Summercon 2026

Join us for Summercon 2026

Summercon 2026

Two days of technical talks, hacker culture, late-night conversations, and Brooklyn chaos.

Summercon returns to Gowanus on July 10–11, 2026, bringing together the information security and hacker communities for a weekend that is technical, social, irreverent, and unmistakably Summercon.

This is not a hotel ballroom conference. It is a walkable hacker village centered around Littlefield, Lucky 13 Saloon, Ornate Studios, and the surrounding neighborhood.

Tickets include admission for both days and the always amazing Summercon t-shirt.

What your ticket includes

Your Summercon 2026 ticket gets you more than a seat in the room. It gets you into the whole weekend: the talks, the parties, the neighborhood, the shirt, the side quests, and the conversations that make Summercon feel like Summercon.

Two days of technical talks

Summercon is a single-track conference built around serious technical content and the hacker spirit. Expect research, stories, strange discoveries, strong opinions, audience participation, and talks that respect your intelligence.

The official Summercon 2026 t-shirt

Every attendee gets the one-of-a-kind Summercon t-shirt, included with admission. Pick it up across the street at Ornate Studios, then feel free to wear it all weekend. Nobody will accuse you of “wearing the band’s shirt at the concert.”

Hacker Village at Ornate Studios

Ornate Studios becomes part of the Summercon footprint for the weekend, with sponsor tables, merch, giveaways, lounge space, and opportunities to meet people without having to shout over a PA system. Between talks, head across the street for hands-on activities, lock picking, exclusive conference merchandise, sponsor demos, swag, surprises, and whatever other strange little missions we manage to create before go-time.

Friday night at Littlefield

After the first full day of talks, we keep things moving with happy hour, live music, a DJ, and the official Friday night Summercon party at Littlefield.

Saturday closing ceremonies and flip cup

Saturday wraps with closing ceremonies, happy hour, and our traditional flip cup tournament: an event of questionable athletic merit but significant cultural importance.

Completely From Memory

Saturday night continues with a special performance by Completely From Memory, an improv troupe that performs an entire movie from memory, with the kind of accuracy, confidence, and narrative instability that feels spiritually correct for Summercon.

The unofficial After After Party

For the brave, the foolish, and the people who somehow still want to keep talking, the unofficial After After Party continues late at Canal Bar.

A walkable Brooklyn hacker village

Summercon 2026 centers around Littlefield, Ornate Studios, Lucky 13 Saloon, Canal Bar, and the surrounding Gowanus neighborhood. Talks, drinks, food, merch, parties, and late-night conversations are all close enough that the whole weekend feels like one shared space.

The people

The best part of Summercon has always been the people: researchers, builders, breakers, defenders, old friends, new friends, hallway-track philosophers, first-timers, lifers, and people who came for one talk and somehow ended up in a 2:00am conversation about RF, municipal infrastructure, and whether computers were a mistake.

The Neighborhood

Summercon 2026 takes over a small, walkable piece of Gowanus, turning a few blocks of Brooklyn into a hacker village for the weekend.

At the center is Littlefield, our main venue and home base for talks, ceremonies, happy hours, live music, DJs, and the moments that somehow become Summercon lore before the weekend is over.

Across the street, Ornate Studios becomes the daytime side quest: t-shirt pickup, sponsor tables, conference merch, lock picking, lounge space, and the place to wander when you need a break without leaving the event.

Next door, Lucky 13 Saloon gives attendees a nearby place to grab a drink, meet up between sessions, continue a hallway conversation, or quietly reconsider whether the previous speaker was joking.

A few blocks away, Canal Bar hosts the unofficial late-night continuation for people who are not ready to let the night end and are willing to make tomorrow’s decisions tomorrow.

The whole thing is intentionally compact. No shuttle buses. No conference-center carpet. No wandering through a casino trying to find Ballroom C. Just talks, drinks, food, merch, parties, side quests, and friends old and new, all close enough to feel like one shared space.

For one weekend, Gowanus becomes Summercon’s neighborhood.

Volunteers Needed! Apply Now!

You know what it takes to make Summercon happen every year? An army of volunteers!

Free admission, cool swag, and bragging rights — do you think you have what it takes?

Apply Now!

Code of Conduct

Summercon runs on chaos, but it still has rules. Keep it strange. Keep it technical. But keep it together.

