Prizes worth €20,000 at the EUDIS (European Defense Innovation Scheme) hackathon, an initiative under the auspices of the European Defense Fund, dedicated to startups and innovators in the field of military and civil technologies

The initiative’s mission is to contribute to strengthening the technological sovereignty of the European Union

• The EUDIS hackathon organizers are offering prizes worth a total of 20,000 euros, consisting of cash, mentoring resources and acceleration programs;
• The cash awards are worth 4,000 euros: 1st prize, in the amount of 2,500 euros, and 2nd prize, in the amount of 1,500 euros;
• The resources worth 16,000 euros consist of access to acceleration programs, mentoring and resources for the development of the proposed ideas;
• The competition is aimed at both innovators with early prototypes and those with mature solutions. Advanced-stage prototypes will have the opportunity to enter a special matchmaking program connecting industry and investors, as well as national institutions and European agencies;
• Romania is organizing, for the first time, a hackathon for dual-use solutions – with both civilian and military applications.

Bucharest, October 10^th, 2025: Startups and innovative individuals who register for EUDIS Hackathon, a European digital innovation event in the field of dual-use technologies (with civil and military applications), can win prizes totaling €20,000. The organizers are offering two cash prizes: a first prize of €2,500 and a second prize of €1,500, plus resources worth €16,000, which include access to acceleration programs, mentoring, and product development resources.

EUDIS is an initiative of the European Defence Fund, a program designed to strengthen digital innovation in the defence sector across the EU, with a budget of nearly €7.3 billion for the 2021–2027 period. The EUDIS Hackathon is now reaching its third edition and takes place simultaneously in no fewer than eight European countries: Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Portugal. This is the first time that Romania is hosting a hackathon dedicated to dual-use solutions, marking an important milestone in the expansion of the EUDIS European network.

The first edition of the EUDIS Hackathon took place in 2024, bringing together participants from six countries including Italy, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland). The second edition, held in the spring of this year, gathered competitors from eight countries: Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

The event is organized in Romania by the Romanian Tech Startups Association (ROTSA) and will take place in person on October 17–19, hosted by the Politehnica University of Bucharest – “Precis” Center. It will also include an online version during the same period. The hackathon is aimed both at startups developing dual-use products and at early-career professionals, researchers, and students with technical proposals.

Those interested can register at this link until Wednesday, October 15.

In 2024, the defense expenditures of the 27 EU member states reached an unprecedented level of €343 billion – a 19% increase compared to 2023 – representing 1.9% of GDP. This growth, driven largely by equipment acquisitions and rising investments in research and development, reflects the member states’ determination to strengthen Europe’s military capabilities in response to the evolving security environment.

At the NATO Summit in June 2025, NATO members agreed to begin allocating the equivalent of 5% of their annual GDP to defense by 2035.

In September, the Romanian government announced that Romania will receive €16.68 billion in funding through the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense investment program, the second-largest amount distributed to a member state after Poland.

In the context of Europe’s efforts to strengthen its defense capabilities, the EUDIS Hackathon continues the initiatives carried out by ROTSA, in partnership with Techcelerator, in the field of digital innovation for defense and the space sector. These efforts include supporting projects such as DIANA – NATO’s accelerator for civil and military solutions – and the NASA Space Apps Challenge, the world’s largest hackathon.

The consortium formed by ROTSA and Techcelerator was selected to implement EUDIS activities in Romania, in a European competition, alongside a community of local agencies in the field of defense and security.

Participants in the EUDIS Hackathon will receive both cash prizes and a valuable opportunity to develop their skills and connect with the European defense innovation ecosystem. The winning team at the national level will benefit from two months of intensive mentoring, consisting of approximately 40 hours of expert consultancy. The top three teams qualifying for the European final will gain access to an extended mentoring program of up to six months, with services valued at a minimum of €16,000.

