Europe Tech Hackathon: Building Innovation, Partnerships, and Impact
From May 15 to 17, 2026, Sustainista will once again host the Europe Tech Hackathon at the ÖBB Open Innovation Factory in Vienna as part of ViennaUP. According to Sustainista’s event page, the 2026 edition invites designers, innovators, and tech enthusiasts to redefine the potential of AI agents and work on pressing sustainability challenges with real-world impact. The page presents the hackathon as a collaborative innovation format built around mentoring, ideation, pitching, and solution development.
This year’s edition also sits within a particularly exciting broader context. ViennaUP describes itself as a city-wide festival of entrepreneurship and innovation, created by the startup community for the world. Events are spread across Vienna and designed to connect participants with the city’s startup ecosystem, bringing together founders, investors, talent, and enablers from around the globe. For 2026, ViennaUP runs from May 18 to 22, preceded for the first time by a dedicated WarmUP weekend from May 15 to 17 — exactly the window in which the Europe Tech Hackathon takes place. That positioning makes the hackathon not just part of the festival, but part of its opening momentum.
That setting matters. ViennaUP is a decentralized festival, meaning each event is hosted and ticketed separately, with many events free to attend, some paid, and some application-based. The festival programme for 2026 is already available, and ViennaUP states that most events are conducted in English, reflecting its role as an international startup festival. The festival also notes that there is no single “golden ticket” for all events because the programme is delivered by many different local and international organizations. Instead, participants enter through individual event registrations and become part of the larger ViennaUP experience across the city.
Within that vibrant ecosystem, the Europe Tech Hackathon represents exactly the kind of collaborative and future-oriented format that ViennaUP is built to support. ViennaUP’s programme materials place the hackathon within the festival’s future-tech energy, describing it as a showcase of teamwork and brilliant solutions. Sustainista’s own positioning makes clear that the 2026 event will once again focus on the intersection of AI, sustainability, and practical innovation. In that broader context, topics such as the Digital Product Passport stand out as powerful examples of the kind of transformation-oriented challenges that fit naturally into this mission. Sustainista’s own work around the Digital Product Passport shows how central the topic has become for sustainable product regulation, transparency, lifecycle information, and digital product data in Europe.
Since 2022, Sustainista has proudly organized the Europe Tech Hackathon as part of ViennaUP, helping shape a platform where technology, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and collaboration come together with real purpose. Over the years, the hackathon has grown into far more than a single event. It has become a meeting point for innovators, students, founders, corporates, institutions, and ecosystem builders who want to turn bold ideas into tangible impact. The 2025 edition, for example, was organized by Sustainista within the ViennaUP Festival and focused on applied artificial intelligence for a sustainable future. ViennaUP itself is presented as a city-wide platform that connects startup stakeholders across sectors and geographies.
What makes this journey special is not only the innovation that has emerged, but the strength of the ecosystem behind it. Year after year, the Europe Tech Hackathon has created a space where interdisciplinary teams work on concrete sustainability challenges using technology, AI, and data. That practical, hands-on approach remains at the heart of the format. Sustainista’s 2026 programme once again emphasizes collaboration, mentoring, pitch training, and real-world problem solving rather than abstract discussion.
For Sustainista, organizing the Europe Tech Hackathon since 2022 has always been about building bridges: between ideas and implementation, between established institutions and emerging talent, and between innovation and societal responsibility. Looking back at previous editions, this mission has remained consistent. Over time, the format has evolved with the changing innovation landscape, but its core remains the same: creating a space where future-oriented technologies can be applied to real sustainability challenges in a way that is collaborative, fast-moving, and meaningful.
As Dr. Stefan Bauer puts it: “Over the years, we have created a great deal of innovation and delivered real added value for our partners and for the innovation ecosystem of the Vienna Business Agency.”
