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.

Unicorn Pitches Limassol 2026 — AI Revolution: From Vision to Reality

Ten startups, one stage, and a jury that votes electronically. Unicorn Pitches brings its pitch-battle format to Limassol on 24 November 2026, running 15:00–23:00 at the CUT Tassos Papadopoulos Building (1 Themidos, Limassol). The theme is AI Revolution: From Vision to Reality — which, in this format, means teams have to show the product rather than describe the future. Format. Ten selected startups pitch to a panel of 7–10 venture capitalists, who score live by electronic vote. The winner gets entry to the Unicorn event in San Francisco. Around the competition there are two hands-on AI workshops for entrepreneurs, investor speed-dating, and panel discussions. Organisers expect 300+ attendees, 100+ investors and 20+ family offices. Who it is for. Founders with something already built and a reason to be in a room with capital. Applications go through the Unicorn.Events page; tickets for attendees are on Eventbrite (refundable up to seven days before). Worth knowing: this is a pitch competition, not a build weekend — no code is written on the day. If you have come out of one of the hackathons on this calendar with a prototype and a co-founder, this is the next rung: the same evening puts the AI workshops, the VCs and the family offices in one building, in Limassol, for the price of a ticket.

27th NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum — Cyprus

The payments industry's Cyprus stop, eight days before the fintech hackathon that will be judged by half the people in the room. The 27th NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum runs on Thursday 19 November 2026, 09:00–18:00, at the Four Seasons Hotel, Limassol, organised by QUBE Events. Expected: 400+ attendees from 100+ companies and 50+ speakers from payments, EU compliance and banking technology. The agenda, as published.

• Cyprus as a payments and fintech hub — the recurring question of whether licensing volume has turned into actual engineering headcount
• Instant payments, A2A and open finance
• PSD3 / PSR and the EU AML package — the regulatory work that will dominate 2027 roadmaps
• DORA and NIS2 operational resilience — now a live obligation, not a planning exercise, for a lot of Cyprus-licensed entities
• AI and agentic AI in payments and RegTech
• Crypto, stablecoins and the Digital Euro
• Fraud prevention and financial crime
• Cross-border payments and treasury

Who actually goes. Banks, payment service providers, EMIs, fintechs, regulators and vendors — senior, commercial, and there to do business development. This is the 27th edition of a travelling series and Limassol is one of its regular anchors precisely because of the density of CySEC-regulated payment and brokerage firms on the coast. Cost. Paid, corporate pricing, registration via the QUBE Events site. There is no student tier advertised — this one is budgeted as business development, not education. Check the current rate before planning the day. The timing is the argument for going. It lands eight days before the BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November, IDEA Innovation Centre, €16,000 in prizes). If you are building a team for that, the mentors, judges and prospective first customers for a Cypriot fintech build are concentrated in one Limassol ballroom on 19 November. The DORA/NIS2 and PSD3 sessions in particular are the clearest available read on what a bank in this market considers a real problem right now — which is more useful input for a hackathon brief than any amount of ideation. Contact: info@qubevents.com, +357 22010583.

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.

Plug and Play Cyprus Expo 2026

Plug and Play's first Cyprus Expo — the demo day that closes the accelerator's inaugural Limassol cohort. Set this expectation first: this is not a competition. There is no challenge brief, no 48-hour build, no prize pool. It is the public showcase at the end of a six-month accelerator, and it is listed here because it is the one evening this year when the ten startups Plug and Play picked in Cyprus, their corporate partners and the investors around them are all in the same room — with free entry. When and where. Wednesday 11 November 2026, at Etko, Τσιφλικουδιών, 3010 Limassol. The public programme:

• 16:00–17:00 — registration and arrival
• 17:00–20:00 — the Expo itself: open to everyone, free admission
• 20:00–22:30 — networking, included with the expo ticket

One housekeeping note: the Eventbrite header bills the event as 17:00–21:30 while its own published agenda runs networking to 22:30. Plan for the earlier finish and treat the extra hour as a bonus. Getting in. Free, but registration is required via Eventbrite, and it is first-come, first-served until capacity is reached — there is no published cut-off date, so the constraint is the room, not the calendar. Register early rather than on the day. The daytime half is closed. Two application-only sessions run before the doors open, and neither is walk-in:

• 10:00–12:00 — Startup Mentoring Session, startups only, application required.
• 12:00–15:00 — Mentorship Hours, one-to-one slots by application.