Summercon comes from a tradition that goes back almost forty years. A lot has changed since Summercon ’87. The computers changed. The networks changed. The scene changed. The jokes changed. The expectations changed. So did we.

That does not mean losing the things that made Summercon matter in the first place. It means protecting them.

Summercon has always been more than a schedule of talks. The talks matter, but the real event is what happens around them: the conversations, arguments, introductions, reunions, hallway debates, late-night stories, and strange little moments where people realize they are on the same frequency.

That only works when people can actually share space. Summercon depends on trust, good faith, and enough self-awareness to know when your bit, your argument, your joke, your flirting, your volume, or your behavior is starting to make the room worse.

We want you here. We want you to meet people, argue about computers, learn something strange, make friends, and have the kind of weekend that becomes a story later.

The ground rules are not complicated.

1. Don’t harass people.

Summercon is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. That includes harassment at the venue, at official events, at parties, online, or anywhere else your behavior affects the Summercon community.

2. Respect the humans.

Everyone at Summercon is a person first. Speakers, attendees, sponsors, volunteers, venue staff, organizers, press, friends, strangers, and people you only know by handle all deserve to be treated with basic respect.

You do not have to agree with everyone. You do not have to like everyone. You do have to share space like a functioning adult.

3. No means no. Stop means stop.

If someone sets a boundary, respect it immediately.

No debate. No negotiation. No “I was just joking.” No repeated attempts. No following someone around to continue the conversation. If someone tells you to stop, leave them alone.

4. Don’t threaten, stalk, abuse, or intimidate.

Threatening behavior, stalking, intimidation, abusive conduct, and patently offensive behavior are not welcome at Summercon.

This applies whether it happens in the conference venue, in sponsor areas, at official parties, in online spaces connected to the event, or anywhere else it becomes our problem.

5. Don’t make the room worse.

Summercon works because people bring energy without making the event miserable for everyone around them.

Do not disrupt talks, interfere with speakers, harass volunteers, abuse venue staff, create safety problems, or otherwise make shared spaces harder to enjoy. Heckling can be part of the culture. Being an exhausting menace is not.

6. Breaking the law is still illegal.

Yes, this is a hacker conference. No, that is not a legal defense.

Do not break things, set off alarms, damage venues, tamper with equipment, attack networks, interfere with safety systems, steal things, or create legal problems for yourself, the venue, other attendees, or Summercon.

If you love anarchy, want to break things, set off fire alarms, or generally behave like a twelve-year-old, you should probably stay away — even if you are a twelve-year-old. Especially if you are a twelve-year-old. It is not that kind of event, and we are not those kind of people.

7. Don’t make official spaces creepy, gross, or uncomfortable.

Summercon is strange on purpose. That does not mean every space is open season for every joke, image, comment, bit, shirt, prop, slide, or conversation.

Talks, sponsor spaces, registration, official events, and official parties need to remain comfortable for the people who came for the conference. Do not bring material or behavior into those spaces that turns the room creepy, gross, hostile, or uncomfortable.

Read the room. Then do better than that.

8. Staff in red shirts are empowered to maintain order.

Anyone wearing a red Summercon Staff shirt is empowered to step in, redirect behavior, separate people, escalate concerns, remove people from an area, or otherwise maintain order.

If staff gives you a direction, follow it. Arguing during an active situation only makes it worse. Questions can wait until things are stable.

9. Report problems early: 720-586-HACK.

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concern, please contact Summercon staff immediately.

You can speak to any staff member in a red Summercon Staff shirt.

If you do not feel comfortable approaching staff in person, call us directly:

720-586-4225
720-586-HACK

We would rather hear about a problem early, while it is still small, than hear about it later after it has already harmed someone or damaged the event.

10. Organizers have the final call. No refunds. No drama.

Summercon reserves the right to remove anyone, at any time, for any reason, at the discretion of the organizers.

Conference participants violating these rules may be removed from the conference without a refund. This may include removal from the venue, official events, parties, online spaces, or future Summercon events.

No drama. No debate. No refunds. No takebacks. Please, don’t test us.

Thanks for helping.

Keep Summercon weird, welcoming, and worth coming back to.

CFP Open 2026

The Call for Papers for Summercon 2026 is now open.

We’re looking for talks that come out of real work. That can take a lot of forms: original research, novel exploitation techniques, unexpected failures that led somewhere interesting–but the common thread is that the material should be grounded in something you actually did, not something you assembled after the fact.

