The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has launched Cyber Kushti 2026, a national level hackathon focused on cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Launched on 15 August 2026 as the official technical track of the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026) at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi, the competition flips the usual hackathon model. Instead of just finding flaws, teams must prove their judgment by separating real threats from fake ones in an AI generated security report.
What Is Cyber Kushti 2026?
Cyber Kushti 2026 is a nationwide cybersecurity and AI hackathon launched by NIELIT to test and recognise human judgment in cybersecurity assessment. The name combines cyber with kushti, the traditional Indian wrestling form, to signal a contest of skill, strategy and endurance in the digital arena.
The competition is free and open to students from any recognised institution and independent researchers. Participants can be from any academic branch and need not hold a formal degree. Each team must have exactly three members, and registration is free. The registration window opened on 15 August 2026 and will close on 10 September 2026.
Unlike typical Capture The Flag (CTF) events that reward speed in finding vulnerabilities, this hackathon rewards accuracy in evaluation. The goal is not to see who can find the most issues, but who can correctly decide which issues are real, which are false, and which deserve priority attention. This shift mirrors real world security operations, where analysts are flooded with alerts and must choose what to fix first.
The event also formally connects to NCCDFI 2026, the third edition of the National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence. Earlier editions were held in collaboration with state police and academic partners, such as the 2024 edition in Kohima organised by NIELIT Kohima with Nagaland Police. The 2026 conference will be held on 9 and 10 October 2026 in New Delhi, alongside the hackathon finale.
How the Competition Works: A Test of Human Judgment
The core idea behind Cyber Kushti 2026 is simple but different. Machines can now generate security findings at great speed, but they also generate a lot of noise. The scarce skill today is not finding a problem, but judging whether a finding is real, whether it matters, and what should be fixed first.
As explained at the launch by Prof. (Dr.) M. M. Tripathi, Director General of NIELIT and Vice Chancellor of NIELIT Deemed to be University, the most difficult part of security work has shifted. Finding an issue was once the hard part. Today tools produce findings faster than any team can read them. What machines cannot yet do reliably is tell which findings are genuine, which are most critical, and what needs immediate action. That judgment is what the competition measures.
The Deliberately Flawed Security Assessment Package
Every team will receive the same Security Assessment Package. This ensures a level playing field where success depends on analysis quality, not on access to better tools. Teams are allowed to use AI tools of their choice, but all start from the identical flawed package.
The package contains AI generated findings and static analysis results, dependency and secrets scans, architecture documentation, and the related source code and application logs.
Intentionally, the package mixes genuine, false, duplicate and incomplete findings, and some real vulnerabilities are deliberately omitted. Participants must produce a corrected and prioritised security assessment and defend the decisions they made. Scoring rewards both finding real threats and correctly dismissing inaccurate, AI generated or duplicated alerts. In other words, rejecting a false positive earns points just as finding a true vulnerability does.
Three Rounds: Akhada, Dangal and Kesari
The hackathon will run in three progressive stages, named after stages of a traditional wrestling contest. This cultural framing makes the technical contest easy to remember while signalling increasing intensity.
| Round | Name | Date | Mode | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | The Akhada | 15 September 2026 | Online | Top 50 teams advance |
| Round 2 | The Dangal | 24 September 2026 | Online | Top 10 teams (30 finalists) advance |
| Round 3 | The Kesari | 9 October 2026 | Offline, Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi | Final defence on main stage of NCCDFI 2026 |
In Round 1, The Akhada, all registered teams work online from the same assessment package. This broad qualifying round tests basic analytical judgment. Fifty teams will be shortlisted to move forward.
In Round 2, The Dangal, the selected 50 teams compete again online on 24 September 2026. The filter becomes stricter, and only ten teams will be chosen as finalists.
The Final Round, The Kesari, will be held physically on 9 October 2026 at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi. The ten finalist teams will work under supervision and then present and defend their assessments before an eminent jury on the main stage of NCCDFI 2026. The conference itself runs on 9 and 10 October 2026.
Recognition follows the same wrestling theme. The winning team will be awarded the title Cyber Kesari 2026 and presented with the traditional Gada (mace). Runners up will receive the titles Rustam and Pahalwan. All Round 1 participants will get a Certificate of Participation and an individual scorecard. Teams moving beyond Round 1 will receive National Security Database (NSD) recognition credits. A special award will recognise the most instructive incorrect submission, where the reasoning is well documented and offers educational value despite being wrong.
Who Is Organising It: NIELIT, ISAC and CERT-In
NIELIT is the lead organiser. Formally launched as the Department of Electronics and Accreditation of Computer Courses (DOEACC) Society in 1994 under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, the body was created to accredit computer training programmes run by private institutes. In December 2002, several autonomous societies including Centres for Electronics Design and Technology of India (CEDTI) at Aurangabad, Calicut, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Srinagar, Jammu, Tezpur and Guwahati, and Regional Computer Centres (RCC) at Chandigarh and Kolkata were merged into it. On 10 October 2011, it was renamed NIELIT to reflect its wider role in human resource development in electronics and Information and Communication Technology. Today it functions as an autonomous scientific society under MeitY, headquartered at NIELIT Bhawan, Dwarka, New Delhi, with more than 50 centres across India. In 2025, it was also accorded Deemed to be University status under the distinct category.
The competition is being conducted in collaboration with the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) Foundation under the National Security Database (NSD) programme, and CERT-In is the Knowledge Partner.
