Teknofest
Teknofest, short for Teknofest Aerospace and Technology Festival, is the largest aviation, aerospace, and technology festival in the world, taking place in Turkey. It was first held at Istanbul Airport in September 2018 by the Turkish Technology Team Foundation (T3) in collaboration with private companies, ministries, and academic institutions.[1] The primary goals of the festival are to raise public awareness about technology in society and to draw attention to the importance of national production.[2][3]
Teknofest
Active
Festival (aviation, space and technology, air show)
Annually
Turkey
2018
Türkiye Teknoloji Takımı (Technology Team of Turkey)
The Festival is filled with seminars, technology competitions, exhibitions of domestic technology enterprises, Take Off international startup summit. Visitors also can enjoy numerous attractions, such as aviation demonstrations including parachuting, air shows of "Solo Turk", "Turkish Stars", and many international aerobatic teams.[1][3]
Technology competitions are organized in 12 different categories. People of all ages from primary school students to entrepreneurs can take part in the competitions with their projects and also benefit from the technical equipment support.[1]
For the contest "The HackIstanbul 2018 Capture the Flag", organized in cooperation with the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ECSO) and Romanian government, computer hackers from all over the world competed. Winners were awarded money.[1]
Another award-winning competition is the "World Drone Cup" race.[4]
Attendance[edit]
In 2018, the first year of Teknofest, 4,333 teams made applications. In 2019, 10,288 teams applied to Teknofest, which has become the world's largest aviation and space festival. It received 1,720,000 participants in total. Despite the epidemic in 2020, a significant increase was observed in the number of applications with 16,034 teams. Applications received in 2021 broke a new record with a total of 36,984 teams.[10]
There were 12 different competition categories in the festival held in 2018. In the first year of the festival, around 80,000 people registered and welcomed 500,000 visitors.[11] In 2019, more than 50,000 contestants from 122 countries participated in the festival in 19 different categories.[12] The festival was not open to visitors in 2020 due to Covid-19. Despite this, it received applications from more than 100,000 people in 23 categories.[13] In 2021, the number of competition categories was increased to 34.[14]