Competition

The WRO Cyprus 2026 National Robotics Competition takes place on Saturday, 19 September 2026 at European University Cyprus in Nicosia. It is the Cypriot national round of the World Robot Olympiad, organised by the Cyprus Computer Society under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth, in collaboration with STEM Education Hellas and IET Cyprus, with XM as Tech Partner. Theme - "Robots Meet Culture": the 2026 season asks teams to explore how robots can help shape, protect and grow art and culture in today's world. Who takes part: primary and secondary school students, competing in three age categories - Primary, Lower Secondary and Upper Secondary. Teams design, build and program a robot to solve the field challenges set for their category. What's new in 2026:

• Open robotics platforms - teams are no longer limited to LEGO hardware.
• Pre-assembled robots are allowed.
• A surprise rule is announced shortly before the competition, so teams must be able to adapt on the day.

What the winners get: the top team in each age group represents Cyprus at the WRO International Final 2026 in San Juan, Puerto Rico (8-10 December 2026), while the runner-up in each group goes to the WRO Open Championship Europe 2026 in Zagreb, Croatia (13-16 October 2026). Registration is via the organisers' online form.

Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge (CCSC) 2026

Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge (CCSC) 2026 is the national cybersecurity competition through which the Cypriot national team is selected and trained for the European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC).

• When: 2 - 9 August 2026, fully online
• Format: Capture-the-Flag (CTF) challenges covering cryptography, web and binary exploitation, forensics, reverse engineering and more, played on the CCSC arena platform
• Who: open to all ages - the national team itself is formed from young talents aged 14-25 with an active interest in information security
• What comes next: the top finalists make up the Cyprus Cyber Security Team, which represents Cyprus at ECSC 2026 in Bochum, Germany (12-16 October 2026), followed by in-person training for the finalists

Organised by the Cyprus Computer Society in cooperation with information security specialists from Cypriot academia and industry. Registration and challenges: ccsc.org.cy.

Robotex Cyprus 2026 - 9th Pancyprian Educational & Athletic Robotics Competition

Robotex Cyprus 2026 - the 9th Pancyprian Educational & Athletic Robotics Competition - was held on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 June 2026 at the University of Cyprus Sports Centre in Aglantzia, Nicosia. It is the largest robotics festival in Cyprus, organised by the Cyprus Computer Society in cooperation with the University of Cyprus, the Cyprus Youth Organisation and IET Cyprus, and run to the international ROBOTEX standards originating in Estonia. Scale: 216 teams, 709 competitors and 138 coaches took part across the two days, drawn from schools, universities and the general public. Doors were open to the public from 10:00 to 15:00 on both days. Challenges: more than 20 separate robotics categories, including Line Following, Folkrace, Maze Solving, Bowling, Archery, SUMO robot battles, Rally track racing and drone competitions, alongside AI, space and STEAM activities. International pathway: Cyprus was the first country to establish Robotex as a national competition, and Robotex International CEO Nathan Metsala attended this edition. Winning Cypriot teams qualified for the international finals - Robotex International 2026 moves to South Korea, the first time the final has been staged outside Estonia. The awards ceremony for the Cypriot qualifiers is scheduled for October 2026. Full details and results: robotex.org.cy.

INVESTech 2026

Correction to the shape of this event: INVESTech 2026 was never a one-day June hackathon. It is a six-month, multi-stage software engineering skills competition run in Cyprus by Frederick University as part of the European INVESTech project, and its Cyprus leg has now finished. The full timeline as published by the organisers:

• March–September 2026 — project development with online mentorship
• 15–17 June 2026 — three-day intensive hackathon
• 19 June 2026 — semi-final Pitching Day (prototype presentations)
• 22–24 September 2026 — Finals, with international teams and complete MVPs
• March 2027 — the top 2 Cyprus teams compete at EU level in Lithuania

