Bilişim Vadisi, Türkiye & The Athens Startup Business Incubator, (THEA), Greece
"Greece–Türkiye Hackathon 2024-2025"
The Greece–Türkiye Hackathon is a cross-border innovation programme bringing together young people from Greece and Türkiye to co-develop solutions for smart cities and the green transition. Using a hybrid format and mixed-nationality teams, it turns shared regional challenges into collaborative, scalable innovation outcomes.
Purpose of the solution
The Greece–Türkiye Hackathon was designed to address a clear and shared regional need: the lack of structured, cross-border mechanisms enabling young innovators to collaboratively develop solutions to common environmental and urban challenges. Both countries face similar pressures related to climate change, rapid urbanisation, disaster risks, and resource management, yet opportunities for joint innovation at the early-stage talent level have remained limited. The programme aimed to create a practical collaboration platform where young people from Greece and Türkiye could jointly explore these challenges and co-develop solutions with real-world relevance. By bringing together participants in mixed-nationality teams, the hackathon sought to foster not only innovation but also mutual understanding, knowledge exchange, and long-term cooperation between the two ecosystems. A second objective was to bridge the gap between ideation and implementation. The programme was therefore designed to go beyond a traditional hackathon format by integrating mentoring, capacity building, evaluation stages, and post-hackathon incubation support. This ensured that promising ideas could evolve into viable projects with potential for real-world application. Ultimately, the programme aimed to contribute to the green transition and smart city development in the region, while establishing a structured and replicable model for cross-border innovation collaboration, to be further developed and expanded in future editions, including 2026.
Impact
The Greece–Türkiye Hackathon has generated significant social, economic, and environmental impact by enabling structured cross-border collaboration between young innovators from Greece and Türkiye. The programme received more than 2,200 applications and brought together 160 participants in 20 mixed-nationality teams, who worked jointly on shared regional challenges related to smart cities and the green transition. Socially, the hackathon fostered lasting cooperation and trust between Greek and Turkish youth by removing nationality-based team divisions and promoting collective problem-solving. Many participants continued collaborating beyond the programme, forming cross-border professional networks and deepening cultural understanding. Economically, the programme supported entrepreneurship through monetary awards, the opportunity to benefit from six months of incubation support, and structured access to mentors, investors, municipalities, and industry stakeholders. Several teams advanced toward startup formation, pilot projects, and investment discussions, demonstrating the programme's ability to convert ideas into market-ready solutions. Environmentally, the hackathon produced practical, sustainability-focused solutions addressing urban mobility, smart buildings, disaster resilience, and waste management. Selected teams engaged with public and private actors to explore real-world implementation pathways. Building on the proven success of this first edition, a new 2026 edition will be delivered to scale participation and deepen long-term impact.
What is innovative about it?
The Greece–Türkiye Hackathon introduced an innovative approach to cross-border innovation by embedding international collaboration directly into its programme design. From the outset, participants were paired into mixed-nationality teams, ensuring that cooperation across borders was structural rather than optional. This design transformed shared regional challenges into a platform for joint problem-solving and co-creation. The programme successfully applied a hybrid, multi-phase format combining online preparation, mentoring, and workshops with intensive in-person hackathon phases hosted in both countries. This structure enabled participants to progressively develop their ideas while benefiting from continuous expert guidance and ecosystem exposure. Innovation was further reinforced through the programme's post-hackathon continuity. Winning teams received structured incubation support, allowing them to refine solutions, engage with municipalities and industry partners, and move toward real-world deployment. As a result, the hackathon extended beyond a competition and functioned as an implementation-oriented innovation pipeline. Importantly, the programme was supported by a documented methodology, toolkit, and joint governance framework, formalised through a bilateral MoU. This made the model replicable and transferable. A refined 2026 edition will build on these foundations, incorporating lessons learned and expanding the model's scalability.
Who are the main users?
The primary users of the Greece–Türkiye Hackathon were young innovators aged 18–35 from Greece and Türkiye, including university students, recent graduates, early-stage entrepreneurs, and researchers. These participants were selected for their interest and potential in developing solutions related to smart cities, sustainability, green transition, disaster resilience, and citizen-focused technologies. Throughout the programme, participants benefited directly from hands-on collaboration, skills development, mentorship, and exposure to innovation ecosystems in both countries. By working in mixed-nationality teams, they gained practical experience in cross-cultural teamwork, applied problem-solving, and international innovation processes. Secondary users included early-stage startups and project teams that emerged from the hackathon. These teams received incubation, mentoring, and networking support, enabling them to move closer to implementation, market entry, and investment readiness. The programme also benefited public institutions, municipalities, industry actors, and investors, who engaged with participants to explore pilot opportunities and scalable solutions addressing real urban and environmental challenges. Innovation ecosystems in both countries gained a tested collaboration model, which will be further expanded through the 2026 edition.
Who runs it?
The programme was jointly designed and delivered by Bilişim Vadisi from Türkiye and the Athens Startup Business Incubator (THEA) from Greece, with the support of public institutions, municipalities, chambers of commerce, academia, and private-sector stakeholders in both countries.