11th CASSINI Hackathon Bulgaria: Space for Water
- DSLL News
- Mar 5
- 2 min read
CASSINI is the European Commission's flagship initiative to support entrepreneurs, start-ups, and SMEs in the space industry, with a €1 billion budget. One of its key actions is the CASSINI Hackathons — held twice a year simultaneously at 10 locations across the continent. Over the past 10 editions, these hackathons have engaged thousands of participants and partners and helped design various novel space-related solutions and launch numerous start-ups.
The 11th CASSINI Hackathon took place in Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Spain between 24th and 26th of April 2026. This year’s theme is ‘Space for Water’ tackled urgent challenges in the era of climate change with major social and economic impact — including equitable and efficient access to water and disaster risk monitoring.
Students and professionals in hydro-engineering, computer science, space technologies, and business who are passionate about protecting our planet were invited to join, form teams, and spend an exciting weekend building and pitching innovative water-related solutions using Earth Observation and other data. In Bulgaria these challenges are echoed by problems of water loss in the utilities sector, lack of water in remote villages, but also in municipality central cities, vehement floods with severe damages, polluted Black sea waters, etc.
Participants benefited from an inspiring programme featuring keynote speakers from EnduroSat and Veolia, dedicated mentors from leading companies and universities in Earth Observation, data science, hydro-engineering, and AI, access to powerful software platforms and resources, open satellite and other data, an expert jury, valuable prizes, good food and company, and direct connections to the European space ecosystem.
This was a unique opportunity to join a vibrant international community, shape and test your ideas, develop real solutions and have them validated by expert feedback, and take your first step toward becoming a space entrepreneur.
Mozaika and Digital Spaces Living Lab organised the Sofia edition of the event, hosted at JA Startup Hambar, in partnership with Ratio and other organisations.
Free LLcloud subscription plans were provided to 11th CASSINI Hackathon Bulgaria Space for Water teams who need them to combine multi-sensor data and jointly visualise it. Two teams used the LLcloud platform for building their MVP solutions during the hackathon. Digital Spaces Living Lab awarded a free 6 month LLcloud subscription plan to the Aspersorium team, building an environmental risk intelligence platform for the maritime industry, which combines satellite detection, AIS vessel tracking, and drift modeling to identify pollution events, predict their movement, and analyze vessel behavior in context.
To learn more about the hackathon challenges and prizes, meet the mentors and partners, visit the official 11th CASSINI Hackathon Bulgaria webpage.
Below you can see photos from the 11th CASSINI Hackathon Bulgaria Space for Water, held at JA Startup Hambar in Sofia from 24th until 26th of April 2026. The hackathon has been an unforgettable experience for both the over 50 participants and more than 10 mentors.
Day 1: Registration, Key Notes, Opening
Day 2: Hackathon
Day 3: Hackathon, Photos, Pitches, Awards, Closing
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