When the expo was first announced in September the daytime block was described as startup mentoring in the morning plus a VC matchmaking session in the afternoon; the current Eventbrite agenda lists it as mentorship hours. If you are a founder hoping for investor time, apply and ask which it is — applying does not guarantee a place. Who is on show. The ten startups of Plug and Play Cyprus' first cohort, announced in August 2026: Sprouty, ModelRoom, Cleedee, BLEND.app, Digital Fox, EleniAI, EMBIO Diagnostics, Fewton, Neura Energy and QubeHub. The accelerator ran them through six intensive three-day bootcamps across six months, and the Expo is its closing milestone. Who is behind it. Organised by Plug and Play Cyprus in cooperation with the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) and the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, with corporate partners Tototheo Global, ASBIS, ECOMMBX and Mastercard. Why it matters locally. Plug and Play is one of the largest startup platforms in the world, and 2026 is its first full cycle on the island — it also signed a strategic partnership with Reflect Festival in September to wire Cyprus into its global network. For anyone who builds at the hackathons on this list, this is the other end of the pipeline: the same room where a weekend prototype eventually has to find a corporate sponsor or a cheque. Worth four hours of an evening, especially since it costs nothing.

Wiki Finance Expo Cyprus 2026

The largest free-entry fintech floor Cyprus will see this year, and it lands thirteen days before the other one. Wiki Finance Expo Cyprus 2026 runs on Friday 6 November 2026, 09:00–18:00, at Parklane, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, 11 Giannou Kranidioti, 4534 Limassol. It is organised by WikiEXPO, the events arm of Wiki Global, with WikiFX, WikiBit and WikiGold as co-organisers, and it bills itself as "Europe's Premier FinTech, Forex & Crypto Event". The headline number, with the appropriate caveat. The organisers advertise 7,000+ attendees, 50+ speakers and exhibitors and representation from 30+ countries. That 7,000 figure is WikiEXPO's own across-the-series average rather than an audited Limassol count — treat it as an order of magnitude, not a promise. Even discounted heavily, this is a large floor by Cyprus standards. The tracks, as published.

• Foreign exchange and liquidity solutions
• Regulatory and compliance frameworks
• Next-generation payments
• Platform building and brokerage technology
• Fintech service providers
• Crypto and DeFi
• AI in finance

The detailed agenda and the speaker list were still marked coming soon at the time of writing; the track list above is the firm part. Who is in the room. Brokers, institutional investors, VCs, payment and brokerage vendors, developers and crypto natives. The pitch is explicitly transactional — liquidity, B2B partnerships and funding — which is the honest description of what a Limassol FX expo is for. Cyprus hosts one of the densest concentrations of CySEC-regulated brokerages and payment firms in the EU, and this is the room where that industry does its purchasing. Cost: nothing. Registration is free, via wikiexpo.com/Cyprus/2026/en or the Eventbrite listing. That is the single most useful fact here. The island's other two big financial-technology gatherings this November — the 27th NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum (19 November, Four Seasons Limassol) and the BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November, IDEA Innovation Centre, €16,000 in prizes) — are respectively paid-corporate and competitive. This one just asks you to turn up. Why it belongs on a hackathon calendar. Because November in Cyprus is effectively one long fintech funnel, and this is the free end of it. If you are assembling a team for BoC Fintech 7.0 three weeks later, 6 November is the cheapest day all autumn to find a co-founder, a liquidity provider willing to explain their actual integration pain, or a vendor whose API you were going to build against anyway. The crypto/DeFi and AI in finance tracks in particular map almost directly onto the BoC brief, which combines fintech with AI, cybersecurity and smart cities. Free does not mean small — register early and check the final agenda on wikiexpo.com before planning the day around a specific speaker.

