Sponsored by
Supported by
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.

- 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


Hacking Content

Professional Certification

Prizes

Global Benchmarking
Hacking Content
Professional Certification
Prizes

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
$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
$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
$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

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