EVerest Community Hackathon 2026: Cross-Domain Engineering for the Open EV Charging Ecosystem

September 9–10, 2026 · Pionix HQ, Bad Schönborn, Germany Hosted by LF Energy · Venue partner: Pionix · Aligned with The EV:ent (Sep 7–8)

What this is

Maintainers meeting: We want to bring the EVerest maintainers and friends into a room to got things algined and done! But we want to scale beyond this:

Two days of focused engineering for the people who build EV charging software. Not a pitch contest or a trade show, but maybe a 24-hour energy drink marathon: A working hackathon where small teams ship real improvements to the open EV charging stack and the systems it has to talk to.

The EVerest Project sits at the core, but this is explicitly an ecosystem event. If you work on anything that touches EV charging, you belong here: CPMS, EVs, Emulators, HEMS, cloud energy management, certification tooling, simulation, or the protocols that wire them together.

Who this is for

Coders and lead engineers from across the open EV charging ecosystem:

• Open-source contributors to the EVerest Project and adjacent LF Energy projects
• Firmware and backend engineers at charger manufacturers and CPMS vendors
• EV-side engineers working on ISO 15118, or in-vehicle charging logic
• Energy management engineers (HEMS, VPP, DERMS, cloud-side optimization)
• Test, certification, and interoperability engineers
• Students and newcomers who want to learn by building alongside experienced teams

The companion event, The EV:ent on September 7–8, is aimed at technical decision-makers and product leaders. The Hackathon is for the people who write the code. Some overlap is expected and welcome, but the audiences are intentionally different.

We are aiming for around 50 participants. Spots are limited so we can keep the signal-to-noise ratio high and make sure every team gets mentor time and hardware access.

The core theme: cross-domain engineering

Most of the hard problems in EV charging today are not inside one system. They live at the seams between two or more.

The default challenge format is therefore a cross-domain integration: take EVerest on one side and another system on the other, and make them work together properly, or test how well they already do.

Examples of the kinds of challenges we expect to see:

• EVerest ↔ CPMS: integration and conformance testing with CitrineOS, MaEVe, or other open/closed CPMS implementations over OCPP 1.6 / 2.0.1 / 2.1
• EVerest ↔ EV: ISO 15118-2 / 15118-20 / GB-T / ... sessions with real cars and EV emulators, including Plug & Charge edge cases
• EVerest ↔ HEMS: local energy management integration via SunSpec or EEBus or else
• EVerest ↔ Grid / Cloud Energy Management: e.g. IEEE 2030.5 or OpenADR linkage for managed charging and demand response
• EVerest ↔ Test & Simulation tooling: extending Virtual Charging Platforms, improving CI test coverage, building new conformance scenarios

Challenges that stay within one system are also welcome, as long as they are substantive. New CintrineOS modules, new EVerest modules, performance improvements, protocol support, developer tooling, documentation work that unblocks real users, all good.

How it works

We strongly prefer pre-proposed topics with named participants. This is what makes the event work: when challenges and teams are aligned ahead of time, we can prepare hardware, mentors, and the right people in the room, and you spend the two days building instead of scoping.

The flow:

1. Propose a challenge ahead of the event with a short description, the systems involved, and the people committing to work on it. We'll publish a challenge board.
2. Coordinate with us on hardware, environment, and any other teams whose work overlaps with yours.
3. Show up on Wednesday morning with your team, your laptop (, and a HW prototype if applicable), and a clear idea of what "done" looks like by Thursday evening.

If you don't have a team yet, that's fine. A meaningful share of seats are reserved for individual participants who want to join an existing team. This is one of the best ways to learn EVerest or any of the adjacent projects from the people who build them. Tell us your background and interests, and we'll help you find a good fit.

What's on site

• Real EVs available for testing
• A set of EVerest-compatible development kits: EVSEs and EV emulators (AC and DC, including µMWC)
• 80 kW of available power for real charging sessions, plus plenty of CEE power outlets and bench space
• Fiber internet :-)
• Food, drinks, and yes, Club-Mate
• Mentors from across the EVerest Project, LF Energy, and partner organizations

Schedule (preliminary)

Wednesday, September 9

• 09:00, Arrival, team formation for unassigned participants, challenge confirmation
• 10:00, Hacking begins
• Mentor check-ins, lunch, coffee, more hacking
• 18:00, Soft close, optional dinner and informal demos, (or just stay really late,...)

Thursday, September 10

• 09:00, Hacking resumes
• Mentor check-ins, lunch, coffee, more hacking
• 16:00, Demos and team readouts
• 17:00, Recap, recognition, retrospectives
• 18:00, Wrap

Surrounding week

The Hackathon is part of an unusually dense week for the EV charging community in Europe:

• Sep 1–3, ICNC, Berlin
• Sep 7–8, The EV:ent, Bad Schönborn (the-event.tech)
• Sep 9–10, EVerest Community Hackathon, Bad Schönborn (this event)
• Sep 15–16, LF Energy Summit, Berlin
• Sep 22–23, CharIN Conference + Testival, Germany / OCA Plugfest, Ireland
• Sep 22–23, OCA Plugfest, Ireland

If you're already travelling for one of these, the Hackathon is a good reason to extend the trip.

Hosting

The EVerest Community Hackathon is hosted by LF Energy as part of the EVerest Project community programme. Pionix provides the venue, hardware, and on-site logistics. The event is open to the full EV charging ecosystem; participation does not require affiliation with any of the host organizations.