Hack the Hate, Renew Democracy

Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France 17-19 JUNE 2026

A democracy Hackathon at the Palais de l’Europe in Strasbourg under the New Democratic Pact for Europe,and under the auspices of the Monaco Presidency of the Committee of Ministers, bringing together innovators, activists, and policy-makers to co-design tools that fight hate speech. Organised jointly with the No Hate Speech Week of the Council of Europe.

More info and registration by 5 June

Teams: Up to 20 multidisciplinary teams from across the 46 Council of Europe member states - Prize: A €50,000 grant by Microsoft will be distributed amongst the winning teams and post-event implementation support will be provided.

Four challenges and four mentors accompanying challengers during
the Hackathon and winners in their next steps toward implementation.
Results that contribute to the New Democratic Pact, in addition to 230 contributions already received.
Interaction with more than 200 attendants of the No Hate Speech Week.

ABOUT »

CHALLENGES »

SCHEDULE »

MENTORS AND JURY »

2025 WINNERS »

About

Why the Hackathon?

The Council of Europe has initiated a political and strategic consultation for a New Democratic Pact for Europe aiming at addressing the current democratic backsliding. The 17-19 June 2026 Democracy Hackathon dedicated to combating hate speech will feed directly into this consultation process to strengthen the foundations of democracy, amplify its benefits, restore trust, and innovate its forms to make it tangible and meaningful for all.

Hate speech is silencing voices and eroding the shared digital spaces on which democracy depends. Deepfakes, algorithmic amplification, and co-ordinated harassment campaigns have made the problem faster, harder to trace, and harder to counter.

The New Democratic Pact for Europe consultations so far highlight the importance of democratic security, safeguarding the values that form the foundation of democratic societies. Safe democratic participation for all, including women and under-represented groups is at the core of democratic security and hate speech puts these values at risk. The Hackathon and the No Hate Speech Week aim to address that.

What is happening during Hackathon?

The Democracy Hackathon is a high-intensity collaborative event at the Palais de l'Europe. Teams of 3–4 people, each mixing at least one person with a technology background (coding/data science), one democracy /policy or expert, and one specializing in design/front-end development - spend three days developing practical, rights-based solutions to a shared challenge.

The Hackathon, organised under the New Democratic Pact for Europe runs alongside the No Hate Speech Week, giving teams direct access to European human rights practitioners, regulators, civil society leaders, and policymakers as mentors and audience throughout the event.

The Hackaton is organised under the auspices of the Monaco Presidency of the Committee of Ministers.

From fighting disinformation to combating hate speech

This is the second Democracy Hackathon under the Council of Europe's New Democratic Pact for Europe. In 2025, teams delivered solutions to the challenge of disinformation: an echo-chamber breaker, a gamified fact-checking platform for teenagers, and an open data visualiser for citizens. In 2026, the issue is to address hate speech with a choice of four different challenges.

The winning teams' solutions may feed directly into Council of Europe policy workstreams. This is not symbolic. Participants are building tools that could shape how Europe responds.

Date: 17–19 June 2026

Location: Palais de l'Europe, Strasbourg

Team size: 3–4 members (preformed teams required)

Team composition: 1 technologist, 1 democracy expert, 1 designer or front-end developer

Costs: Free event, travel and accommodation covered for all selected teams

Eligibility: Open to residents of any of the 46 Council of Europe member state

Language: English

Prize: A €50,000 grant donated by Microsoft will be distributed amongst the winning teams and post-event implementation support will be provided by the Council of Europe.

Challenges

The Privacy-preserving Hate Speech Detection Challenge – mentored by a researcher from the Technical University of Munich

The Problem: The challenge operates at the intersection of Hate Speech Detection (HSD) and privacy protection, particularly with the ultimate goal of maximizing the “privacy-HSD” trade-off, where the optimal scenario maximizes HSD performance while minimizing loss to personal privacy protections. Using state-of-the-art techniques and metrics from both research fields, we challenge participants to innovate ways in which HSD can continue to function as urgently needed, but not at the cost of creating harmful re-identification tools. The team that can achieve the best trade-off wins!
The Objective: Innovate a new HSD method that operates agnostically to the author’s identity. The goal is to maximise the "Privacy-HSD trade-off"— achieving high detection performance while minimising the loss of personal privacy protections.
Potential Output: A Demonstrable Concept or working prototype accompanied by a research note articulating its rights-based architecture and privacy-preserving features. The winning team should expect to share their full results and take part in publishing their results in a scientific publication.

Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB) Identification - mentored by a senior fellow from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue

The Problem: Hate-based narratives are increasingly driven by "smarter" coordinated networks rather than organic user behaviour.
The Objective: Build a tool that detects when hate-based narratives emerge across platforms and accounts in a short window of time. LLM enabled semantic clustering can be used instead of being limited to keyword-based queries to group mentions by intention and meaning rather than simply by identical language. Participants should include at least one gendered campaign (e.g. coordinated harassment of women politicians or activists) among their test cases, as these are among the most documented forms of CIB and provide a concrete benchmark for the tool's real-world relevance. An important threshold is determining line between coordination and organic behaviour from many authentic users.
Potential Output: Visualized summary of narrative clusters in a dashboard designed for use by analysts or journalists. The dashboard should allow filtering by targeted identity group, including gender.

From reporting to response: Addressing online hate and gender-based violence – mentored by a researcher of Democracy Reporting International

The Problem: The challenge responds to a practical implementation gap during electoral periods, when harmful content is often encountered online but remains difficult for institutional actors to document, assess, and escalate. While legal frameworks and multi-stakeholder mechanisms already exist, reporting pathways are often fragmented, unevenly accessible, or not designed around gender-sensitive and electoral-risk criteria. The goal is to support timely, proportionate, and rights-respecting responses without undermining legitimate political debate or freedom of expression.
The Objective: DRI invites teams to design a tech-enabled reporting and referral solution aimed primarily at institutional actors, including but not limited to electoral commissions, trusted flaggers, and platform integrity teams. Rather than focusing only on the reporting interface, the solution should help turn user-submitted reports of suspected online hate speech and gender-based violence (OGBV) against women, as well as trans and non-binary candidates into structured evidence that can support classification, assessment, prioritisation, and clear escalation or referral logic.
Potential Output: Teams are expected to present a prototype/MVP, wireframe, or proof of concept that shows how reports of suspected online hate speech and OGBV would be collected, structured, classified, prioritised, and referred to relevant institutional actors. The output should include a proposed user flow, key data fields, classification criteria, and referral/escalation logic.

Think out of the box - mentored by an academic researcher and lecturer from the University of Strasbourg

The Problem: What if tackling hate speech was not only about removing harmful content—but about transforming the social dynamics that produce it? Hate speech online is a growing and complex societal issue, affecting social cohesion, mental health, and democratic discourse. While current solutions focus largely on detection and content removal, they often fail to capture context, address bias, or empower users. This challenge invites participants to think out of the box and go beyond traditional moderation approaches. Rather than focusing solely on detection, teams are encouraged to explore new ways to prevent, contextualize, counter, and transform hate speech in digital environments.
The Objective: Design a solution that prevents, contextualises, counters, or transforms hate speech rather than simply moderating it. Teams are encouraged to combine technology, design, policy, and creative approaches, targeting any relevant group from social media users and platform moderators to educators, NGOs, or policymakers. An intersectional approach to the work, including gender, age, origin and/or other grounds of discrimination is encouraged.
Potential Output: A functional prototype or MVP in any form (web or mobile application, moderation support interface, educational experience, policy framework, or creative concept with social impact), accompanied by a 5-minute pitch and a short concept paper outlining design choices, methodology, and ethical considerations.

Schedule

A more detailed programme will be available soon.

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

8:15 Registration at the Palais de l’Europe

9:00 Welcome session for No Hate Speech Week and Democracy Hackathon- Hemicycle
Logistics information and technical announcements

9:30 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)

11:00 Break (coffee & tea)

11:30 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)

12:30 Reception for Hackathon and No Hate Speech Week with Member States representatives – foyer of the Hemicycle - DJ

14:00 Opening of the Hackathon & No Hate Speech Week – Hemicycle
Keynote speech

Alain Berset, Council of Europe’s Secretary General

14:20 Panel Discussion & Q&A - The Ethical dilemma of Tech Innovation

Moderators: Liz Alderman, journalist and former New York Times correspondent and Sally Bailey-Ravet, Council of Europe

Inbal Becker-Reshef Microsoft AI for Good
Maya Lahav, Cyber criminologist at Oxford University
Victoria Grech, Founder & CEO, Truzentia
Siobhán O'Sullivan, Senior Policy Analyst, The National Economic and Social Council of Ireland

15:00 Author Giuliano da Empoli in conversation with Liz Alderman
Moderators: Sally Bailey-Ravet, Council of Europe and Hugo Espinosa, Kreativdistrikt

15:30 Presentation of Hackathon challenges and teams

15:45 Break (coffee & tea)

16:15 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)

16:15 – 17:15 Youth Flash Challenge (Room 8)

17:45 Working/hacking sessions + mentor support until 19.45 (Room 7, 10, 11)

Thursday, 18 June 2026

8:30 Registration & info desk opens

9:00 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)
Youth Flash Challenge (Room 12/13)

10:30 Break (coffee & tea)

11:00 Plenary for the International Day for Countering Hate Speech - Hemicycle
Statement for the International Day for Countering Hate Speech