We tend to respond well to talks that show the path, not just the result. What were you trying to do, what went wrong, what surprised you, and how did you eventually get somewhere useful? That arc is often more valuable than a clean, linear presentation that skips over the difficult parts.

The conference is single-track, which means every talk is presented to the full audience. That constraint shapes the selection process. We’re not trying to fill parallel sessions or niche tracks; we’re trying to build a program where each talk can hold the room.

If you’re considering submitting, take a look at our speaker guidelines and past talks to get a sense of what works here. Then send us something you’d actually want to sit through yourself.

We admit that we have a lot of latitude in how we schedule speakers, but generally presentations fall into two categories: short (25 minutes), and long (55 minutes). We tend to favor technical presentations that are geared around offense, but we’re open to all good ideas. Please build in time for spirited Q&A. 

We invite you to review what we look for when selecting a presentation, but here’s the TL;DR:

  1. Technical
  2. Novel
  3. Irreverent
  4. Revels in the journey
  5. Sticks it to the Man
  6. Engages the audience
  7. Fits into the allocated time

Submissions are open now. We’re reviewing them on a rolling basis.

Please submit your proposals using our Google Form.

Deadline: Saturday, May 15, 2026 11:59PM (EDT, because we’re in New York)

WHAT MAKES A GREAT SUMMERCON PRESENTATION?

With the opening of the Summercon 2023 CFP, here are a few friendly tips for what makes a great Summercon presentation. These seven points represent the kinds of things that we are evaluating when we look at CFP proposals.

  1. Technical
    • While we occasionally incorporate talks of a non-technical nature, almost every presentation that shows up at Summercon is deeply technical. They’re not sales pitches, and they’re not about righting societal wrongs. So if you’re planning on submitting a talk about why people should buy your company’s particular security snake oil, or why your company has the best culture (and you can too!), you’ll have more success somewhere else.
  2. Novel
    • From time to time, in the interest of getting important content in front of the best audience in the world, we let people present something they’ve already shown at events of lesser stature. But we prefer totally new presentations instead of rehashed talks. New content has a better chance of getting shown on the Summercon stage.
  3. Irreverent
    • While the presentations are technical, successful Summercon presentations get their point across is through non-traditional means. This is not the place to read slides. One memorable presentation used an Android-shaped piñata as a prop. Another invited participation through an AA-meeting style format. The sky’s the limit (within the limits of our code of conduct, of course).
  4. Revels in the Journey
    • If you like talking about the trials and tribulations of research, we are all ears. Even though your final results may be super polished and look effortless, everyone knows you had at least three major setbacks and went down two totally worthless paths before you arrived at a good solution. Share those. People love that, especially our speaker selection committee.
  5. Sticks it to The Man
    • Despite all the sponsorships, corporate attendance, and more buttoned-up nature of Summercon (see our Code of Conduct, which is totally reasonable, by the way), we are still, at heart, a hacker conference. Challenge authority. Show you’re not a patsy for The Man. Fight the Power.
  6. Engages the Audience
    • Summercon speakers are a special breed, because Summercon attendees are a special breed. Prepare to have people call out your mistakes, heckle if you’re less than prepared, and generally push your buttons. Successful presentations channel this misplaced audience enthusiasm. We still fondly recall a choose-your-own-adventure presentation, where randomly selected audience members got to dictate the direction of the talk. Engage your audience, and they won’t turn on you. (This can be good life advice, too.)
  7. Fits into the Allocated Time
    • We cannot overstate this: fill the time, generally 45 minutes of speaking with 10 minutes of Q&A. Our speaker selection committee has been around the block, so if you’re going to try to pretend that a six hour seminar fits into 55 minutes of speaking slot, it’s probably not going to get selected.

We look forward to your submission!

Summercon 2026 is GO

Early Bird tickets for America’s Oldest Hacker Conference are now live.

We’re back at Littlefield next June with two days of sharp research, bad jokes, good people, and the kind of glorious chaos only Summercon can deliver.

