CFP RULES

When submitting to the PIVOTcon CfP, please keep the following in mind:

Original or substantially new research is required.
Your talk must contain material that has not been previously published or presented elsewhere. If parts of your work build on existing or previously shared research, the submission must still include a meaningful amount of new, unpublished content.

Timing of your (eventual) publication of the talk
We ask that the core of your research be shared first at PIVOTcon. Publishing the bulk of your findings before, immediately after, or within a few days of your talk may limit the impact for our audience and could make the submission less suitable for the conference. Most presenters do publish their research afterward, and that’s absolutely fine— but we ask that your talk delivers attendees a first look at your research, giving them a real heads-up and time to explore the findings themselves, before they’re widely available.

Emphasize actionable impact.
We prioritize proposals that leads to concrete actions, improvements, disruption or insights for the research and threat intelligence community.

Show us the how behind your pivots
We’re not just interested in what you found—we’re interested in how you got there. Strong submissions clearly walk through the analytical tradecraft, reasoning, and pivoting methods used to reach the results. We also value hearing about what didn’t work: failed pivots, dead ends, and approaches that taught you something along the way. These lessons are just as important for the community as the final conclusions.

Session format.
Each talk is 25 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.

Topic areas.
PIVOTcon focuses on:
– Threat intelligence
– Threat hunting
– Malware intelligence
– Vulnerability research

Speaker's Privileges

In case you have already bought a ticket to PIVOTcon, the primary speakers will be issued a refund upon acceptance.

If you are the 1st speaker for an accepted submission at PIVOTcon, we will reimburse:
- up to 150€ for travelling within Spain (economy class only)
- up to 500€ for travelling within Europe (economy class only)
- up to 1500 USD for international travel,
and we will cover accommodation for three nights in Malaga.

If you are the 2nd speaker, we will cover only the event ticket (not including accommodation fee).
NOTE: given the extremely high ticket demand, we cannot guarantee we will be able to provide a ticket to all second speakers.

Important Dates

CfP ends on: February 6th, 2026 23:59:59 CET
Final notification: by End of February 2026
Agenda published: by March 6th, 2026
Conference: May 6th - 8th, 2026
** Dates/Time are in Central European Time (CET) as the conference is in Spain. **

About PIVOTcon

PIVOTcon is an invite-only event (with a maximum of 160 vetted attendees) with focus on threat research and technical analysis tradecraft. Our goal is to create a trusted forum to share and discuss the latest threats, and to build connections between threat researchers.

PIVOTcon focuses on research regarding cyber threat actors affiliated with states that conduct espionage, disinformation, disruption operations, as well as on financially motivated cybercriminals, private mercenaries and spyware, but also vulnerability research as long as it's a research with the clear link to threat actors and/or threat hunting. There will be no recording, no streaming and no live posting, as we want to make it as safe and trusted space as possible for speakers to feel comfortable and share a bit more.

Speakers and attendees come from a spectrum of backgrounds ranging from private sector researchers, government, law enforcement and military analysts, to academics and investigative journalists. Data pivoting skillset is the common denominator of these professionals who will share their experience, tradecraft, successes and pitfalls.

Submissions close on 2026-02-06 23:59 (Europe/Madrid), 2 months, 1 week from now.