Kaspersky is pleased to announce eight finalists of this year’s SAS CTF qualifying round, the company’s annual competition for professional CTF players and seasoned security experts, that outperformed more than 1,100 participants. With the winners advancing now to the offline finals in Bali on October 20-23, Kaspersky is opening the next challenge: Kaspersky{CTF} 2026, a competition for corporate and academic teams.
Kaspersky has long been committed to nurturing cybersecurity talent, through investments in educational and cyber capacity building initiatives such as CTF competitions. The company’s tournaments last year brought together 2,500 teams from around the world, reinforcing Kaspersky’s growing role in professional development.
Concluding on June 7, SAS CTF qualifiers challenged participants with a series of Jeopardy-style tasks that tested their ability to find vulnerabilities and investigate security incidents. Out of 1,146 participating teams, FR13NDS x Kheshig (Kazakhstan and Mongolia), ARESxTRX (the US and Italy), BunkyoWesterns (Japan), PIG SEKAI (international), dda_com (Korea), v01d-ma (Morocco), amigus (Russia) and thehackerscrew (international) have demonstrated the highest performance. FR13NDS x Kheshig secured the first place by capturing 20 out of 24 flags, while ARESxTRX and BunkyoWesterns followed in second and third, with 19 flags each.
Together with the SAS CTF qualifiers winner’s announcement, Kaspersky is opening registration for Kaspersky{CTF} 2026 — a 24-hour online challenge, now for academic and business teams, scheduled for August 29-30. The competition is built around real-world cybersecurity scenarios, including cryptography, reverse engineering, binary exploitation, forensics, and AI-related tasks, with some of the puzzles inspired by real-life cyber investigations conducted by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT).
Registration for Kaspersky{CTF} 2026 will be open till August 30. To enter the competition, it’s necessary to sign up with an academic or corporate email and choose one of five regional streams:
· North America, South America and Caribbean
· Europe
· Middle East, Turkiye and Africa
· Russia and CIS
· Asia and Oceania
The winning teams from each of the regional streams will earn an exclusive invitation to the SAS CTF 2026 on‑site finals in Bali, where they will compete for the $18,000 prize pool alongside eight finalists of SAS CTF qualifiers.
“We’re honored to host CTF events and support the development of the cybersecurity industry around the world. These competitions are far more than entertainment. For business they’re an effective and budget-friendly tool for team’s skillset development. For students, CTFs offer a chance to test their knowledge in real cybersecurity scenarios. We invite everyone to join Kaspersky{CTF} 2026 and become part of international CTF community,” comments Leonid Bezvershenko, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.
To help teams feel more confident and prepared for the upcoming tournament, additional educational activities will await participants within two upcoming months, including a webinar and ‘parse-the-task’ of the last year’s challenges.
