[ Hackathon — September 9th + 10th, 2026 · Bad Schönborn, Germany ]
EVerest Community
Hackathon 2026
Cross-Domain Engineering for the Open EV Charging Ecosystem
That's a wrap. THE EV:ent Hackathon brought together developers, designers, and domain experts for two intense days of prototyping, collaboration, and creative problem-solving — right at Pionix HQ, followed by the EVerest Maintainer Meetup.
Code. Create. Charge.
Real challenges. Real teams. Real impact on the EV charging ecosystem — from seasoned open-source contributors to people new to EV charging.
September 9th + 10th, 2026 — completed
Teams tackled hands-on challenges around EVerest, OCPP, smart charging, and more — with mentors from leading companies guiding the way.
More than 60 participants made this the biggest hackathon in the LF Energy ecosystem so far — and we’re still buzzing from the turnout.
Thanks to everyone who took part.
What the Hackathon Was About
THE EV:ent Hackathon was not your average hackathon. It was a focused, industry-specific challenge where code made a real difference in the EV charging ecosystem. September 9th + 10th, 2026. Pionix HQ, Bad Schönborn.
✔ COMPLETED
HOW WE WORKED
An Unconference, Built by Everyone
The hackathon was self-organized around projects people proposed and others could join. Participants formed teams, chose what to work on and moved ideas forward together.
Alongside the project work, anyone could add a side-topic talk, working session or meeting to the shared board and make it happen. The agenda grew from the community in real time.
Build
Hands dirty with real EV charging challenges. Teams prototyped solutions using EVerest, OCPP, and open-source tools — and saw their ideas come to life in two days.
Collaborate
Developers, designers, and EV charging experts from across the industry teamed up. The best solutions came from diverse perspectives working together.
Learn
Participants worked alongside experienced mentors from leading companies, gaining hands-on experience with cutting-edge charging software.
Share
Teams presented their prototypes to the community, and the EVerest Maintainer Meetup turned the results into next steps for the project.
See the hackathon photos →Missed it? Browse the photo gallery
What the Community Built
Two days of focused work produced a remarkable amount of real progress — from first-beta infrastructure to quiet but highly appreciated quality-of-life improvements.
Federated Testing
The first beta of federated testing is up and running.
- Registration is working and results are coming out in standard formats.
- Several vendors are already aiming to join the initiative.
- Next step: filling it with real test suites.
Second OCPP Channel
A new OCPP channel took shape during the hackathon.
- Big thanks to Kempower for driving this work.
- Co-development will continue alongside the official Open Charge Alliance draft whitepaper.
Telemetry Framework
The community converged on OpenTelemetry as the standard format.
- Direction is OpenTelemetry with a dedicated SDK.
- Active architectural debate: every module links directly, or the OCPP module acts as a listener?
- Strong cross-company participation in shaping the approach.
MCS Implementation
Major progress on the Megawatt Charging System implementation.
- Finalization of the implementation.
- Cross testing and cleanup moved the code closer to production readiness.
Smaller Wins, Big Impact
Some things do not fit on a poster, but the people deep in the code highly appreciated them.
Cleaner Startup Logs
Suppressing transient startup errors by delaying setup until all modules and devices are fully booted — thanks HEIDELBERG Amperfied.
Restart Without Unplugging
Prototype for restarting a transaction without unplugging the cable is in place and ready for more testing.
Ad Hoc Payments
Ad hoc payment prototype with Giro-e, plus generic encryption for messages between modules.
libiso15118 on MCUs
Foundation laid for libiso15118 on microcontrollers and Zephyr; next step is flashing hardware and running live tests.
EVerest for Noobs
Kai-Uwe’s high-level architecture and bare-metal session was very well received by newcomers.
Interop Testing
Continuous interop testing between companies and across tools ran throughout the event.
Roadmap & Release Planning
The group also ran project organization, roadmap and October release planning. Details will be published after the next EVerest TSC once everything is cleaned up — but the next stable release is shaping up to be a big one, with the cleanup and last gaps needed for stellar AFIR compliance in 2027.
We saw a lot of new vendors who want to move to EVerest, and many companies who want to step up their engagement in the project hierarchy — even up to new TSC members. That says more about where this project is heading than any single feature.
