Team Europe has won the inaugural Women's International Cybersecurity Challenge (WICC), a two-day competition held in Dublin that brought together elite women cybersecurity competitors from around the world. The event, staged from 9 to 10 July 2026, tested participants on cryptography, reverse engineering, digital forensics, web exploitation, binary exploitation, hardware security, open-source intelligence, and attack-and-defence scenarios, with an emphasis on strategic thinking and collaboration under pressure. The US Cyber Team placed second, and Team Oceania placed third.
The challenge, organised by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) in partnership with the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) and the European Commission, aimed to foster the next generation of women leadership in cybersecurity. Nine teams competed, representing regions including Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Oceania, the UK, the US, Ukraine (G1rlUn1ty), Canada, and Europe. Each team was named after a figure from myth or urban legends. Beyond the competition, side events such as workshops and discussion panels allowed participants to network with industry professionals, researchers, and the wider cybersecurity community.
ENISA directly supported the participation of the female Team Europe in WICC 2026, continuing its advocacy for initiatives addressing gender inequality in cybersecurity. The agency expressed gratitude to the women who volunteered as coaches and trainers, running bootcamps to prepare competitors for qualifiers and form the final team. This event builds on ENISA's broader work on cybersecurity skills and competences, including its June 2025 guidance on cybersecurity roles for NIS2 entities and its December 2024 after-action report on the Cyber Europe 2024 exercise.
The competition moved beyond traditional Capture The Flag formats to create a more dynamic experience, requiring teams to evaluate opportunities and risks and make time-sensitive tactical decisions. The success of Team Europe, ENISA stated, reflects how European values remain central to the agency's efforts to lead change in cybersecurity.