Black Hat Europe 2026

Black Hat is one of the best-known names in information security, and its European edition brings the format to London each December. Part of Informa, the event is built around research: its Briefings present new vulnerabilities, attack techniques and defensive work, selected by a review board of practitioners and researchers.

The week starts with technical Trainings, offered as two-day and four-day courses at different skill levels, before moving into the main conference with keynotes and Briefings. Alongside these, Arsenal gives open source tool developers space to demonstrate their work, and summits focus on specific themes.

The Business Hall is where vendors exhibit. Exhibitors cover areas such as network and cloud security, identity and access management, threat intelligence, application security, incident response and managed security services. Attendees are security practitioners, researchers, security leaders and IT professionals from across Europe and beyond, which makes it a highly technical trade audience.

For security vendors, the attraction is credibility as much as lead generation. Black Hat attendees know their subject and quickly spot marketing gloss, so a presence here signals that a product can stand up to scrutiny. Conversations tend to be deeper and more specific than at general IT events. Stands that let visitors see a product working, ideally with technical staff on hand to answer detailed questions, usually earn more respect than those relying on headline claims.