Get your ticket: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summercon-2026-tickets-1486402011429

Sponsors: planning for 2026 is already underway. If you want to be part of the ecosystem, reach out —
[email protected]

See you in Brooklyn!

sponsors sidebar 2026

Platinum

Atredis Logo

Gold

Etsy Logo

Silver

Bishop Fox Logo

K logix Logo

Tracebit Logo

 

Supporter

RunSybil Logo

 

 

 

Special Thanks to

Sponsors

PLATINUM

Atredis Partners is a research-driven Information Security consultancy. We deliver advanced penetration testing, embedded security research, and cutting edge risk management. Our team is made up of some of the most respected hackers in the information security industry, and we thrive on hacking complicated targets, on time and under budget. Our HQ also happens to be in the birth city of SummerCon, but we’re pretty sure the Best Western in North Saint Louis burned down years ago.

GOLD

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. Our two-sided marketplace connects over 5M makers, artisans and creative entrepreneurs to tens of millions of buyers around the world looking for something special. Buyers come to the Etsy marketplace to be inspired and delighted by items that are made, designed and handpicked by our creative entrepreneurs. For nearly two decades, Etsy has been the online home for creativity and self expression. Our mission is to “Keep Commerce Human,” and we’re committed to using the power of business and technology to strengthen communities and empower people around the world.

Phyle builds AI-native systems that enable governments to conduct online operations at scale with the precision that matters. It’s building for what comes next: automating the parts of the offensive cyber mission that have always taken the most time, the most judgment, and the most headcount. 

Silver

Bishop Fox is the leading authority in offensive security, providing solutions ranging from continuous penetration testing, red teaming, and attack surface management to product, cloud, and application security assessments. We’ve worked with more than 25% of the Fortune 100, half of the Fortune 10, eight of the top 10 global technology companies, and all of the top global media companies to improve their security. Our Cosmos platform, service innovation, and culture of excellence continue to gather accolades from industry award programs including Fast Company, Inc., SC Media, and others, and our offerings are consistently ranked as “world class” in customer experience surveys. We’ve been actively contributing to and supporting the security community for almost two decades and have published more than 20 open-source tools and 50 security advisories in the last five years. Learn more at bishopfox.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.

Scorpion Labs is a Boston-based offensive security team that uses threat-driven penetration testing to provide impactful and actionable results to customers across nearly every industry vertical. The team provides network, application, and product-focused penetration testing.

North Pole Security (NPS) offers a proactive solution to endpoint security by focusing on prevention rather than detection and response. NPS develops the open source security agent Santa, that the team started while at Google. Santa operates on macOS endpoints, enforcing policies based on a “naughty or nice” list. NPS’ new control plane pairs Santa with a streamlined approval process to ensure your business runs safely and seamlessly.

The NYS Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) was established in 2012 and is the largest consolidated IT organization in America. At ITS, we are guiding the State’s next phase of artificial intelligence as we deliver modern technology solutions that connect NYS agencies, entities, commissions, and local governments with millions of New Yorkers. 

 Our talented ITS employees are leaders, innovators and drivers of positive change who have won countless state and national awards. We believe technology is transformational, and we will never stop striving to do better, be better and improve the way we operate.

 Want to know more about how ITS, a NYS Agency on the rise, makes IT Happen? Visit our website at its.ny.gov and follow ITS on X, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Scalable Cyber provides cyber vulnerability research products and services powered by an internal AI-driven research platform. The platform leverages teams of AI agents to build digital models of target device software, then tasks separate agent teams to discover and validate cyber capabilities against those models. Scalable Cyber sells directly to USG, FVEY, and allied contractors. 

Tracebit deploys deception infrastructure across your cloud accounts, endpoints, SaaS applications, and CI/CD pipelines to detect attackers the moment they move. Unlike traditional detection hunting for suspicious patterns in billions of events, our canaries create definitive signals – when someone touches them, you know immediately, and you know it matters. Security teams deploy in 30 minutes using infrastructure-as-code: no agents, no servers, no tuning. Founded by former security leaders, Tracebit makes deception technology accessible to every security team.

Wiz is reinventing cloud & AI security from the inside out.

Led by an experienced and visionary team, we are on a mission to help organizations create secure cloud and AI environments that accelerate their businesses — across all major clouds. By creating a normalizing layer between cloud environments, the Wiz platform enables organizations to rapidly identify and remove critical risks.

Security teams don’t need more alerts—they need proof. XBOW is an AI-powered autonomous offensive security platform that operationalizes penetration testing as a continuous, machine-speed system. Instead of relying on annual assessments or theoretical vulnerabilities, XBOW independently discovers, chains, and proves exploits across your attack surface. Get expert-level pentesting results in days, not months, and know exactly what to fix first before an attacker does.

