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The biggest global CTF for business teams

Event Type

Capture The Flag

Duration

5 Days - Friday to Wednesday

Region

Global

Entry Fee

Free

Prize Pool

$38,000

Team Size

1 - 30 Players

Difficulty

Very Easy to Insane

CTF Style

Jeopardy & more

save the date

May 15-20, 2026

Join a free, global CTF competition designed to benchmark corporate team readiness. Sharpen your skills on a team level, show them to the world, and get to the top of a global leaderboard.

    The Scenario: Project Nightfall

    Secure the dependencies. Save the state.

    Landing Page - HTB GCSB 2026_Theme Banner

    • In a world where influence is measured by the control of shared dependencies rather than territory, Project Nightfall represents the front line of nation-state cyber warfare.
    • Operating below the threshold of open conflict, rival coalitions and APT units have spent years embedded within your virtualization stacks, identity providers, and supplier ecosystems to gain quiet strategic leverage.
    • While state-enabled proxies launch high-visibility "terrorist" distractions to trigger chaos and diplomatic emergency, the true enemy remains deniable, quietly shaping the tempo of national modernization from within.
    • As part of Task Force Nightfall, your mission is to embed within critical infrastructure operators, root out deep-seated persistence in vendor tooling, and maintain national resilience against rising global interference.

    More than 40 challenges to take on.

    Click to edit the content.

    Web

    5 Challenges

    Reversing

    5 Challenges

    Pwn

    5 Challenges

    Forensics

    5 Challenges

    Crypto

    5 Challenges

    Blockchain

    5 Challenges

    Hardware

    3 Challenges

    Machines

    5 Challenges

    Cloud

    5 Challenges

    Misc

    3 Challenges

    ICS

    3 Challenges

    Coding

    5 Challenges

    Why you should sign up your team

    TL;DR: For the glory, the training, the prizes, and the certification

    Global Benchmarking

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    Benchmark Your Team’s Defensive Readiness
     
    Industry Peer Comparison: See how your team’s technical proficiency stacks up against over 1,000 corporate squads and global industry peers
    Identify Skill Gaps: Use the competition to pinpoint specific exposure areas across 14 critical domains, from Cloud Security to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) .
    Data-Driven Validation: Gain a clear, objective baseline of your team’s current capabilities to justify future upskilling investments and 2026 budget planning.
     
    Landing Page - HTB GCSB 2026_Benchmark Banner

    Hacking Content

    Toggle

    Professional Certification

    Toggle

    Prizes

    Toggle

    Timeline

    Mark your calendar

     
     

    Registration opens

    April 7, 2026

     
     

    CTF starts

    May 15, 2026, 13:00 UTC

     
     

    CTF ends

    May 20, 2026, 13:00 UTC

     

    CTF after party

    May 21, 2026

    "Organizations looking to engage cybersecurity talent and prepare them for an agentic future through gamified, challenge-based learning will find Hack The Box a strong fit."

    In The Forrester Wave™ Cybersecurity Skills And Training Platforms, Q1 2026, Hack The Box scored 5 out of 5 in 13 criteria.

    5/5 - Agentic AI Readiness 

    5/5 - Learner Experience and Adoption 

    5/5 - Gamification, Competition, and Recognition

    5/5 - Training Assignment and Curriculum 

    5/5 - Security Framework Mapping and Alignment

    5/5 - Talent Ecosystem Integration 

    5/5 - Security and Risk Ecosystem Integration 

    5/5 - Accessibility 

    5/5 - Product Security 

    5/5 - Vision 

    5/5 - Innovation

    5/5 - Partner Ecosystem 

    5/5 - Community 

    Outsmart your competitors, bring home your prizes

    MEET THE AWARDS

    1st place trophy

    1st place

    $20,000

    Worth of services

    • Secret HTB trophy
    • Access to Academy for Business for 3 months (incl. AI red teaming certification)
    • 3 months of Dedicated Labs
    • 5,000 CTF credits
    • $100 HTB swag card (for each player)
    2nd place trophy

    2nd place

    $12,000

    Worth of services

    • 3 months Academy for Business (incl. AI red teaming certification)
    • 3 months of Dedicated Labs
    • $50 HTB swag card (for each player)
    3rd place trophy

    3rd place

    $6,000

    Worth of services

    • 3 months of Dedicated Labs
    • $25 HTB swag card (for each player)

    MAXIMUM PRIZE VALUE: $38,000

    Rules of engagement

    The Global Cyber Skills Benchmark is designed to reward human expertise augmented with AI. Our Hybrid Mode allows AI as a co-pilot for analysis, but requires human-led problem solving at every step.

    ✅ Included in Hybrid Mode

    Leverage these AI-assisted workflows to accelerate your investigation while maintaining human-led logic:

    • Summarizing logs, code, or artifacts for faster analysis
    • Clarifying challenge prompts and translating documentation
    • Generating commands, scripts, or regex as a co-pilot
    • Using AI to brainstorm hypotheses and interpret data

    ❌ Outside Event Scope

    The following behaviors shift the focus away from human-led skill and are not part of this benchmark's goals:

    • Fully autonomous or semi-autonomous challenge solves
    • Agentic workflows that bypass human reasoning
    • Bulk challenge farming or automated orchestration
    • Unattended model execution without manual oversight
    Integrity and review

    A live leaderboard may be displayed during the event for participant engagement. However, all rankings, prizes, and awards are provisional until organizer review is complete.

    Hack The Box reserves the right to review teams for obvious over-automated or non-human solve behavior using available telemetry, timing anomalies, progression patterns, and other integrity checks.



    Prize eligibility

    For prize eligibility, shortlisted teams may be asked to:

     

    - Provide a brief writeup for selected challenges
    - Explain their reasoning for one or more solves
    - Participate in a short validation interview or walkthrough

    Failure to complete validation, or evidence of obvious over-automated solving, may result in disqualification from prize consideration.



    Final authority

    Hack The Box reserves the right to make final decisions on competition integrity and eligibility in line with the spirit of Hybrid Mode.



    Spirit of the event

    This benchmark is intended to reward human expertise augmented with AI, not unattended AI execution. Custom, first-seen content is designed to test reasoning, judgment, and adaptability under pressure.



    Resources

    WEBINARS

    AI Security in 2026: Trends, Roles, and Readiness

    FROM THE BLOG

    The great complexity shift – Why AI agents don’t just simplify cybersecurity

    RESEARCH PAPER

    Breaking Guardrails, Facing Walls: Insights on Adversarial AI for Defenders & Researchers