Four days at ExCeL London: two days of hands-on security Trainings, two days of Briefings presenting original security research, and a Business Hall of tools and services.
Black Hat Europe is the European edition of the Black Hat information security conference series, held annually in London in early December. The 2026 edition runs from 7 to 10 December at ExCeL London. The structure is fixed across the series: hands-on Trainings open the week in two-day and four-day formats at several skill levels, the Briefings follow on the final two days with original security research selected through a call for papers, and a Business Hall runs alongside the Briefings with security tools and services.
Black Hat exists to disclose new offensive and defensive research to practitioners, and to train them. The Briefings are the point: talks are selected by a review board and present work that has not been published before, spanning vulnerability research, exploitation technique, hardware and firmware attacks, cloud and identity abuse, and increasingly the attack surface of machine learning systems. The Trainings are the commercial backbone, intensive paid courses taught by practitioners over two or four days. Everything else is secondary.
The week opens with Trainings, which run from 7 December and account for the bulk of the attendee spend. The Briefings occupy 9 and 10 December, running in parallel tracks. Around the Briefings sit the Business Hall, the Arsenal open-source tool demonstration area, and the sponsored session tracks. Registration is modular: a training place, a Briefings pass, or both, are bought separately.
it-sa in Nuremberg, Infosecurity Europe in London and Cybersec Europe in Brussels are exhibition-led: their centre of gravity is the vendor floor and the procurement conversation. Black Hat Europe inverts that. Its floor is small, its ticket prices are high, and its value is the technical content and the peer group in the room. A security team sending people to both is buying two different things: market intelligence at one, technical capability at the other.
No. Briefings passes and Training places are sold separately, and many attendees buy only one. Trainings are the more expensive component.
The Briefings are selected through a call for papers with a review board, and the series is built on previously undisclosed work. It is one of the main European venues for coordinated vulnerability disclosure at conference scale.
No. Same brand, different products. Black Hat MEA in Riyadh runs at roughly ten times the attendance with a large exhibition and national showcase function. Black Hat Europe stays a compact research and training event.
ExCeL London in the Royal Docks hosts both Black Hat Europe in December and Infosecurity Europe in June, which gives the London calendar two structurally opposite security events in the same halls.
The European stop of the security research circuit, where new offensive work is disclosed on stage and the training rooms, not the exhibition floor, justify the trip.
Registration is handled on the official Black Hat site, with separate purchase paths for Trainings and Briefings and early-bird pricing that closes well before the event. Trainings are priced per course and are the largest line item; Briefings passes are cheaper and include Business Hall and Arsenal access. Group and academic rates have been offered in past editions. Exact 2026 pricing is published on the registration page.
Trainings run 7 to 10 December 2026 in two-day and four-day formats. The Briefings run 9 and 10 December 2026.
ExCeL London, Royal Victoria Dock, in east London, served directly by the Elizabeth line and DLR.
Black Hat publishes slide decks and white papers for many Briefings after the event through its archive, and video availability varies by edition and speaker consent.
| Official website | https://www.blackhat.com/eu-26/ |
| Series overview | https://blackhat.com/europe/ |
| Call for papers | https://blackhat.com/call-for-papers.html |