Programme
Events.
Cross-disciplinary days where security, engineering, infrastructure, and product communities meet in person.
01 Upcoming
Coming up.
BSides Manchester 2027
Date and venue to be announced
A full-day, community-led conference. After two community nights in 2026, we are building a full day where security, engineering and product people share a programme, a CTF and a room.
Tracks
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Security
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Engineering
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Product
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First-time speakers
A supported stage for people new to speaking, with mentoring.
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Workshops
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CTF
Tickets: £10 standard, free for students. How tickets work.
The date, venue and call for papers will be announced via the mailing list.
02 Archive
Past events.
Ground Truth: How Things Really Get Built, Broken, and Fixed
Thursday 1 October 2026, GM Digital Security Hub (DiSH), Manchester
Venue: DiSH (venue). PortSwigger (refreshment sponsor, also provided swag), Axiom Breach (AV sponsor), and Equixly (CTF partner).
Attendees: Around 70
Ground Truth picked up where the April preview night left off: a practitioner-led evening built around honest accounts from the people closest to the work.
Not theory, not frameworks, not strategy decks. What actually happens when code meets reality, told by the builders, testers, and breakers in the same room.
How the evening ran
- Doors at 18:00, with networking and refreshments
- A moderated practitioner panel from 18:30 to 19:30, around 60 minutes, followed by audience Q&A
- A short introduction to the CTF and how to take part
- A live CTF from Equixly alongside food, drinks and networking until 21:00
The panel
- Rio Sherri, Principal Security Consultant, Red Team, NetSPI
- Andy Shaw, QA Test Analyst, Loxam
- Graham Cook, Staff Engineer, Sedex
- John Watson, Co-Founder and Head of Platform, Swamp Club
- Moderated by Kay Daskalakis
We are grateful to DiSH for hosting, PortSwigger for refreshments and swag, Axiom Breach for AV, and Equixly for running the CTF.
BSides Manchester Preview Night, Integrated Resilience
29 April 2026, AJ Bell HQ, Salford Quays
Venue: AJ Bell (venue and refreshment sponsor). PortSwigger, Equixly, and SpecterOps (community swag sponsors).
Attendees: 57
Our preview night was the first BSides Manchester event in several years. It was designed as a low-pressure evening to reconnect with the community, test our operational processes, and gauge interest in a recurring cross-disciplinary day.
The format was a moderated panel on integrated resilience, drawing speakers from across security and engineering, followed by open networking and a community swap table. The mix of practitioners in the room, security, software, platform, and product, was exactly the audience we are building for.
We are grateful to AJ Bell for hosting and providing refreshments, and to PortSwigger, Equixly, and SpecterOps for sponsoring the community swag.
03 Accessibility
Tickets for 2027.
Standard tickets are £10. Students get in free with a confirmed university email address, and we are setting aside allocations for North West universities.
Why not make every ticket free? Free tickets tend to bring a high no-show rate, which means empty seats that someone else could have used. A low-cost paid ticket keeps no-shows down while keeping the event open to everyone.
This is made possible by our sponsors. Their support covers the core costs of running the event, so ticket revenue is not the deciding factor in whether BSides Manchester can happen.
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