ViennaUP Europe Tech Hackathon 2025 Winner Pic I Dr. Stefan Bauer
That is exactly what this platform has stood for since day one. Innovation is never built alone. It is built through trust, continuity, and partnerships that grow stronger over time. We are deeply grateful to the Vienna Business Agency for its trust and support, and for creating the larger framework of ViennaUP, which has helped position Vienna as one of Europe’s most dynamic meeting points for startups and innovation. ViennaUP’s own materials describe the festival as a community-built international platform for entrepreneurship and innovation, and that spirit of openness and connection has been essential to the hackathon’s growth.
We also want to give special thanks to Jan Juriga and the wider ViennaUP team at the Vienna Business Agency. Their work represents exactly the kind of ecosystem thinking that long-term innovation needs: creating a framework in which partner-led events can flourish, communities can connect, and new ideas can gain visibility far beyond a single venue. ViennaUP is not a traditional centralized conference. It is a distributed platform across the city, powered by many organizers and communities — and that model is one of the reasons why the Europe Tech Hackathon has been able to grow in relevance and reach over the years.
At the same time, this story would not exist without the participants. To all the students, developers, designers, founders, researchers, creatives, and changemakers who joined us over the years: thank you. Thank you for your energy, your courage, your curiosity, and your willingness to take on difficult challenges. The Europe Tech Hackathon has always drawn its strength from the people in the room — the people who are ready to test ideas, question assumptions, build prototypes, and collaborate under pressure.
We are equally grateful to all partners who have helped make this journey possible. Their support, expertise, visibility, and belief in the value of practical innovation have helped the Europe Tech Hackathon grow into a stronger and more relevant platform every year.
Our partners:
TCI Consult GmbH Tobias Amesberger | Wirtschaftsagentur Wien Jan Juriga Florian Schanznig Gabriele Tatzberger | Bund Europäischer Jugend (BEJ/JEF Österreich) Kati Schneeberger | Bundeskanzleramt Österreich | ÖBB Sabine Prettenhofer Madeleine Kutschker | DPP Austria Sindre Wimberger 🕶️ Promptfather Schabnam Azad | brutkasten | Trending Topics by newsrooms | Alin Kalam | Stefan Bauer 🤸♂️ | Hubert Forster | Impact Hub Vienna I Klartext AI Daniel Toth Michael Neuberger, MBA I Markus Wals Wals Professional Services GmbH I OekoBusiness Wien I L2BGreen I Anthropic I OpenAI I Google I WU (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien)
To every one of these partners, we say thank you. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your collaboration. Thank you for helping us create a format that continues to deliver value not only for individual participants, but for Vienna’s wider innovation ecosystem as well.
As organizer, Sustainista is proud of what has been built since 2022 — and even more excited about what comes next. The Europe Tech Hackathon has shown that when the right people, the right partners, and the right challenges come together, innovation becomes something concrete. It becomes visible. It becomes collaborative. And most importantly, it becomes meaningful.
And this is exactly why we are looking ahead to the 2026 edition with such energy. The Europe Tech Hackathon opens ViennaUP’s new WarmUP weekend, placing it right at the front of the festival experience. That matters not only symbolically, but strategically: participants arrive at a moment when the city is already turning into a living lab for innovation, with more than 35 events across the ViennaUP programme and a wide mix of formats ranging from startup sessions and networking opportunities to side events and future-tech showcases. ViennaUP also emphasizes that the experience is primarily physical or hybrid, reinforcing Vienna itself as a place of encounter, exchange, and collaboration.
From May 15–17, 2026, the Europe Tech Hackathon will once again bring together innovators in Vienna to work on AI-driven sustainability challenges, supported by mentoring, pitch sessions, and a strong partner network. Sustainista’s programme description makes clear that this is a space for people from different backgrounds to innovate, collaborate, and make a difference together. In light of Sustainista’s wider sustainability work, challenge areas related to data-driven sustainability, transparency, and the Digital Product Passport are especially compelling examples of the kind of real-world transformation this platform can accelerate.
We look ahead with gratitude, ambition, and confidence. Together with our partners, with the Vienna Business Agency, with Jan Juriga and the ViennaUP team, and with all the brilliant participants who bring this event to life, we will continue building a platform where innovation meets sustainability — and where ideas become impact.