In addition, participants enjoy visibility and direct access to leading defense institutions, with the opportunity to present their ideas both in Romania, to the Ministry of Defense, corporations, and other relevant actors, and at the European level, to officials and military leaders. The event thus becomes a launch pad for strategic partnerships, collaborations, and potential investments.

“The EUDIS Hackathon is not just an innovation exercise, but a true accelerator for solutions that can quickly reach the market and create real impact. Through this event, we are building an essential dialogue space between the institutional sphere and the innovation community — where public needs meet creative minds. I strongly believe it is vital to support the role of local technology innovators, including in strengthening resilience in Eastern Europe, and we are doing this by helping Romanian innovators test new products, accelerate their business development, and attract investment,” said Cristian Dascălu, President of the Romanian Tech Startups Association (ROTSA) and Managing Partner at Techcelerator, the organizer of the EUDIS Hackathon in Romania.

EUDIS Hackathon 2025 Challenges – Fall Edition

The fall 2025 edition of the hackathon will be structured around a central theme, divided into three distinct challenges. The main theme of the hackathon is how the European space ecosystem can support defense missions and operations and contribute to securing space.

The three sub-theme challenges are:

• Protection of space assets – identifying, analyzing, and countering threats from space. This challenge is proposed in a context where adversaries are developing anti-satellite weapons, orbital jamming devices, and cyber attacks, and where Europe’s space assets (navigation, communications, and Earth observation) are under threat.
• Use of space for defense – this challenge addresses the need for space-based solutions to support military missions and operations, including Earth observation, positioning, navigation and timing, secure communications, early warning of space-based missiles, and the collection and processing of data from multiple sources
• Sovereign Aerospace – Autonomous drones (military and civilian), aircraft, and weapon systems are redefining the aerospace industry. The challenge concerns the need for solutions such as airspace monitoring to detect and combat hostile or unknown aerial objects using automated countermeasures; more effective recognition and neutralization of fiber optic drones in ambush situations; reuse of existing space hardware and software for military applications in the aerospace field, with a focus on launch, authorization, and trajectory calculation systems; development of hardware and software for drone management.

“We are looking for solutions that reduce external dependencies, localize critical knowledge, and quickly integrate with European users. As usual, we support both early-stage prototypes and mature solutions, the latter of which may be eligible for our special industry-investor matchmaking program during the event,” added Cristian Dascălu.

The partners of the EUDIS Hackathon are: Civitta, the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics – ICI, ING Bank, CARSA, UBB – Tech Transfer, Măgurele Science Park, Unitech, Tehnopol, Politehnica University, ROSPIN, Techcelerator, North-West RDA, CS Inohub, Cluj IT, Cluj Hub, DiFine PR, UEFISCDI, Women in Tech, SAS, Brewtifi, Mons Mellis, and Redis Nutriție.

More details about the challenges are available on the EUDIS website.

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About EUDIS:

The European Defence Innovation Scheme (EUDIS) is a programme created under the European Defence Fund (EDF) that aims to strengthen defence innovation at EU level. The main objective of EUDIS is to reduce the barriers to entry into defence for start-ups and innovators. The programme supports innovators throughout the development process – from ideation, validation and launch to scaling up.

The European Defence Fund (of which the EUDIS initiative is part) has a budget of almost €7.3 billion for the period 2021–2027 and supports projects that encourage cooperation between SMEs, large companies and research organisations in the EU. The funding aims to stimulate innovation in cutting-edge, interoperable defence technologies with a significant impact on European defence capabilities and overall security.

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About ROTSA

ROTSA (Romanian Tech Startups Association) is a non-profit organization that aims to promote, support and represent the interests of technology startups in Romania. ROTSA, through collaboration with actors of the national ecosystem, carries out the national mapping of tech startups in Romania, in an effort to generate data related to the state and evolution of tech startup companies. ROTSA’s vision is to develop and support the technology startup ecosystem, while being a connector for the main actors and a link with other existing international ecosystems.