Alain Berset, Council of Europe’s Secretary General

11:10 Debate: Online hate speech is Europe’s biggest threat to youth’s involvement in democracy
House for the motion:

Ana Kuprava, Georgia
Arman Martirosyan, Armenia
Rok Saric, Slovenia
House against the motion:
Serena Gandogonon, France
Vetle Skrede, Norway
Mazin Abdalla, Sudan

Feedback from the audience

12:00 Reflections by:

Alain Berset, Council of Europe’s Secretary General
Gilles Marchand, Director Initiative Media Philanthropy (IMP), University of Geneva

12:30 Award Ceremony: Journalism Excellence Awards “Ethical reporting on Roma and Travellers and combating antigypsyism through the media”
Introduction by:

Alain Berset, Council of Europe’s Secretary General
Frédéric FAUTRIER, Directeur Général du Département de l’Intérieur, Committee of Ministers Presidency of Monaco

Awarded

Moderators:
Nidhya Paliakara, journalist TV5MONDE
Alex Taylor, European journalist

13:00 Lunch reception (60 minutes) – foyer of the Hemicycle

14:00 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)
Youth Flash Challenge (Room 12/13)

15:30 Break (coffee & tea)

16:00 Parallel sessions
Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)
Youth Flash Challenge (Room 12/13)

18:30-20:30 Hackathon evening event

Friday, 19 June 2026

8:30 Registration & info desk opens

8:30 Working/hacking sessions + mentor support (Room 7, 10, 11)

9:00 Selection of four finalist teams per challenge
Democracy Hackathon and No Hate Speech Week closing session – Room 1

10:30 Democracy Hackathon Dragon’s Den presentations by four finalists
Moderator: Hugo Espinosa, Kreativdistrikt- hackathon
Hackathon – Grand Finale Dragon’s Den -Presentation four projects

11:30 Break (coffee & tea) while the Judges deliberate

12:00 Awards ceremony
Moderators: Liz Alderman and Sally Bailey-Ravet

12:00 Conclusions from the No Hate Speech Week
Marja Ruotanen, Director General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Council of Europe

12:15 Remark by Judges
PACE, Special Commission on the New Democratic Pact for Europe
Ayisha Piotti, ETH Zurich and RegHorizon

12:40 Closing remarks and announcement on the Hackathon winner

Alain Berset, Council of Europe’s Secretary General

13:00 Lunch reception for No Hate Speech Week & Democracy Hackathon participants - foyer of the Hemicycle

Mentors and Jury

Mentors

What’s a Mentor at a Hackathon?
A mentor is a resource person available throughout the event to guide teams on strategy, ethics, and technical aspects. They will help refine ideas, give feedback, and ensure your project aligns with the challenge goals.
Mentors come from various fields, and their goal is to help you learn, stay motivated, and if you are among winning team(s) – develop your solutions!

Camila Weinmann (she/her)

Sabine Cullmann

Stephen Meisenbacher

Zahed Amanullah (he/him)

Supporting mentors

Retour Thomas Lampert

Professor,
University of Strasbourg

Thomas Lampert, professor and former Chair of AI and Data Science at the University of Strasbourg, holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of York. His research focuses on both the theoretical foundations of AI and its applications across diverse domains. He serves as ICube's referent to the Council of Europe CDNET committee and, as an AI expert, helped develop a training course on AI for the Council’s Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) programme.

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Winners of 2025

2025 First prize: The Fact-Checking Foxes (Italy) took top prize for a fun, classroom tool that helps teens outsmart fake news - no AI, just sharp thinking.
EchoBreaker (Georgia) earned a special mention for bursting filter bubbles.
Sunflower (Italy) got a special mention for making open data easy to access and understand.

First prize: ‘The Fact-Checking Foxes’ (Italy)

The 2025 top prize was awarded to The Fact-Checking Foxes for their innovative classroom solution that proposed to use game-based pre-bunking to help adolescents develop critical thinking skills by analyzing real-world false claims.
What made the project stand out?

Fully integrated into the classroom
Engaging, game-based learning
No reliance on AI-generated content

Special mention: ‘Echobreaker’ (Georgia)

Special mention was awarded to ‘Echobreaker’ for their tool designed to break echo chambers by highlighting ideological bias and offering alternative perspectives. Key feature: a personal dashboard that displayed ideological diversity scores and suggested content from a range of media viewpoints.

Special mention: Sunflower (Italy)

Special mention was awarded to ‘Sunflower’ for their mobile app translating open data into accessible visual insights with context and social features. Key feature: a three-click usability design that simplified access to open data for all users.

Register here before 5 June 2026

to apply to participate in the 2026 Council of Europe Hack the Hate, Renew Democracy! Hackaton !

Apply now