ISAC Foundation is a non profit organisation registered as a Section 8 company in India, with a counterpart registered in the United States. It is best known for creating the National Security Database (NSD), described as India’s credible pool of vetted cybersecurity experts. The NSD was conceived after the 2008 Mumbai attacks to protect national critical infrastructure and cyberspace. Launched in collaboration with the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) in 2010 by the then Minister of State for Communications and IT, it empanels professionals through technical lab examinations and psychometric evaluation. Empanelled experts are recognised under categories such as Cadet and Falcon and are often deployed to support the government during major cyber incidents.
CERT-In, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, is the national nodal agency for responding to cybersecurity incidents. Formed in January 2004 under Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, it operates within MeitY, based at Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. Its mandate includes incident prevention and response, raising security awareness, issuing alerts and advisories, and coordinating with critical sectors, Internet Service Providers, academia and industry. It also runs the Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre), launched in February 2017 under the Digital India initiative, which helps users detect and clean malware infected devices with free tools.
The final jury for Cyber Kushti will be jointly formed by NIELIT and ISAC and will include senior practitioners from government, industry and academia, including National Cyber Security Scholars recognised under the NSD.
NIELIT and MeitY: The Institutional Context
Understanding the organisers helps to place this hackathon in the larger governance picture.
MeitY, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, was formed on 19 July 2016 as a standalone ministry after being separated from the then Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. It is headquartered at Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi, and is headed by Cabinet Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw with Minister of State Jitin Prasada. The ministry acts as the nodal body for policy on electronics, IT, internet governance, e governance, digital payments, emerging technologies such as AI, and securing cyberspace. Key organisations under MeitY include the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and CERT-In itself.
NIELIT is one of MeitY’s key implementation arms for skilling. Apart from formal courses such as M.Tech in Electronics Design and Technology and Embedded Systems, it runs non formal programmes in areas including Information Security, Cyber Law, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and e Governance. It also operates as a national examination and certification body and delivers the well known Course on Computer Concepts (CCC) and Basic Computer Course (BCC) for digital literacy. Its mandate under Digital India and Skill India is to bridge the gap between academic training and industry needs, especially in remote and semi urban areas.
The Dr. Ambedkar International Centre (DAIC), where the launch and finale are hosted, is itself a significant institution. Located at 15 Janpath, Windsor Place, New Delhi, it is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. Inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 7 December 2017, it was envisaged as a centre of excellence for research and policy on social justice and equality, and is equipped with large auditoriums such as Bhim Auditorium that regularly host national conferences.
Why This Model Matters for India’s Digital Security
The timing of Cyber Kushti 2026 reflects three converging pressures.
First, the volume of AI generated security alerts. Automated scanners and AI tools now produce findings faster than teams can review them, and studies consistently point to false positive rates that can exceed half of all alerts. Without strong human judgment, teams risk alert fatigue, where real threats are missed because attention is scattered across fake or low priority warnings. By rewarding the correct rejection of false positives, the hackathon trains participants for the actual job as it exists in security operations centres.
Second, India’s cyber talent gap. Estimates place India’s cybersecurity workforce at around 300,000 professionals, yet around 39,000 positions remain vacant despite 40,000 to 60,000 new entrants each year. The gap is sharpest in emerging areas such as cloud security, AI security, operational technology and Internet of Things security. Reports by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and SANS Institute find that more than 70 percent of enterprises report difficulty in finding qualified talent, and vacancies often stay open for one to six months. The problem is not just headcount but capability, including hands on exposure, cross domain knowledge and ability to handle live incidents.
Third, the expansion of digital infrastructure itself. With initiatives such as Digital India, the rollout of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) which processed more than 21 billion transactions in a single month in late 2025, and growing adoption of AI agents across enterprises, the attack surface is widening. The Union Budget for 2025 to 26 allocated ₹782 crore for cybersecurity, signalling sustained policy focus. Building a workforce that can work with AI tools rather than be misled by them has become a national priority.
The Way Forward
Cyber Kushti 2026 is positioned as more than a one time contest. As the official technical track of NCCDFI, it is intended to become a recurring benchmark for AI era security talent.
For participants, success will depend not on fancy tooling but on calm, evidence based reasoning. Teams must show they can read code and logs, cross check tool outputs, rank risks by business impact, and explain their choices clearly to a jury of practitioners.
For institutions, the next step will be to carry the lessons from this format into curricula. Embedding judgment based assessment, false positive triage and risk prioritisation into NIELIT courses, university labs and NSD certification pathways could multiply the impact far beyond the 30 finalists who reach the Kesari stage in New Delhi.
Key Takeaways
- Cyber Kushti 2026 was launched on 15 August 2026 by NIELIT under MeitY as a national cybersecurity and AI hackathon.
- It is the official technical track of the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026) to be held on 9 and 10 October 2026 at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi.
- Registration is free and open from 15 August to 10 September 2026 for teams of exactly three members comprising students or independent researchers.
- The competition tests human judgment by giving all teams the same deliberately flawed Security Assessment Package with genuine, false, duplicate and incomplete findings, and scoring both detection of real threats and correct rejection of false positives.
- The hackathon runs in three rounds: Akhada (15 September 2026, online, top 50 advance), Dangal (24 September 2026, online, top 10 advance) and Kesari (9 October 2026, offline finale in New Delhi).
- Winners receive the title Cyber Kesari 2026 and the traditional Gada, runners up are titled Rustam and Pahalwan, with CERT-In as Knowledge Partner and ISAC Foundation under the National Security Database (NSD) as co organiser.
