June 19–21, 2026 · Amsterdam
The stage Europe never built. Until now.
Presenting Partners
The Weekend
Three days. One venue. Everything you need to go from idea to launch.
Friday evening the clock starts. Sunday afternoon it stops. Everything in between is yours — code, ship, iterate, repeat. Your real project. Your real vision.
Founders, engineers, investors. Scheduled sessions plus roaming mentors all weekend.
Find your people. Form your team. Scope it. By Saturday morning, you're shipping fast.
Food, music, and 500 people who get what you're doing. Or keep building. Your call.
Demo day on steroids. Top teams pitch live to a packed room. Judges decide. €100K+ awarded on stage.
The Programme
Build runs continuously — these are the programmed moments. Times in Amsterdam (CEST).
Day 01
Fri · Jun 19
Doors open — walk-in
Music, food, icebreakers, GameCube
Kick-off — opening ceremony
Epic open + house rules, then sponsor keynotes back-to-back
Food + break
Pitch & team formation
1 min each — who you are, who you're looking for · pizza & pitches
Day 02
Sat · Jun 20
Pixverse — Creative AI Video
Hands-on build walkthrough + best practices
Wispr — Hold Your Breath Longer
Freediving techniques for shipping under pressure
Vapi workshop
Live-build a voice agent, end to end
Cala workshop
Tap into Cala — skip the data
Devin / Cognition workshop
Build with Devin — hands-on session
⚽ Netherlands × Sweden — watch party
🇳🇱 vs 🇸🇪 · World Cup Group F — on the main screen, shared break from building
Day 03
Sun · Jun 21
Pitch Workshop
Sharpen your final pitch before finals
Submissions close
Building stops — live countdown from 14:50
AnyBiz live company auction
Companies auctioned live on stage
Pauze + food
Main finals
Top 10 main-track pitches to judges
Tier-1 pitch battle
Finalists from the highest-paying tracks + Q&A
Awards + close
Every winner, Money Track reveal, audience award
Tracks & Challenges
One main race for the headline prizes — plus a dozen more you can win on top. Enter as many as your build fits.
The most commercially viable product of the weekend.
The headline track, open to any domain. Build the startup most ready to become a unicorn — the main judges focus here, and the winner comes out of the main-stage finals.
Prompt to paid. Launch a venture and get real traction.
Go from a prompt to a live venture on Base44 and show real traction during the weekend — signups, payments, users, partnerships. Not a demo: a business that's already moving.
Devin as the product — not just a tool.
Build with the Devin API as an autonomous infrastructure layer: programmatically trigger and control Devin agents to solve real-world problems.
The Jury
The founders, operators and investors picking the winners — per track.
Headline · Main-Stage Finals
Bob van Luijt
Weaviate
CEO & Co-Founder @ Weaviate
Jelle Prins
Cradle
Cradle.bio, AI Deltaplan, NADI. Ex-Uber
Tea Elezi
Peak Capital
General Partner @ Peak
Ksenia Zvereva
Mollie
Developer Relations & Product at Mollie
Pierre Castronovo
Visa
Fintech Lead & Stablecoins GTM @ Visa
Daniel Gebler
Picnic
CTO at Picnic
Evert Beeckman
Entourage
Partner at Entourage
Lennard Kooy
Lleverage
Founder & CEO at Lleverage
Spots filling
Watching isn't winning. 150 startups launch this weekend. Be one of them.
One email. We hand off to Luma.
You build serious stuff at work. Now it's time to build something of your own — your stack, your call, your weekend.
We don't judge polish. We judge momentum.
Where you started vs. where you ended. That's what matters.
Apply NowMEGATHON sits inside Amsterdam Tech Week — a full calendar of talks, meetups, demos and parties across the city. Browse what's on and plan your week.
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Questions
Yes — applying is free. Spots are limited and vetted; we select 500 builders out of every applicant pool.
Bring Your Own Startup. You arrive with your real project, not a weekend toy. The point is momentum on what you're already building — not a themed sprint where everyone ends up with the same demo.
Mostly self-formed. Friday evening is structured to help you find your people if you arrive solo. By Saturday morning your team is shipping.
Two axes: momentum — where you started Friday vs. where you ended Sunday — and how clever the idea is technically and business-wise. Polish isn't the metric.
Yes. You retain full ownership of everything you build at MEGATHON. No silent IP transfers, no obligations.
Venue is in Amsterdam. Food and drinks are provided throughout the weekend. Sleep is your call — quiet rest zones are available. Saturday evening is a community moment you can opt into or keep building through.
Yes — the Main-Stage Finals on Sunday are livestreamed globally. The €100K+ prize pool is awarded live.
No. MEGATHON is open to everyone who wants to build — founders, engineers, designers, students, makers. Bring a project you're working on, or join a team on the ground. The only filter is that you actually want to ship something over the weekend.
