Amsterdam — Week of 15 Jun 2026

Practical morning session for early-stage AI founders at Startup Village Amsterdam. Sira Incentives — a Dutch consultancy specialising in public funding for innovation — walks through which EU and Dutch grant schemes AI startups can realistically apply for, what the application process actually looks like, and case studies of companies that have successfully secured non-dilutive support. Run as part of The Nursery programme.

One-day Amsterdam edition of the AfricArena Tour — the long-running African tech ecosystem accelerator that culminates each year in the Grand Summit in December. Held at Google Amsterdam, the programme features curated pitches from African startups raising in Europe, keynotes from senior investors and corporates active across the continent, and structured networking with LPs, GPs and founders. Strong fit for European VCs looking at African deal flow and for diaspora founders connecting back to the continent.

Four-day hands-on information security training event in Amsterdam from SpecterOps — the US offensive-security firm behind BloodHound and a regular fixture on the conference circuit. Two parallel courses run across the week: Adversary Tactics: Identity-Driven Offensive Tradecraft (deep-dive into attacking modern hybrid identity, including Entra ID and on-prem AD), and Adversary Perspectives: Azure (foundational Azure / Entra ID attack and defence, with hands-on labs). Paid professional training — relevant for security engineers, blue-team leads and red-team operators. Virtual attendance option for those who can't make it to Amsterdam.

Third edition of Finder — Amsterdam's structured co-founder matching event — and the opening event of Amsterdam Tech Week. Designed for two audiences: joiners looking for a 16+ hour role in an Amsterdam-based startup (as co-founder or early hire), and founders looking for business or technical talent to add to a young team. A structured Finder Session 16:00–17:30 walks participants through guided introductions, followed by open drinks 17:30–19:00 at AMS Institute. Hosted by AMS Institute, Venture Centre HvA, Demonstrator Lab and Startup Village Amsterdam.

Evening session in Amsterdam's Zuidas finance district on how major financial institutions are repositioning their risk frameworks for the next cycle — AI-driven decisioning, climate exposure, trade and supply-chain shocks, and the new regulatory stack. Panel-led discussion aimed at risk officers, compliance leads, fintech operators selling into banks, and investors tracking the financial-services tech stack. Networking afterwards at Van der Valk Zuidas.

Afternoon pitch competition and networking at TNW City run by ACT | The App Association to open Amsterdam Tech Week. Eight European startups from the App Association's Scale Lab cohort pitch live to a panel of mentors, policymakers and industry insiders — with the angle that regulatory intelligence (AI Act, DSA, compliance-as-moat) is becoming a real competitive edge for early-stage tech companies, not just a tax. Programme includes opening remarks, a policy-leader keynote, a panel on Compliance as a Competitive Edge, the lightning pitches, a winner announcement (with a spotlight slot at the App Association's TNW Conference booth), and networking that flows into the larger TNW opening party. Free to attend, registration required.

with Arthur Camara (Senior Research Engineer, Zeta Alpha)

As part of Amsterdam Tech Week, Zeta Alpha's Arthur Camara leads an interactive talk on building multi-agent AI systems that improve themselves. Instead of endlessly tweaking prompts by hand, the session explores how agents can examine their own execution traces, reason about past failures, and refine their behaviour automatically using techniques like GEPA and TextGrad - drawing on Zeta Alpha's own research into self-optimizing systems for deep research. Aimed at engineers, product and tech leads, and anyone building agentic systems, LLM applications, or AI dev tools, it's a practical, discussion-led evening at the University of Amsterdam's LAB42. Expect to leave with concrete ideas and a room full of people working on the same hard problems.

Grand finale of Innovators Arena 2026 at the E|SPORTS TECH CAMPUS (H20 Esports Stadium) in Amsterdam Zuidoost. Eight selected startups pitch on stage to a room of investors, corporate innovation leads and partners; all programme participants — including teams not pitching — showcase live demos and real-world applications from 18:30. Notable because the venue itself is a Living Lab — innovations are tested in operation, not just on slides.

The Amsterdam edition of the global DevOpsDays community returns to Pakhuis de Zwijger for a single packed day: a morning of curated 25-minute talks, lightning-fast Ignite sessions after lunch, and an afternoon of participant-driven Open Spaces where the real conversations happen. DevOpsDays is deliberately community-run and discussion-first — ideal for engineers, SREs, platform and operations people who want practical, vendor-neutral insight on culture, automation and reliability rather than a sales pitch. Small enough to actually meet people, serious enough to leave with new ideas.

MEGATHON descends on Amsterdam for 45+ hours of building, shipping and pitching - billed as Europe's biggest builder event. Roughly 500 vetted founders, engineers, designers and makers gather at The HUBB to launch around 150 startups live, competing for a prize pool north of EUR 100,000. Mentors, operators and investors from Mollie, Codex, Miro, Peak Capital, Visa, Wispr Flow, Tulip Ventures and BabyVC will be in the room, on hand throughout the weekend. Bring a project or join a team on the ground; food, drinks and quiet rest zones run across the whole event. If you want to build something real and meet the people who can help you scale it, this is the room to be in.

Headline event of Amsterdam Tech Week: a 45-hour AI builder tournament at The HUBB bringing together 500+ vetted founders, engineers and designers to ship real startup work, not weekend toys. Mentors and operators from Codex, Mollie, Miro, Peak Capital, Visa, Wispr Flow, Tulip Ventures and BabyVC are in the room throughout the weekend; €100K+ prize pool. Hosted by TAG — the Amsterdam builder community behind weekly ship sprints and demo nights. Applications vetted; free tickets via the public video-pitch route.