On 30 June and 1 July 2026, students, developers, researchers, innovators, and open-source enthusiasts gathered in Cagliari, Italy, for the Code the Continuum Hackathon, a two-day event dedicated to tackling real-world challenges across the Cloud-Edge-IoT continuum.
Co-organised by COP-PILOT Horizon, O-CEI Horizon, CEI-Sphere, and the Eclipse Foundation, and hosted by the University of Cagliari, the hackathon brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to experiment with cutting-edge technologies, collaborate with industry experts, and transform innovative ideas into working prototypes.
Three Challenges, One Cloud-Edge-IoT Continuum
The hackathon featured three challenge tracks, each addressing a different dimension of Europe’s emerging Cloud-Edge-IoT ecosystem.
The COP-PILOT Horizon challenge, From Code to Continuum: Orchestrating Distributed Applications with OpenSlice, focused on the orchestration of distributed applications across edge and cloud environments. Participants worked with OpenSlice and Kubernetes technologies to onboard, deploy, and manage containerised services in a realistic computing continuum scenario.
The O-CEI Horizon challenge, Eclipse Zenoh & Sustainable Edge-Cloud, explored how open-source communication technologies can support energy-efficient data exchange and distributed computing by comparing cloud-only and edge-accelerated deployments.
Meanwhile, the Eclipse Foundation challenge, Jakarta EE, AI & the Hourglass Model, invited participants to design intelligent enterprise applications that combine Jakarta EE technologies with AI-powered services and modern software engineering practices.
Together, the three tracks provided participants with hands-on experience in orchestration, interoperability, edge computing, artificial intelligence, open-source software, and distributed systems, all critical building blocks of Europe’s digital future.
COP-PILOT Challenge - From Code to Continuum: Orchestrating Distributed Applications with OpenSlice
As one of the organisers, COP-PILOT introduced participants to one of the core challenges addressed by the project: enabling seamless orchestration of distributed services across the Cloud-Edge-IoT continuum.
The challenge leveraged technologies developed and adopted within the COP-PILOT ecosystem, particularly OpenSlice, allowing participants to experience how complex applications can be deployed, managed, and coordinated across heterogeneous computing environments.
Through practical exercises, teams explored service onboarding, lifecycle management, deployment automation, and orchestration mechanisms that mirror the type of multi-domain environments being developed within COP-PILOT. The challenge demonstrated how open, interoperable orchestration platforms can support the deployment of distributed applications across different sectors, including smart cities, energy, agriculture, manufacturing, and mobility.
The solutions developed during the hackathon showcased the creativity and technical expertise of participants, while highlighting the growing importance of orchestration technologies for future digital infrastructures.
COP-PILOT Challenge Winners
After two intensive days of collaboration and development, the winning teams of the COP-PILOT / OpenSlice challenge were:
1st place: SAD
2nd Place: AI/AB Users
3rd Place: Reverse Sense
The winning teams impressed the jury with their technical implementation, problem-solving approach, and ability to effectively apply orchestration concepts within the challenge environment.
COP-PILOT congratulates all participants who took part in the challenge and thanks them for their enthusiasm, commitment, and innovative spirit throughout the event.
Building Skills, Communities, and Innovation
Beyond the competition itself, the Code the Continuum Hackathon demonstrated the value of collaboration across research projects, industry initiatives, universities, and open-source communities. Participants developed technical solutions, exchanged ideas, learned from mentors, and gained practical experience with technologies that are shaping the future of Cloud-Edge-IoT ecosystems.
The event also reinforced the importance of open, interoperable, and standards-based technologies, principles that are at the heart of the COP-PILOT project. As the project continues to develop its orchestration platform and pilot activities across multiple industrial sectors, initiatives such as Code the Continuum play a crucial role in fostering the next generation of innovators who will help build Europe’s future Cloud-Edge-IoT ecosystem.
The creativity, collaboration, and technical excellence demonstrated during the hackathon provide a strong reminder that the future of distributed digital infrastructures is being designed both in research projects and laboratories and post-event by the communities of developers, students, and innovators who are turning ideas into reality.