Venue: Frederick University Limassol, 18 Mariou Agathangelou, Limassol 3080. Challenge theme: "ICT for Social Inclusion." Teams build software that bridges social gaps — targeting the elderly, people with disabilities and marginalised communities. 15 mentor organisations back the teams, among them UpcoMinds, Panaline Ltd, Inquiry Fuse, Campeon Gaming, Noesis, Cyprus Computer Society, Jinius and HardwareX. The competition is promoted in Cyprus by the Cyprus Employers & Industrialists Federation (OEB), and the working language is English. Contact: achilleas.achilleos@frederick.ac.cy. Why the structure matters more than the June date. A 48-hour hackathon rewards the team that can fake the most convincing demo. This format does the opposite: the June hackathon only produced a prototype, June's Pitching Day filtered it, and the September finals demanded a working MVP after three more months of mentored development. That is a much harder test, and it is the reason the reward at the end is a place in an EU-level final rather than a cheque. The honest caveat: the September finals have concluded but no winners or results have been published on either the Frederick University event site or the OEB listing as of 29 September 2026. If you are tracking who goes to Lithuania in March 2027, that announcement is still pending. Who should watch the next cycle: software engineering students who want an internship-shaped credential rather than a weekend T-shirt, and Cyprus tech companies — the 15-mentor structure is a low-cost recruiting channel that lets you watch candidates build for six months before you interview them.

iFX Hack 2026

A 24-hour Trading & Fintech Hackathon powered by AWS, hosted by iFX EXPO International at the University of Limassol (Agias Filaxeos 92, Limassol). The hackathon runs from 12:00 on 13 June to 15:00 on 14 June 2026. Participation is free of charge and open to university students, software developers, engineers, data scientists, AI specialists, fintech professionals, product managers, startup founders and traders — no prior hackathon experience required. Teams build solutions across trading, fintech, AI and payments. Winning teams are announced and recognised during iFX EXPO International 2026 (16–18 June 2026, City of Dreams Mediterranean, Limassol).

HackIT!4EU - 3D Digital Cultural Heritage Hackathon

Pan-European 3D Digital Cultural Heritage Hackathon at Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, with Europeana and the European Commission, under the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU.

1st Engineering Hackathon at UCLan Cyprus

The 1st Engineering Hackathon at UCLan Cyprus took place on 26–27 May 2026 at the UCLan Cyprus campus in Larnaka, bringing together students, academics and industry professionals in a hands-on, collaborative environment. Under the theme of environmental innovation, teams designed and built robotic-based solutions for real-world sustainability challenges, combining creative engineering with practical problem-solving. The inaugural edition was supported by robo.com.cy, HardwareX and the Cyprus Computer Society (CCS), and is intended to become an annual platform that promotes innovation, teamwork, practical learning and stronger links between education and industry.

HELIOS Training School & Hackathon

Correction to the record: this was a four-day residential event, not a one-day hackathon. The Federated Data Analysis Training School & Hackathon ran in Cyprus from 11 to 14 May 2026, not on 11 May alone. Venue: Alion Beach Hotel, Ayia Napa, Cyprus. Organisers: COST Action HELIOS, delivered in collaboration with HemaFAIR. Participation was open-access and free; the working language was English. Expressions of interest closed on 18 February 2026 via the organisers' application form. What the programme actually covered:

• introduction to federated analysis and federated learning frameworks
• FAIR data principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)
• hands-on analysis using common data models
• federated querying across distributed datasets
• ethical and legal aspects — privacy, data governance and responsible data use

Who it was for: researchers, clinicians and data scientists with relevant background knowledge, with the applied emphasis on biomedical and rare-disease research. This was not an open-entry student hackathon. Why the four-day shape matters. Federated analysis is the discipline of computing over data you are never allowed to move or even see — hospital records that cannot legally leave the institution that holds them. You cannot teach that in an afternoon, because the hard part is not the model, it is the data governance and the common data model that let five hospitals answer one query without pooling a single patient row. The published agenda front-loads exactly those topics, then runs the hackathon on top of them. A one-day listing misrepresented it as a sprint when it was a training school with a build phase attached. Status: concluded. HemaFAIR and the HELIOS COST Action have both recorded the event as successfully completed, with materials deposited publicly on Zenodo. The gap in the record: no participant count, team list or hackathon outputs have been published, so there is no way to judge what the build phase produced. For anyone tracking Cyprus as a venue for EU health-data work, the useful signal is not the result but the fact that a COST Action chose Cyprus for a four-day federated-health-data school at all — that follows the same trustworthy-AI-in-health thread as the island's other recent EU placements.