Supporter

RunSybil is a startup scaling offensive security by automating hacker intuition. RunSybil’s flagship AI-driven penetration testing platform, Sybil, autonomously finds vulnerabilities faster than human hackers and enables organizations to identify and fix weaknesses before they can be exploited. It combines state-of-the-art artificial intelligence with deep cybersecurity expertise to deliver active defense capabilities that simulate real attacker behavior. RunSybil’s core team includes seasoned industry veterans from OpenAI, Meta, Mandiant, NCC Group, and Trail of Bits.

InterConnect Defense delivers a wide range of expertise to bring together all aspects of cybersecurity and the CNO mission. We provide key services to our clients such as software engineering (capability/tool dev, low-level/embedded, full-stack, UI, web, DevOps, etc), vulnerability research/analysis, reverse engineering, network analysis, software testing, network/infrastructure engineering, and hands-on cyber operations. We are experts in CNO, and support numerous challenging, mission-critical projects that make a direct impact on our nation’s security and intelligence mission.

Binary Ninja is a powerful reverse engineering platform with native APIs for the languages you use, program analysis techniques that make finding vulnerabilities easier, and a stack of ILs that not only make scripting easier but also make moving between architectures for manual analysis easier.

Partner

No Starch Press publishes the finest in geek entertainment — bestsellers like Python Crash Course, Python for Kids, How Linux Works, and Hacking: The Art of Exploitation. We focus on computer programming, security, hacking, alternative operating systems, STEM, and LEGO. Our titles have personality, our authors are passionate, and we read and edit everything we publish. Readers appreciate our straightforward presentation, fearless approach to the complex world of technology, and support of the global hacking community. No Starch Press titles have been included in the prestigious Communication Arts Design Annual and STEP inside 100 competition, and have won the Independent Publisher Book Award (the “IPPYs”) from Independent Publisher magazine.

San Francisco-based No Starch Press was founded in 1994 by Bill Pollock, who brings more than 30 years of publishing industry experience to the company. Prior to launching No Starch Press, Pollock worked in professional reference, scientific, college and trade publishing, and was a co-founder of computer book publisher APress.

Locks are puzzles you can solve without the key! Explore the fun world of locksport with Lockpick Extreme. Learn to lockpick from friendly instructors or practice what you already know with their assortment of locks and picks. When you’re done, you can shop at their pop-up shop and take your new hobby home with you.: 

Lockpick Extreme has run lockpick villages for many public conferences including HOPE, B-Sides SF & Chicago, and the Diana Initiative. Here you will find the necessary materials, locks, picks, instructional aids, and knowledgeable instructors to start or continue your lockpicking journey.

Lockpick Extreme provides fun, informative remote and in-person lockpicking workshops for team building and marketing events. This is Lock Pick Extreme’s tenth year hosting lockpick villages for security conferences, trade shows, and nonprofit organizations they support. They love to spread the joy of discovery and accomplishment that comes with learning how to pick locks. Locks are just puzzles you can solve without the key.

The Lockpick Village will host an ongoing workshop for both days of SummerCon, where everyone can learn and practice lockpicking. All of the necessary materials will be available for you to use, including locks, picks, and instructional aids. Knowledgeable instructors will give you an understanding of how locks work.

Special Thanks To

Big Mike’s Discount Exploit Emporium has been serving the security community’s vulnerability procurement needs since stacks were still executable. Whether you’re shopping for certified pre-owned zero-days, surplus nation-state inventory, or slightly leaked exploit chains, Big Mike has a deal for you. We don’t waste money vetting our sources and we pass the savings directly on to you. Browse our famous Scratch ‘n Dent for unbeatable deals on patch-gap bugs, heap sprays, and 0-clicks that require brute forcing addresses. They may not be pretty, but they get the job done! Why pay premium prices for brand new bugs when nobody patches anyways? Big Mike’s proudly supports Summercon because nothing says “community” quite like high-quality exploits at low, low prices. Cash only. No receipts. No questions. No judgments. No gods.

Not all heroes wear capes. The old BK Hackers support Summercon for the sheer love of the game.

Interested in Sponsoring Summercon 2026? Email [email protected] for details.