4th European Cybersecurity Skills Conference 2026

Postponed from March, moved to November, and now full. The 4th European Cybersecurity Skills Conference takes place on 4–5 November 2026, 09:00–17:00 both days, at the Radisson Beach Resort, Larnaca. It is run by ENISA, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, together with the Digital Security Authority (DSA) of Cyprus, under the title "Strengthening EU's Cybersecurity Skills for a Resilient Digital Future". The two facts to act on first. It was originally scheduled for 4–5 March 2026 and postponed because of developments in the Middle East; and registration is now closed because the conference reached maximum capacity. ENISA's own page says so plainly. If you are not already registered, the realistic options are the published materials and whatever ENISA puts out afterwards — this is the flagship EU event on cybersecurity skills and the agenda is worth reading even from a distance. What is on the agenda.

• European initiatives on skills recognition and the attestation of cybersecurity competencies
• The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the cybersecurity workforce — which skills AI erodes, which it creates, and what that does to hiring
• The ongoing revision of the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF), including a new set of proficiency levels
• Secure product lifecycles and the security of AI systems
• Cross-ecosystem cooperation between EU institutions, member states, industry and academia

Published materials, both open to anyone: the agenda and the participant guide. Hashtags #EUCyberSkills and #ECSFtalks for following along. Who it is aimed at. Policymakers, educators, industry leaders and practising cybersecurity professionals — not students, and not a build event. Why Cyprus got it, and why that matters locally. The ECSF revision discussed here is the framework that national training and certification schemes get written against, so what is decided in Larnaca propagates into Cypriot curricula and job specifications over the following couple of years. It also lands inside a notably busy fortnight: the Cybersecurity for ALL Festival at Nicosia Mall on 24 October, Cyber Resilience 2026 in Nicosia on 2 November with a DG CONNECT keynote, and a €1.5m national grant scheme for cybersecurity innovation taking applications until 8 December. For once, the skills conversation and the money are happening in the same month. Registration is closed — treat this listing as a record of what is being decided on the island, not an invitation.

Cyber Resilience 2026

"From Digital Threat to Digital Resilience" — half a day, free, and already full. Cyber Resilience 2026 runs on Monday 2 November 2026 from 09:30 to roughly 14:00 at the Office of the Commissioner of Communications – Digital Security Authority, Andrea Chaliou 1, 2408 Engomi, Nicosia. Start with the practical warning: registration is exhausted. The Eventora listing shows the event sold out (Εξαντλήθηκαν). Admission was free and the venue is the Authority's own premises rather than a hotel ballroom, so capacity was always going to be the binding constraint. If you want in, the route now is the organisers directly rather than the form. Who is behind it. Women4Cyber Cyprus and the Digital Security Authority, with support from the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KEVE), the Cyprus Computer Society (CCS) and the National Cyber Security Coordination Centre (NCC-CY). That is effectively the full institutional stack of Cypriot cybersecurity in one room, which explains the capacity problem. The framing. Four words carry the agenda — Artificial Intelligence • Business • People • Trust — and the stated arc is the move from treating cyber as a threat register to treating it as a resilience property of the business. Announced topics: contemporary cyber threats, AI applications in security, the NIS2 Directive, business resilience, future skills and digital trust. The keynote is the reason this is not just another half-day. Despina Spanou, Deputy Director-General for Cybersecurity and Trust at DG CONNECT, European Commission, is speaking. Cypriot, and about as senior as EU cybersecurity policy gets — which makes this the most direct line between Brussels' security agenda and a Nicosia audience available this year. Who is in the audience. European and national officials, corporate executives, cybersecurity leads and digital-ecosystem professionals. This is a policy-and-practice event, not a build. Why it belongs here. Two reasons, both concrete. First, NIS2 and the skills agenda are now live compliance obligations for a large number of Cyprus-licensed entities, and the Cybersecurity & Trust in Fintech track at the BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November) sits directly on top of them. Second, the same fortnight brings the 4th European Cybersecurity Skills Conference to Larnaca on 4–5 November and the Cybersecurity for ALL Festival to Nicosia Mall on 24 October, while a €1.5m grant scheme for cybersecurity innovation takes applications until 8 December. Anyone planning to build or sell security product in this market should read the four together. Confirm the final agenda and any returned places with the organisers — the published running order was still thin at the time of writing.