5th Robotic Day & FIRST Tech Challenge Cyprus 2026

The 5th Pancyprian Robotics Competition — Robotic Day & FIRST Tech Challenge Cyprus 2026 ran across the weekend of 7–8 March 2026 at the Ayios Dometios Sports Center, Nicosia, organised by the non-profit Achievement Foundation for Talented and Gifted Youth. Two competitions, one weekend

• Saturday — Robotic Day Cyprus 2026: robotics challenges built on the LEGO, ENGINO and ARDUINO platforms, open to primary, high school and technical school students.
• Sunday — FIRST Tech Challenge Cyprus 2026: robot games on the advanced REV platform, open to high school and technical school students only.

Scale: around 600–700 student competitors and an expected 1,800–2,000 visitors across the two days. Where the winners go: Robotic Day winners qualified for the Robotic Day competition in Prague, Czech Republic (June 2026). FIRST Tech Challenge Cyprus winners qualified for the FIRST Tech Challenge in Houston, USA (April 2026) and the FIRST Tech Challenge Premier Event in Eindhoven, Netherlands (June 2026). Held under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, with the support of the Research & Innovation Foundation (RIF/IdEK), the Youth Board of Cyprus (ONEK), ETEK and SIFK.

4th Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2026

The 4th Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2026 took place on 7 February 2026 in Limassol. A free, public celebration of education, technology, creativity and innovation for children, young people, families and educators — featuring an expanded Edutainment Zone with hands-on XR/VR, Robotics, Gaming, Science, Art and Eco activities, under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.

CERES Cyprus Hackathon 2026

CERES Cyprus Hackathon - the hands-on part of the CERES programme, organised by Cyprus Certification Company.

1st Cyprus Transport Hackathon

The 1st Cyprus Transport Hackathon - a national initiative to rethink mobility and transport systems in Cyprus. Held at Strovolos municipal hall, Nicosia.

Smart Paphos 360° Hackathon

Two days at the American University of Beirut – Mediterraneo campus in Paphos, where students built technology answers to real problems handed over by the Municipality of Pafos. Organised by DiGiNN (Digital Innovation Hub Cyprus) with AUB Mediterraneo, under the theme Sustainable Urban Development of Pafos. Five challenge areas

• Smart City & Urban Development
• Tourism & Cultural Heritage Preservation
• Environmental Sustainability
• Public Safety & Cybersecurity
• Social Services & Citizen Engagement

Open to undergraduate and postgraduate students from universities across Cyprus, registering solo or as a team. Two online prep workshops ran before the weekend — Mastering the Pitch (21 November) and Prototyping 101 (28 November) — for registered participants only. Teams worked with academic mentors and industry experts, and the brief asked for ideas with a realistic path to being implemented in the city.

HackTech 2025

It is billed as the largest open hackathon in Cyprus, offering a €30,000 prize fund and attracting participants of all skill levels.

Zubr Capital Young Hackathon

Private equity firm Zubr Capital hosted its first Zubr Capital Young Hackathon at the Parklane Hotel in Limassol on 23 October 2025 (11:00–21:00). The free, one-day challenge brought together students from universities across Cyprus and early-stage entrepreneurs to compress months of startup learning into a single day — identifying market needs, building MVPs and crafting investor pitches. Participants were mentored by Zubr Capital leadership and guest founders/investors. Positioned as the first in a recurring series to strengthen Cyprus's startup ecosystem.

EU Code Week Hackathons – Cyprus (National Stage)

EU Code Week Hackathon – Cyprus (2025) is a national coding competition for youth aged 15–19, held in person between October and December 2025. Organized under the EU Code Week and funded by the European Commission, it brings young innovators together to solve real-world challenges using tech and teamwork. Winning teams move on to the online European finals in February 2026, competing against top youth coders from across Europe. Participation is free!

