NovruzCTF 2026 Wrapped Up — Here's How It Went

Novruz is over, and so is NovruzCTF. 😃

We wrapped up NovruzCTF 2026 today — a 24-hour cybersecurity competition. It was an exciting ride. We organized it internationally, 200+ teams and 400+ participants showed up, and most were Azerbaijani. Knowing that young people and students here genuinely love these competitions motivates us to keep going and do even more. ⭐

From my side it was both incredibly stressful and incredibly fun. The server resources we planned couldn’t handle the load when too many participants launched hackable machines simultaneously — the servers started going down. I fixed it within 1-2 hours and got everything back to stable. CanYouHack ran smoothly after that.

To keep the energy going, we added new challenges at intervals throughout the competition. Some participants stayed up all night grinding through the problems. 💫

Challenges were split into easy, medium, and hard levels and released progressively, so everyone found something at their level.

Big thanks to my team — Abdulmalik Baharov, Ilkin Alakbarli, Murad Ahmadov, and Murad Afandiyev. Without them this wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

Special thanks to Malik Mammadli, royalcloud.az, and my friends Vusal Huseynov, Khalig Salmanov, Nazrin Burziyeva, and Nicat Abbasli for the server support.

Results will be reviewed for cheating before final announcement. Current standings: https://lnkd.in/dz6bNsST

If your organization is interested in hosting a CTF on CanYouHack or sponsoring the platform, reach out. These are talented people — any company would want them.