DevFest Cyprus 2026

The venue is confirmed and the running order is published. DevFest Cyprus 2026 takes place on Saturday 31 October 2026, 09:30-17:00 at the University of Nicosia, 46 Makedonitissas Avenue, Nicosia 2417. It is the Cyprus edition of the global, community-run DevFest conference series hosted by Google Developer Groups. Schedule as published:

• 09:30-10:00 — Registration & coffee
• 10:00-10:30 — Opening talk: Nuno Andrade, Google Developer Expert in Cloud
• 10:30-12:45 — Three further talk slots, speakers still TBA, with a coffee break and networking at 11:15
• 12:45-13:30 — Lunch & community networking
• 13:30-15:00 — Hands-on workshop with Marina Coelho, DevRel Engineer at Google
• 15:00-16:30 — Closing remarks & networking

Topics span Google's current developer stack — AI and machine learning, Firebase, Flutter, Web and Cloud. Organisers note that new speakers are being added regularly, so three of the six sessions are still open. Who it's for: developers at any level, from seasoned engineers to newcomers moving into tech. Registration is free, through the GDG Cyprus event page or the group's Meetup listing. Worth noting about the shape of the day: a 90-minute hands-on session with a Google DevRel engineer, and roughly three hours budgeted for breaks, lunch and closing networking, is a larger share of the day than most conferences give to the two things you cannot get from a livestream. The talks will be online afterwards; the workshop and the room will not be. Half the agenda being TBA three weeks out is normal for a volunteer-run DevFest, but it does mean you are committing to the format rather than to a line-up.

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.

Cybersecurity for ALL Festival 2026

Ten hours, a shopping mall, free entry, and no registration form. The Cybersecurity for ALL Festival 2026 runs on Saturday 24 October 2026, 10:00–20:00, at the Nicosia Mall. It is organised by the Office of the Commissioner of Communications through the Digital Security Authority and the National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre of Cyprus (NCC-CY), and the Cyprus Computer Society is taking part alongside the Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge (CCSC). What is actually there. Interactive games and hands-on activities built around digital security, aimed at getting visitors to — in the organisers' own framing — learn, play and realise the importance of digital security and responsible digital behaviour. Previous editions have mixed children's workshops and educational games with practical guidance for parents on protecting children online, plus a strand on careers in cybersecurity. Who it is for. Everyone, genuinely — this is a family event in a mall rather than a professional conference, and that is the point of it. Entry is free and you can simply walk in. Why it is worth a line on a competitive-events calendar. Because the Cyprus Cyber Security Challenge stand is there, and the CCSC is the selection route for the national team that goes to the European Cyber Security Challenge — Cyprus sent its 2026 squad to Bochum, Germany on 12–16 October. If you are a teenager or student with any interest in security, this is the lowest-friction way in the calendar to talk to the people who run that pipeline: no ticket, no application, no prior knowledge assumed. The wider context for the date. It lands in the middle of an unusually dense cybersecurity fortnight in Cyprus: Cyber Resilience 2026 in Nicosia on 2 November, the 4th European Cybersecurity Skills Conference in Larnaca on 4–5 November, and a €1.5m national grant scheme for cybersecurity innovation whose call closes on 8 December. The island is making a concerted push on security skills this autumn, and this is the public-facing end of it. The same Saturday also carries the Zubr Capital Young Hackathon — if you are choosing, this one is the all-ages drop-in and that one is the all-day build.

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.

AI in Practice: Changing the Future of Business

Not a build, not a competition — an evening aimed squarely at the people who sign off on AI budgets. "AI in Practice: Changing the Future of Business" runs on Monday 19 October 2026 at European University Cyprus, 6 Diogenous Street, Engomi, Nicosia 2404, and the stated audience is C-level leaders and SME owners. It is on this calendar for one reason: these are the people who decide whether anything built at November's hackathons ever gets bought. The running order.