BoC Fintech Hackathon 6.0

The Bank of Cyprus is organizing the 6th Innovation Marathon for application development, BoC Hackathon 6.0, focusing on the implementation of proposals and digital applications in the Fintech sector. It also integrates themes such as Social Innovation, Smart Cities, and Sustainability, with the main goal of promoting entrepreneurship.

Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge (CCSC)

Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge (CCSC) 2025 is a national competition that tests the cybersecurity skills of young talent (ages 14–25) through online challenges in cryptography, forensics, reverse engineering, and more. Organized by the Cyprus Computer Society and backed by top tech sponsors and government bodies, CCSC serves as the qualifier for Cyprus’s national team at the European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC). The event runs online from June 27 to July 13, 2025, followed by in-person training for finalists. Open to beginners and pros alike!

IFIP Networking 2025 Hackathon

May 12–13, 2025 • Cyprus Hosted alongside the IFIP Networking 2025 conference, this hackathon brings together researchers, engineers, and students to tackle cutting-edge challenges in network systems, 5G, IoT, and edge computing. Participants will prototype, test, and deploy solutions using real-world infrastructure and network experimentation platforms. Whether you're into programmable networks, testbeds, or internet-scale experiments, this event offers a rare opportunity to build fast, collaborate globally, and get hands-on with advanced networking tools. Build. Test. Scale. All in 48 hours.

3rd Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2025

The 3rd Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2025 took place on 1 February 2025 at The Warehouse by ITQuarter, Limassol. A free, public edutainment festival for children and teens (ages 6–18) celebrating technology, science, art and innovation, with thematic zones including Robotics, Fun Science, XR/VR, ECO, Gaming and Art — under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.

ReInHerit Smart Tourism

​​​​​The ReInHerit Smart Tourism Hackathon was an in-person event held on January 20-21, 2024, at the CYENS Centre of Excellence in Nicosia, Cyprus. Co-organized by the EU-funded projects ReInHerit and DiGiNN, the hackathon aimed to foster innovative solutions that enhance visitor experiences at museums and cultural heritage sites through technology.

Up2You Hackathon

​​The UP2YOU Hackathon was an in-person event held from November 26 to 28, 2024, in Nicosia, Cyprus. Organized as part of the UP2YOU Erasmus+ Project, the hackathon aimed to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and practical expertise, fostering collaboration among students, educators, civil society organizations (CSOs), and stakeholders various sectors.

HackTech 2024

It is billed as the largest open hackathon in Cyprus, offering a €30,000 prize fund and attracting participants of all skill levels.

EIT Community Ignite NEB Hackathon Cyprus 2024

A three-day event aimed at solving urban problems in Cyprus.

BoC Fintech Hackathon 5.0

The BoC Fintech Hackathon 5.0 (Oct 18-20, 2024) at IDEA Innovation Center, Nicosia, brought together 200+ participants in 25+ teams to develop fintech solutions. Winners received monetary prizes, scholarships, mentorship, and cloud credits. Challenges included AI, digital euro, and conversational banking, fostering innovation in Cyprus' fintech sector.

HackAIthon 2024

HackAIthon 2024 in Cyprus was a team-based, in-person hackathon held on June 15 in Limassol. It focused on AI-driven solutions, featured 20+ teams, and offered networking, mentorship, large prizes and major sponsorship support.

Construct Ai Hackathon

​The Construct AI Hackathon was an in-person event held from April 26 to 28, 2024, at Courtyard Long Beach in Iskele, Cyprus. Organized by Dovec Ventures and Cyprus Codes, the hackathon focused on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to develop innovative solutions across various sectors.

2nd Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2024

The 2nd Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2024 was held on Saturday 20 April 2024 (09:00–16:30) at Frederick University, Limassol. A free, public festival for children and young people (ages 6–18) with interactive workshops, masterclasses and shows across Robotics, Gaming, Woodworking, XR/VR, science shows, cubing competitions and fun science — under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.

