AI in Lebanon, the verified AI events calendar, Club Cedro

01 · What this is

Built in the order that actually works

There are Lebanese people building AI in Beirut, Dubai, Riyadh, Paris, London, Montreal and the Bay, and almost none of them know each other. You cannot introduce people you cannot find, so the first thing to build is the record, not the club.

01 · Now

The directory

Events first, because events are the part that is missing, dated, and easy to check. This page is that directory and it is the working half of the product today.

02 · Now, opening

The builders page

What Lebanese founders and teams have actually shipped, each with a link you can open. It opens with the honest number rather than a padded one.

03 · Later

Rooms, and the people in them

Once the list is worth checking weekly, it earns the right to put people in the same room. Meetups come from traffic, not from an announcement.

02 · The directory

The Lebanese AI calendar

15 entries. Every one was opened and read by hand, not scraped and not taken from an aggregator. Where a date is not published, the entry says so rather than guessing one.

Confirmed Dates and venue published

Listed only where the organiser has put dates and a venue in public.

22 December 2026

Confirmed

Beirut Pitch, LIFE Lebanon

LIFE Lebanon and its partners are selecting up to ten tech or tech enabled startups to pitch to investors and the wider ecosystem. Run through LAIN, the Lebanese Angel Investors Network, which is a Ministry of Technology and Artificial Intelligence initiative operated by BY Venture Partners. Applications close 16 October 2026 at 5pm Beirut time, well before the event itself.

Beirut
Up to 10 startups
Applications close 16 Oct 2026, 5pm Beirut
Partners: AlbionVC, BY Venture Partners, Endeavor Lebanon, No Label Ventures

Source Beirut Digital District · checked 28 Oct 2026 · Announced by Beirut Digital District on 7 October 2026. The 22 December date and the 16 October 5pm Beirut application deadline are carried by two independent reports. Diaspora for Growth, announced in the same post, is not listed here yet because its terms were found in only one place.

On the radar Real, but no date in public yet

Live organisations and recurring formats we are watching. They move up the day dates go public. We would rather show an empty date than invent one.

No date published

Watching

GDG North Lebanon, Online Community Check-In

A free monthly online session co-hosted with GDG Coast Lebanon. The last four ran in May on Supabase, June on backend and data, July on computer vision and August on AI operational efficiency. No September edition ran, and the group's next published date is its in person DevFest in Tripoli on 17 Oct, listed separately here. Watch this one for the next online date.

Online
Free
Monthly cadence
With GDG Coast Lebanon

Source gdg.community.dev · checked 1 Nov 2026 · last edition 22 Aug 2026, no September edition, next online date unannounced

No date published

Watching

Startup Weekend Beirut, Artificial Intelligence Edition

The standard Startup Weekend shape, run locally: Friday night pitches, a weekend of building and testing, Sunday night demos to a panel. The listing is up and names a contact, part of the Global Startup Weekend AI run of cities. No dates are on the listing.

Beirut
Three day build
beirut@startupweekend.org

Source ihjoz.com · checked 1 Nov 2026 · no dates listed

No 2026 date published

Watching

LTAI, the Lebanon Technology and AI Summit

The government's own summit, run by the Office of the Minister of State for Technology and AI under the patronage of the President of the Council of Ministers. The 2025 edition ran on 7 November at AVA Venue in Achrafieh and was by invitation only, which is worth knowing before anyone plans a trip around it. The site still shows only that edition.

Beirut
By invitation only
Organiser: Office of the Minister of State for Technology and AI
2025 edition ran 7 November

Source aitechsummit.gov.lb · checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2025 edition only, no 2026 date

No 2026 date published

Watching

AI in Lebanon Conference

A five city format, Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Zahle and Aley, run under the patronage of the Minister of State for Technology and AI and organised by Future 10X with The Eventalist and Loud Creations. The 2025 edition ran 21 to 26 July, with the Beirut leg at the MEA Training and Conferences Center. The site still shows the 2025 dates and its registration link is still live, so anything it says about dates is last year's.

Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Zahle, Aley
Five cities
Organisers: Future 10X, The Eventalist, Loud Creations

Source ailebanonconference.com · checked 1 Nov 2026 · site still shows 2025 dates

Already ran Kept, not deleted

A calendar that only shows the future tells you nothing about whether it has been maintained. These stay up.

17 October 2026

Done

DevFest North Lebanon 2026, Innovation in Action

GDG North Lebanon's yearly DevFest, a full day of hands on workshops and talks from local tech leaders, pitched at seasoned developers and beginners alike. The organiser has not yet published speakers or a session list, so how much of the day is about AI is not yet known.

Beirut Arab University, Tripoli campus
In person, 9am to 7:30pm Beirut time
Free registration
Organiser: GDG North Lebanon

Source gdg.community.dev · checked 28 Oct 2026 · registration open, speakers and agenda still not published four days out

17 October 2026

Done

Lebanese in AI, grad school applications with Alaa Khaddaj

An online session from the Lebanese in AI community: Alaa Khaddaj, described by the organiser as an OpenAI researcher with a PhD from MIT, on how to prepare graduate school applications, with time for questions. The second of these info sessions. The same group runs a casual online meetup roughly monthly; the last one, on always on AI agents, was 3 Oct.

Online, on Zoom
8pm Beirut time
Registration form on the page, questions taken in advance
Organiser: Lebanese in AI

Source buttondown.com/lebaneseinai · checked 31 Oct 2026 · the page does not say whether it is free

14 to 16 October 2026

Done

Bread and Net 2026

SMEX's annual digital rights gathering for West Asia and North Africa, run as an unconference: technologists, journalists, researchers and policymakers in the same room on how technology actually lands on people. The nearest thing Beirut has to a serious conversation about what gets built and who it costs. Dates and city are published, registration is not open yet.

Beirut
Venue not published
Organiser: SMEX
Registration not open

Source smex.org · checked 28 Oct 2026

10 to 11 October 2026

Done

Hack4Justice Lebanon 2026

A two day justice innovation hackathon where teams of three to five from law, technology, design and policy built a testable prototype against a real challenge set with the Ministry of Justice, then pitched it to a jury. AI and data skills were named among the backgrounds wanted. HiiL had not published the winners by 27 Oct.

Berytech, Dekwaneh, Mar Roukoz
In person, 10 to 11 Oct 2026
Prizes of 5,000, 3,000 and 1,000 euros
Organiser: HiiL, the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law
With Berytech, under the patronage of the Ministry of Justice

Source hiil.org · checked 27 Oct 2026 · winners not yet published

8 to 10 October 2026

Done

Experia, Interactive Innovation Expo

Published as Lebanon's first interactive innovation expo: startups, live demos, workshops, speakers and competitions under one roof. The Ministry of Technology and AI is named on the page under "With the Support of". No recap, winners or next edition had been posted by 13 Oct.

Forum de Beyrouth, Beirut
In person
Ticketed through KonfHub, 2pm to 9pm daily
Two hackathons run on the floor, education and healthcare, listed separately here
AI sessions on 8 Oct: Build Your AI Agent, and AI for National Transformation
Organiser: Promofair
Supported by the Ministry of Technology and AI

Source experiaexpo.com · checked 28 Oct 2026

8 to 10 October 2026

Done

Experia Hackathons, education and healthcare

Two three day build sprints running inside the Experia expo, one on education and one on healthcare, both printed on the published 2026 agenda with a stage and a start time. The education track is powered by SmartESA, 42 Beirut and Lovable. The agenda names no entry fee, no eligibility rules and no registration link, so the way in is still unpublished and you would have to ask Promofair directly.

Forum de Beyrouth, Beirut
In person, 8 to 10 Oct 2026
Two tracks, education and healthcare, running at the same time
Education track powered by SmartESA, 42 Beirut and Lovable
Opening session 13:00 on 8 Oct, Impact Stage
Organiser: Promofair

Source experiaexpo.com/agenda-2026 · checked 28 Oct 2026 · no registration route was ever published for the hackathons, and no winners are posted yet

26 September 2026

Done

AWS Community Day Lebanon 2026

A full day of AWS and cloud sessions run by the local user group rather than by a vendor, 9am to 4pm, described on the listing as a complimentary and inclusive event with a stated focus on startups.

