Ukrainian developers make debut appearance at NATO Innovation Challenge

For the first time, NATO has allowed developers and scientists from Ukraine to participate in a hackathon aimed at solving common threats.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported this.

The event will take place on March 27, 2025, in Bydgoszcz (Poland), and you can also join it online. This year's theme is countering guided aerial bombs. Applications can be submitted until March 13.

NATO Innovation Challenge is a hackathon organized by the NATO Innovation Hub (NATO's Joint Command Transformation) and the Alliance's member states. The competition allows scientific associations, individual innovators, or startups to prove themselves and aims to expand NATO's cooperation with industry representatives.

"Enemy's guided aerial bombs are one of the biggest threats to the Ukrainian military on the contact line and Ukrainian cities. This topic must be key for the next NATO hackathon. This proves that we are in the same security context as the Alliance," Deputy Defense Minister Valery Churkin noted.

Previously, only representatives of the Alliance member states could participate in the NATO Innovation Challenge. This year, representatives of Ukraine were allowed to participate.

An application for participation in the hackathon must meet specific criteria. The main thing is that the proposed solution must be relevant to the problem, innovative, and realistic.

Each proposed solution will be evaluated according to the judging criteria:

• relevance to the identified problem,
• innovative approach,
• ease of use,
• integration and compatibility,
• portability,
• scalability,
• reliability,
• cost and resource efficiency,
• data security and protection,
• impact assessment.

Ukraine has continuously grappled with the challenge of countering adversarial guided aerial bombs on the frontlines, a concern that persists despite developing several solutions. In response, Ukrainian inventors, innovators, scientists, and defense industry representatives are encouraged to participate in NATO hackathons to address these critical issues.