AI/ML Hackathon

The AI/ML Hackathon was a dynamic event held from April 15 to 17, 2024, at The Base by CyprusInno in Nicosia, Cyprus. Organized collaboratively by Microsoft, SocialTech Lab, and FINOMENA, the hackathon aimed to harness artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to address real-world challenges across various sectors.

Cyprus Tech Odyssey: XRPL Hackathon 2024

The Cyprus Tech Odyssey: XRPL Hackathon 2024 was a collaborative event held from January 18 to 20, 2024, at the University of Nicosia (UNIC) in Cyprus. Organized by UNIC in partnership with Ripple and XRPL Commons, the hackathon focused on exploring the capabilities of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) through workshops and hands-on development sessions. ​

HackTech 2023

HackTech 2023 — the 2nd edition (originally "HackAdTech") by AdTech Holding — took place on 25–26 November 2023 in Limassol.

1st Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2023

The 1st Youth Tech Fest Cyprus 2023 took place on 18 November 2023 at the University of Nicosia. A free, public edutainment festival for children and teens (ages 6–18) celebrating technology, science, art, environment and entrepreneurship — under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and co-organised with the University of Nicosia. Thematic zones included Robotics, Fun Science, XR/VR, ECO, Innovation, Gaming, Sports and Art.

Cyprus: Hack for skills

The Hack for Skills initiative was a collaborative skills challenge competition held between Cyprus and Malta in November 2023. Its primary goal was to engage 40 young individuals (20 from each country) in developing proposals to enhance Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems, aligning them with current and future labor market demands

BOC Fintech Hackathon 4.0

The BoC Fintech Hackathon 4.0 in 2023 took place in Nicosia, Cyprus. Organized by the Bank of Cyprus, it brought together participants to create innovative fintech solutions. The event offered cash prizes, scholarships, cloud credits, and mentorship to winners, aiming to foster growth in Cyprus' fintech sector.

CASSINI Hackathon

The CASSINI Hackathon is a biannual event organized by the European Commission to foster innovative solutions using EU space technologies. In Cyprus, the 5th CASSINI Hackathon took place from March 24 to 26, 2023, at the Information and Training Center for Employment and Entrepreneurship of the Municipality of Nicosia. ​

HackTech 2022

HackTech 2022 — the 1st edition (originally "HackAdTech"), Cyprus's open hackathon by AdTech Holding — took place on 26–27 November 2022 in Limassol.

GDG Cyprus and DIGITAL DEMOCRACY HACKATHON

The GDG Cyprus and Digital Democracy Hackathon took place on April 29-30, 2022, at Moondogs Bar and Grill in Nicosia, Cyprus. This event was a collaborative effort between Google Developer Groups (GDG) Cyprus and the Office of the Commissioner for the Citizen, aiming to promote digital democracy through innovative technological solutions.

Hack Cyprus 2020

The Hack Cyprus 2020 event, titled Hack the Crisis (CY), was a virtual hackathon held from April 3 to 5, 2020, aimed at leveraging technology to address challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic in Cyprus.

Boc Hackathon Fintech 3.0

The BoC Fintech Hackathon 3.0 in 2019 was an in-person event held in Nicosia, Cyprus, organized by the Bank of Cyprus. Teams developed fintech solutions using open banking APIs. Winners received monetary prizes, mentorship, and opportunities for incubation at IDEAcy.

hack{cyprus} 2019

​The Hack{Cyprus} 2019 Hackathon, themed "The Comeback," took place from July 19 to 21, 2019, across six Cypriot cities: Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos, Kyrenia, and Famagusta. Organized by LEAD Cyprus and supported by the Cypriot Enterprise Link (CEL), the event gathered over 250 developers, designers, and ideators for a 43-hour coding marathon. Participants collaborated intensively to develop innovative projects, culminating in presentations evaluated by a panel of judges. The hackathon featured various awards, including prizes for the top three country winners and city-specific recognitions