• 18:00–18:30 — registration and networking
• 18:30–18:50 — welcome remarks, including opening remarks from Demetris Skourides, Cyprus' Chief Scientist
• 19:00–19:55 — three keynotes back to back
• 20:40–21:15 — speaker Q&A
• 21:15–22:30 — networking reception with refreshments

Who is speaking.

• Monica Odysseos — Head of the AI and Data Lab at Grant Thornton Cyprus, on how AI changes work and decision-making rather than just output volume.
• George Malekkos — CEO of POWERSOFT Computer Solutions and President of CITEA, on the unglamorous part: mapping an actual business problem onto an AI solution instead of the reverse.
• Paris Thomas — executive advisor on AI and strategy to Fortune 500 companies, with the keynote "AI and the Future of Business: Will Your Business Be Here in 2030?"

Who is behind it. Organised by Panis.News, co-organised with GrantXpert Consulting and the Future Skills Hub at European University Cyprus. Silver sponsors: Growth Hacking Cyprus, RSEVEN, Mel's Digital. Supporting partners include the Cyprus Computer Society and XValley Tech. Tickets. Registration is on Luma and there are two tiers, Standard and VIP — this one is paid, unlike most things on this list. Pricing is shown at the checkout step; check it before you plan the evening. There is no published cut-off date, so the constraint is room capacity. The honest framing. This is a talks-and-networking evening, not a workshop — you will not leave with a deployed model. What you will leave with is the room: the Chief Scientist, CITEA's president, Grant Thornton's data lead and a few hundred Cypriot business owners, all in one building, ten days before the island's hackathon season proper kicks off with SkillsCyprus (29–31 October) and DevFest Cyprus (31 October). If you are a founder looking for a first paying customer rather than a prize, the ROI here is better than a weekend of hacking.

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. The Cyprus node is hosted by C.D. Multimedia Services Ltd. This edition's theme is Autonomy on the Battlefield. Engineers, startups, researchers, developers and defence professionals work on real operational challenges over a weekend and pitch to experts from across the European defence innovation ecosystem. The European Commission opened sign-ups on 31 August 2026; teams register through the EUDIS Hackathon site and pick their local node.

Startup Award Cyprus 2026

Twelve startups, four trophies, no prize money — and a room of investors who actually write cheques. The Ventures' Startup Award Cyprus returns for its 2026 edition, and the whole thing comes down to one in-person afternoon on Thursday 15 October 2026. Read this part first if you were planning to apply: you are too late. Applications opened on 1 August and closed on 1 October 2026. The twelve finalists are announced on 11 October, and the Final Pitch and Awards ceremony is on 15 October. This listing exists for the people who want to be in the room, not on the stage. One honest caveat about the times above. The Ventures has not published a start time or a venue for the 2026 final. The 10:00–19:00 window in this listing is a placeholder for the date, not a schedule — if you are attending, confirm the hour and the address with the organisers. For reference, the 2025 edition's final ran on 23 September at The Warehouse, so Limassol is the obvious guess, but it is a guess. The format. Applications are reviewed online — free to enter, a website link and a pitch deck is all it took. The top 12 are then invited to pitch live to a judging panel, which picks four winners across:

• Best Product
• Best Traction
• Best Team
• Best AI Solution (special nomination)

Participation in the final is in person only, and mandatory for finalists — being able to travel to Cyprus was part of the eligibility bar, alongside being early-stage (pre-seed through Round A), from any industry, with an MVP or prototype and "global impact potential". There is no cash prize. That is deliberate. What winners get is distribution: investor introductions, mentorship, media exposure and access to what The Ventures describes as a network of 460+ VC funds, investors and business angels collectively managing over $57 billion. Finalists pitch to a hand-picked set of investors face to face. Whether that beats a €7,000 cheque depends entirely on what stage you are at. The judging panel is the strongest argument for showing up:

• Petros Farah — Investment Director, Samsung Ventures
• Demetrios Zoppos — Co-founder & Partner, 33East
• Andreas Panayi — Co-founder & CEO, Kinisis Ventures
• Stavrinos Kyriakou — Startups and Scale ISVs Recruit Strategy Lead, Microsoft
• Anton Timashev — Co-founder, ZERO10 & Tetrad.vc; CEO & Co-founder, Wayvee Analytics
• Margarita Kyprianou — Innovation Program Manager, Cyprus Seeds
• Grigory Bortnik — Co-founder, Narwhal Accelerator; Venture Partner, The Games Fund

Partners. Platinum partner 4dev.com, gold partner Royal Pine, with AWS/Cloudvisor, Miro and TechIsland among the supporting names. Why it is on this list. It is not a hackathon — there is no build phase and nothing gets coded on the day. It is here for the same reason Unicorn Pitches is: October and November have turned into Cyprus' pitching season, and this is the one where the panel is mostly investors rather than mostly mentors. If you are a founder who did not apply, go anyway and watch which twelve made the cut — that list is the most honest snapshot of the island's early-stage pipeline you will get this year.

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.

Digital Agenda Cyprus Summit 2026 — "AI Wars"

One day, 40+ speakers, and a title that is not trying to be subtle: "AI Wars — Challenging the Balance of Power". The Digital Agenda Cyprus Summit 2026 runs on Wednesday 14 October 2026 at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre, Mouseiou 6, Nicosia 1097. It is the island's main cross-sector technology-policy conference, and this year the framing is geopolitical rather than product-led: who holds leverage when AI capability becomes a national asset. The shape of the day.

• 08:00–09:00 — registration
• 09:00–18:00 — main programme
• 18:00–23:50 — the Night Summit, a separate evening track with its own running order

What the programme covers. The announced threads are "Industrial Intelligence", AI dominance and sovereignty, innovation inside government, investment strategy, early-stage startups, and the luxury and creative industries. The speaker list is deliberately mixed — politics, industry and academia, international and local — rather than engineering-only. Named so far. Nina Schick, sovereign-AI strategist and one of the earlier public voices on synthetic media and AGI geopolitics, is the headline international speaker. The organising committee is chaired by Kyriacos Kokkinos — former IBM executive and former Cyprus Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy — which is a reasonable signal of who will be in the room from the government side. Tickets — and the part worth knowing. This is a paid conference: Early Bird from €70, with discounted rates for corporate teams of five. Students go free. If you are a student on the island, this is the single cheapest way all autumn to be in a room with the people who write Cyprus' digital policy — take it. Why it is on this calendar. It is not a build event and nobody ships anything on 14 October. But it sits two weeks before the hackathon season proper — SkillsCyprus (29–31 October), DevFest Cyprus (31 October) — and five weeks before BoC Fintech Hackathon 7.0 (27–29 November). The summit is where the policy and procurement side of the ecosystem states its priorities for the year; the hackathon briefs tend to rhyme with whatever gets said here. Read it as the agenda-setting event rather than the fun one. Confirm the final programme and current ticket tier on agenda.cy before booking — the speaker list has been filling in through September and October.

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.

European Researchers' Night 2026 — Cyprus (CELEBRATE 2.0)

European Researchers' Night 2026 returns to the Cyprus State Fair (Halls A & B), Nicosia on Friday 25 September 2026, running from 08:30 through to 22:00. The Cyprus edition is organised by the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) together with organisations from across the island's research and innovation ecosystem, and is funded by the European Commission. This year marks the initiative's 20th anniversary, under the theme "CELEBRATE 2.0 – Two Decades of STEAM-Powered Inspiration". What's on:

• 75+ interactive stands staffed by researchers, scientists, academics and R&I organisations.
• 80+ hands-on activities — experiments, live demonstrations, workshops, games, quizzes, simulations and competitions.
• Science Unfold 2026, the pupils' competition, on the theme "STEAMing Through Time! How research and innovation changed our world".
• Robotics and engineering demos from the ecosystem, including the Cyprus Computer Society's EnviroBot.
• An Artistic Creation Activity and the Researchers in Schools programme for 2026-2027.

The programme is aimed at families, students and anyone curious about science and technology; parts of the day are also streamed on the organisers' YouTube channel.

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.