Sixty-two people, twelve nationalities, forty-eight hours and one tough question: how do you keep a drone flying when the GPS signal disappears? The EUDIS Defence Hackathon 2026 starts this Thursday in Leiria and ends on October 17. For European defense technology, it’s another busy week, and for Portugal it’s a notable one. This Leiria hackathon is the third event of the EU Defence Innovation Scheme (EUDIS) held in the country, after two in Lisbon, and this time Startup Leiria is the organizer and the epicenter.
Who’s in the room
Startup Leiria received 75 applications and accepted 62 participants, in 14 teams plus 21 individuals who form teams on the first afternoon. Almost half come from startups, a quarter are students, and the rest include researchers and military personnel. A third are 25 or younger. Two-thirds are Portuguese, and the others come from countries such as Ukraine, France, Sweden, Spain, Germany and Italy. The hackathon runs at the same time in eight countries.
Three challenges under “Autonomy on the Battlefield”
Teams work on navigating without GPS when the signal is blocked, coordinating drone swarms with minimal human input, and a challenge set in Leiria with Tekever: mother platforms that launch, coordinate and retrieve swarms of different vehicles. That one attracted the most teams.
Ideas on the table include vision-based navigation, AI running on the drone itself, interference-resistant communications and supply chains built only from European parts. Several teams also see civilian uses, from search and rescue to firefighting.
Mentors and evaluators come from the three branches of the Portuguese Armed Forces and companies like Tekever, Indra, GMV, CEiiA and Altice Labs. Teams work for 48 hours at the Leiria Municipal Market, sleeping on site. Tekever funds the drone kits and offers a €10,000 prize. National winners get two months of European mentoring.
Building a defense tech cluster
Vítor Ferreira, general director of Startup Leiria, links the hackathon to a bigger plan for defense tech in Portugal. The Leiria region already makes the bodies of robots, from molds to plastics to metalworking. What was missing, he says, is the brain: AI, perception, control, and a link to buyers.
The next steps point that way:
- a Defense Accelerator, from January to April 2027, with applications opening the week of October 26 for 15 to 18 startups and SMEs
- a science park near the future high-speed rail station, focused on robotics and physical AI
- a bid, with Productized, to host a BraveTech EU DefTech Forge in March 2027 with 15 to 20 European and Ukrainian teams
Ferreira wants Portugal seen as a hub for advanced dual-use engineering, and winning the BraveTech bid with Troia as a backdrop would help.
What to watch next
If you follow technology news updates, defense and dual-use will keep showing up there. And for hands-on events like this one, digital innovation events are the place to look.
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