BDD 1280, Beirut Digital District
Bchara El Khoury, Beirut
In person
Free
Organiser: AWS User Group Lebanon

Source meetup.com/aws-ug-lb · checked 28 Oct 2026

28 to 30 August 2026

Done

LEBTECH 2026

Three days across AI, cybersecurity, fintech, digital transformation, blockchain, edtech and e-governance, published under the line "Shaping the Future of Tech in Lebanon and Beyond". Tickets are free, with hotel valet parking the only cost the organiser names.

Le Royal Hotel, Dbayeh
In person
Free entry
Organiser: Strawberry Agency

Source leb-tech.com · checked 28 Oct 2026 · a 2027 edition is teased on the site with no dates

30 June 2026

Cohort running

LAU Engine, the LAUNCH programme

Fifteen teams in the opening cohort of a sixteen week course run in four phases, on the Beirut campus, ending in an Invest Day and a three week residency in New York. Not an event you turn up to, but the intake is worth knowing about if you are building something and want a room around you.

LAU Beirut campus
Fifteen teams
Sixteen weeks, four phases
Invest Day plus a New York residency

Source news.lau.edu.lb · checked 24 Oct 2026

2026, date not published

Done

Lebanon's AI Agents Hackathon 2026

Published as the first nationwide hackathon where developers built AI agents against real Lebanese problems: environment, job hunting, crisis management, healthcare. Thirteen teams competed. Four of the entrants were seventeen years old, which is the part worth remembering.

Thirteen teams
Supportful with Develeb
Google for Developers, Build with AI

Source supportful.world · checked 27 Oct 2026

Open from Lebanon

International hackathons you can actually enter and get paid for

There are around a hundred and seventy open hackathons on Devpost at any moment. Almost none of them say whether somebody sitting in Beirut can take part, and none of them say whether the prize could ever reach a Lebanese bank account. We read the rules page and record both answers, and we sweep the list every week so what is here is open now. A large cash prize you cannot collect is worth less than a small one in credits. Entries tagged beginner friendly are the ones the organiser opens to first timers.

Deadline 2 November 2026

Open now Online

Codex x TwitchCon Hackathon

Build something interactive for Twitch streamers and their viewers with OpenAI Codex, connected to Twitch through chat, an overlay, the Twitch API, EventSub or an Extension. Five cash awards from 2,500 to 10,000 dollars, and the top five are shown on the Codex stage at TwitchCon San Diego. A short window, so it suits someone who already knows the Twitch API.

Entry open to Lebanon Cash prize, needs a bank transfer $25,000 cash prize pool

Standard Devpost exclusion wording: Brazil, Quebec, Russia, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and comprehensively sanctioned countries. Lebanon is not named. Individuals and teams only, no companies. Prizes are mailed or "sent electronically to the Entrant or Entrant's Representative's bank account" after the winner affidavit, and winners pay any wiring or currency fees, so you need an account that can take a US transfer. Submission closes 2 Nov 2026 at 2 pm Pacific time, which is midnight in Beirut.

Rules read at the organiser's page · checked 1 Nov 2026

Deadline 12 November 2026

Open now Online

PayPal AI Hackathon

Build an app that pairs the PayPal developer platform, using its free sandbox, with any AI model or tool you like. The money is spread wide: twenty cash awards from 1,000 to 12,000 dollars, including five 5,000 dollar category prizes for things like best demo and most creative, so a strong entry does not need to win outright to be paid.

Entry open to Lebanon Cash prize, needs a bank transfer $67,500 cash plus credits prize pool

Standard Devpost exclusion wording: Brazil, Quebec, Russia, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and comprehensively sanctioned countries. Lebanon is not named. Individuals, teams and registered organisations can all enter. Cash prizes are mailed or "sent electronically to the Entrant, Entrant's Representative, or Organization's bank account", so you need an account that can take a US transfer. The three Render awards are paid as Render credits, which need no bank. You need a PayPal developer sandbox account, so check you can open one from Lebanon before you build. Submission closes 12 Nov 2026 at noon Pacific time.

