Event Details

The 2026 eCitadel Open will be held June 5 - June 8, 2026. The competition runs from 8 AM Central time on June 5th through 10:59 PM Central time on June 8th.

Competition Window

Teams have a 6 hour competition window to work on the provided virtual machines and challenges. Teams choose when their 6 hour window begins, but they must complete all their efforts by 10:59 PM Central time on June 8th. There is no pausing/stopping of the 6 hour window - once you start competing you have a total of 6 hours to work on ALL the provided virtual machines and challenges.

Prizes

Prizes will be awarded to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams.

Orientation & Practice Round

A competition orientation briefing will be held May 30, 2026, alongside a practice round provided to each fully registered team.

Environment

• Debian 13
• Fedora 43
• Windows Server 2022
• pfSense

Scoring

The winner will be determined by the highest cumulative score at the end of competition. Accumulated point values are broken down as follows:

• Finding and fixing vulnerabilities accounts for roughly 20 percent of the possible points
• Successful completion of injects accounts for roughly 35 percent of the possible points (awarded points will vary by task, but will be part of a cumulative total)
• Critical services account for roughly 35 percent of the possible points (based on a random polling interval of core services)
• Orange Team activities will account for roughly 10 percent of the possible points

Successful Red Team persistence will result in point deductions from a team's total score based on the level of access maintained.