boroCTF 2026: 2,000 Students, 93 Countries, One Weekend

In June 2026 we did something a little audacious for a nonprofit run by high schoolers: we built and ran boroCTF, a full international capture-the-flag (CTF) competition — writing every challenge ourselves and operating the event live.

Then the world showed up.

The numbers

Every one of those challenges was written by our team. Nothing was recycled from a challenge bank. Categories spanned the disciplines students actually need to learn: web exploitation, reverse engineering, binary exploitation, cryptography, forensics, OSINT, and networking.

Why we built it ourselves

We could have pointed students at someone else's competition. Instead we built our own, end to end: more than a hundred original challenges, authored by our team, and a live international event we ran ourselves. Doing it that way is harder — but it meant the difficulty curve, the categories, and the on-ramp for first-timers were all designed for the students we care about, not left to chance.

What it meant for students

A CTF is one of the fastest ways to fall in love with cybersecurity. You are handed a locked door and a hunch, and the moment the flag pops is the moment a lot of students realize they can actually do this. For many boroCTF competitors, this was their first CTF ever — and thanks to a beginner-friendly track, it wasn't their last.

That is the whole point of CyberAcad: give every student, regardless of background or budget, a real shot at that moment.

What's next

boroCTF 2026 was a milestone, not a finish line — and we're already sketching what next year looks like. In the meantime, the free CyberAcad platform is where students can build the skills to compete: interactive lessons and hands-on practice, year-round.

Want to be part of it? Join the Discord and create a free account to start training today.