Rules read at the organiser's page · checked 1 Nov 2026

Deadline 15 November 2026

Open now Online

UGREEN Hackathon on AI NAS

Build an AI Skill that runs on UGREEN's AI NAS home server, for example sorting documents, finding photos or helping creators tag media. Round 1 needs only a short PDF and a starter Skill package, no hardware and no demo video. Up to 30 finalists then get one day of free remote access to a real NAS to test and film it.

Entry open to Lebanon Cash prize, needs a bank transfer $46,000 cash prize pool

Lebanon is named on the list of eligible countries, which is rarer than it should be. Individuals and teams of up to three can enter; registered organisations cannot. Every prize is cash, five awards from 5,000 to 20,000 dollars, and the rules say it is mailed or "sent electronically to the Entrant, Entrant's Representative, or Organization's bank account", so you need an account that can take a US transfer, and wiring fees are yours. Round 1 closes 15 Nov 2026 at 11:45pm Pacific time; finalists are invited on 21 Nov and the final round closes 30 Nov.

Rules read at the organiser's page · checked 1 Nov 2026

Deadline 22 December 2026

Open now Online

Codegeist 2026

Atlassian's yearly online hackathon. Build an app on its Forge platform that plugs into Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management, Bitbucket, Teamwork Graph or Rovo, in one of three categories. Each category pays 15,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars, and twenty four bonus awards of 1,500 dollars go to things like the best Rovo agent, the best app using the Atlassian MCP server and the best app published to the Marketplace. The developer licence is free, and you have almost two months.

Entry open to Lebanon Cash prize, needs a bank transfer $120,000 cash prize pool

Standard Devpost exclusion wording: Brazil, Quebec, Russia, Belarus, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar and any country under US Treasury sanctions. Lebanon is not named. Individuals, teams and registered organisations can all enter. A cash prize is "mailed to the winning Entrant's address" or "sent electronically to the Entrant, Entrant's Representative, or Organization's bank account", so you need an account that can take a US transfer or a cheque you can cash. Submission closes 22 Dec 2026 at noon Pacific time.

Rules read at the organiser's page · checked 1 Nov 2026

Verdicts are our reading of the published rules on the date shown, not legal advice. Rules change and sponsors add restrictions. Open the rules page yourself before you spend a weekend on it.

03 · Writing

What we think is actually going on

The calendar says when. These say why it matters. Same rule as everything else here: if a claim cannot be sourced, it does not get made.

News, research · 24 Oct 2026

63 AUB faculty among the world's most cited scientists

AUB says 63 of its faculty members are on the 2026 Stanford and Elsevier list of the world's most cited scientists, up from 56 last year, with 8 of them in electrical and computer engineering.

2 min read The i, legal AI · 18 Oct 2026

HAQQ signs with two Egyptian bar associations in one week

In seven days the Lebanese-founded legal AI company became the technology partner of the New Cairo and Southern Giza Bar Associations, putting its tools in front of more than 55,000 Egyptian lawyers by its own count.

3 min read The numbers · 18 Oct 2026

Lebanon's telecoms gap is in the rule book, not the price list

The state owns both of Lebanon's mobile networks and its fixed network, and the 2002 law that planned to open the market has not been carried through. We read ITU's prices and its regulatory tracker for Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus and Armenia. On price, Lebanon sits among its peers. On the rules, it is far behind all three.

7 min read The numbers · 16 Oct 2026

Lebanon's people are ahead of its digital systems

Over three weeks we read thirteen datasets on Lebanon's digital economy, one post at a time. Side by side they show one pattern: what individuals do scores well, the shared systems they depend on score poorly, and one global measure cannot see Lebanon at all.

6 min read The news · 15 Oct 2026

AUB now has a chair in engineering AI. Here is what it is for.

A 2.5 million dollar gift from Fuad and Rula Tamer creates the Rula and Fuad Tamer Chair in Engineering Artificial Intelligence at the American University of Beirut. The university says it is looking for someone in physical AI.

