START Summit, Europe’s largest student-run startup conference caps a landmark year with a hackathon victory, pioneering pitching competition winners, and a historic 30th anniversary gathering of its global alumni network.
START Summit 2026 has drawn to a close, bringing together over 7’000 attendees, including more than 1’350 founders, alongside leading voices from across the global startup ecosystem such as Milda Mitkutė, Philipp Schröder, George Robson, Gabriel Vasquez, and Laura Modiano. Held in St. Gallen, the summit once again united founders, investors, students, and innovators from across the globe. This year carried special weight as it marked the celebration of START Global’s 30th anniversary, a milestone highlighting three decades of fostering entrepreneurial ambition and community.
START Summiteer Final: ESTER Biotech Leads the Way
From 19 qualifying rounds spanning multiple continents, the Road to START Summit brought the world’s most promising early-stage startups to St. Gallen, and the grand finale on the Summit Stage delivered a worthy champion. Winner: ESTER Biotech GmbH is turning one of the planet’s most stubborn problems into a circular opportunity. Born out of Leipzig University’s BioCity campus in 2022, the spinoff has developed enzyme-based technology that breaks plastic waste down into its original building blocks, making genuine, high-quality recycling possible at industrial scale, while cutting dependence on fossil resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The prize: CHF 250’000 in cloud credits and CHF 10’000 in cash.
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START Hack 2026: Runtime Terrors Take the Crown
After 36 hours of non-stop building, hundreds of bright minds from the United States, Peru, Canada, and dozens of countries across the globe came together to tackle real-world challenges set by leading companies including PostFinance, Syngenta, Chain IQ, and OST. From dancing robots to breakthrough prototypes, START Hack 2026 was a showcase of creativity under pressure. The finale then took center stage, live in front of the full summit audience, where teams presented what they’d built, with one standing out above the rest. Winner: Runtime Terrors took on Belimo’s challenge, demonstrating how actuator data can be transformed into real value for smarter buildings, turning raw signals into clear insights, uncovering root causes, and enabling the right actions at the right time.
The Alpine Area
Away from the main stages, the Alpine Area brought its own energy. Various key players along the Alpine Axis, led by the Canton of St. Gallen and its “Do-it-in-St. Gallen” initiative, which aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the region, made a memorable impression. Their presence featured a working elevator pitch booth, where attendees could step inside a real elevator and pitch to a live judge, alongside a climbing wall and a matcha station that quickly became some of the summit’s most-visited attractions. The HSG START Accelerator, which also had a booth, used the moment to officially launch Batch 2, eight deep tech startups tackling everything from cancer detection and brain imaging to drone technology and compostable packaging, marking the next chapter of one of Switzerland’s most active early-stage programs.
The Alpine Area reflects a deliberate ambition of START Global: to bring together the key players along the Alpine Axis and position them as a unified innovation force, rather than a collection of independent ecosystems. By connecting regional institutions, research-driven startups, and hands-on programming, START Summit 2026 highlights the collective strength of this region and fosters collaboration across borders. Among those on show: Ionic Wind, an EMPA spin-off developing solid-state cooling technology for next-generation electronics; FlareOn Biotech, whose patented sensor helps surgeons verify complete tumour removal in real time during head and neck cancer operations; and Roboloon, building lighter-than-air autonomous drones designed to overcome the flight-time and safety limitations that still hold back today’s civil drone industry.
30 Years of START: A Historic Alumni Reunion
This year’s summit marked a milestone: the 30th anniversary of START Global. The occasion drew the largest gathering of START alumni in the organization’s history, more than 150 attendees, reflecting the extraordinary reach and resilience of the global START network.
Among the alumni present were START’s founding members, including Bettina Hein, Jan Bomholdt, Hermann Arnold, and Florian Schweizer, whose presence underscored the enduring vision behind the organization. Also in attendance was Moritz Zimmermann, a START alumnus and co-founder of hybris software, one of Switzerland’s first unicorns. He hosted sessions titled “Switzerland’s First Unicorn: From HSG to 1B ARR” and “Are We Still Backing the Crazy Ones?”, reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey and his perspective as a General Partner at 42Cap. All presidents from the 22 START chapters worldwide were in attendance, united in a group photo that captures the full global reach of the network, available in the accompanying press materials.
Pitching Competition Highlights
Across seven pitching competitions, standout startups were recognized for their innovation across sectors:
• Swiss Sustainable Impact Award: Riverkin — CHF 20’000 equity-free & CHF 30’000 in legal consulting • Robotics: Tinamu — Bluelion Startup Membership
• Healthtech & Longevity: Orthosens — Scale-Up Masterclass by Creadd Ventures
• AI Pitching Competition: Downstream Intelligence — Access to the Merantix ecosystem, mentoring & a residency at Merantix AI Campus Berlin
• EWOR Grand Pitch – Featuring unique startups, like Tumbleweed, Ghost and Global Citizens • START Fellowship Pitching Competition: Runni, BioClé, LingoQuesto, Notary OS – Winning from a Prize Pool of CHF 120’000 in equity-free funding
Behind every name on that list is a story, and few capture the spirit of START Summit better than that of the Fellowship winners. The START Fellowship Program, a selective four-month accelerator, brings founders from Latin America and Africa to St. Gallen, participating in a live pitch competition at the Summit. This year, Tomas Vallejo Zangen, founder of LingoQuesto, a startup building the AI-native infrastructure for human-led language learning, took home CHF 30’000 in equity-free funding, one of four Fellowship startups to win on the Pitching Stage.
“Receiving this prize at START Summit is a step towards improving the language learning experience of millions of students across the globe. It will empower teachers to give every student a personalised learning journey.” As the doors close on another year, it’s these moments, a founder from the other side of the world, on a stage in Switzerland, building something real, that remind us what START Summit is actually for.
GIFF Launch
The summit also served as the launchpad for Giff, the Global Inclusive Founders Fund, unveiled in front of 7’000 people on the Summit Stage. Co-founded by Hermann Arnold (co-founder of START Global), Swiss parliamentarian Islam Alijaj, Dr. Michael Lorz and Louise Scarlette Maunoir, Giff backs high-growth startups founded by entrepreneurs who have navigated disabilities, neurodivergence, and chronic conditions, on the thesis that founders who have spent a lifetime overcoming exclusion bring an entrepreneurial edge that venture capital has consistently overlooked. ‘Some founders train resilience in the market. Others have been training it since birth.’
About START Global
START Global is a student-led organization based at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. For 30 years, it has been empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs through its flagship event, START Summit X Hack, the START Fellowship programm and a worldwide network of 22 chapters.