3 min read The numbers · 9 Oct 2026

Lebanon's digital exports fell 81 percent. Then the country stopped being counted.

Three things are happening at once. The digital economy has collapsed, the people are still ahead of almost everyone, and Lebanon is quietly disappearing from the indices that would show either.

5 min read

All writing

What changed

Every edit, in the open

A calendar you cannot audit is just a claim. This is the recent history of the list, so you can judge for yourself whether anybody is still maintaining it.

1 Nov 2026 added Codegeist 2026. A new online hackathon open from Lebanon: Atlassian's Codegeist, build an app on Forge for Jira, Confluence or Rovo, 120,000 dollars in cash prizes paid by transfer or cheque, submissions close 22 December.

1 Nov 2026 checked Open from Lebanon hackathons. Deadlines rechecked on Devpost today and unchanged: Codex x TwitchCon closes 2 November, PayPal 12 November, UGREEN 15 November.

1 Nov 2026 checked Lebanese calendar. No new Lebanese AI event with a named organiser and a readable page turned up today. The government's Tech, AI and Innovation Summit and the AI in Lebanon Conference still show only their 2025 editions, so both stay on the radar with no 2026 date.

1 Nov 2026 updated MITAI, the Ministry of Technology and Artificial Intelligence. A parliamentary subcommittee approved the draft law creating the ministry on 27 October 2026, and it now goes to a plenary session of Parliament, which has not yet voted.

31 Oct 2026 removed Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon. Submissions closed on 30 October, so it comes off the Open from Lebanon list.

03 · The builders page

Events tell you when. Builders tell you what.

A calendar is only half the record. The other half is what Lebanese founders and teams have actually shipped, each entry with a link you can open and check yourself. Same rule as the calendar: if we cannot open it, it does not go up.

Open the builders page

04 · What we leave out

The rule this whole site stands on

Half the AI conferences you will find listed in Beirut are not real.

Search for AI conferences in Lebanon and you get pages of them, with names, dates and registration fees. A large share come from a handful of aggregator sites that publish the same generic event in a hundred cities, take a fee, and have no venue, no speakers and no organiser you can reach. Anyone who republishes them looks well stocked and is wasting your flight.

The rule here is simple. An entry needs a named organiser, a venue or a stated online format, and a page we can open and read. If those three are not there, it does not go up, however much better the calendar would look with it in. The same test decides what goes on the builders page.

A short true list beats a long false one. That is the whole reason this site exists, and it is the one thing that cannot be repaired if we get it wrong.

Ma btetla3 3a l list illa iza fina nfout 3ala l page w ne2raa.

05 · Submit

Send us an event we missed

Running something, or you turned up to something we missed. Missing an event is the only real way a calendar fails. Send it with a link and it goes up once we have opened the page ourselves.

Built something instead of running something. The builders page has its own form.

06 · Follow

Follow it, or be counted

Nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for, no membership. Two things are useful right now.

Follow the calendar

New entries and corrections go out on Instagram as they land. That is where the calendar moves between updates to this page.

@clubcedro.ai

Say where you are

If you are Lebanese and working in AI anywhere in the world, tell us the city. No pitch and no list to join yet. We want to see the shape of it before we start naming people.

Use the form above

Every AI room in Lebanon, and when it opens.

Built in the order that actually works

The directory

The builders page

Rooms, and the people in them

The Lebanese AI calendar

International hackathons you can actually enter and get paid for

What we think is actually going on

63 AUB faculty among the world's most cited scientists

HAQQ signs with two Egyptian bar associations in one week

Lebanon's telecoms gap is in the rule book, not the price list

Lebanon's people are ahead of its digital systems

AUB now has a chair in engineering AI. Here is what it is for.

Lebanon's digital exports fell 81 percent. Then the country stopped being counted.

Every edit, in the open

Events tell you when. Builders tell you what.

The rule this whole site stands on

Half the AI conferences you will find listed in Beirut are not real.

Send us an event we missed

Follow it, or be counted

Follow the calendar

Say where you are