ENGINEER '26
02 About

Cognitrixx / the festival

Built by students.
Since 2005.

21 years · 39 events · 3 days
23—25 OCTOBER 2026 · NITK Surathkal

ENGINEER is the annual technical festival of the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal — organised, funded and run end to end by its students. For 21 years it has turned the campus over to three days of competitions, builds, talks and exhibitions, and pulled in people from across the country to take part.

What it reaches

In a normal year

  • 15K+

    Footfall

    across three days

  • 200+

    Colleges

    represented nationwide

  • 250+

    Alumni startups

    founders, CEOs, directors

  • 50+

    MoUs & labs

    incl. ISRO and DRDO

  • 20+

    Clubs

    powering the fest

Cognitrixx / the 2026 theme

A network of intelligence,
and what it rewires.

Cognitrixx is the idea that a system built well enough stops describing the world and starts changing it. Not intelligence as a subject to study — as an instrument you point at something.

That is why the programme runs across 4 tracks rather than one. A combat robot, a Verilog testbench, a telescope built from pipe and mirror and an overnight hackathon are the same argument made in different materials: reality isn't fixed, it's engineered.

Four ways in

4 tracks

  • 01

    Technical Events

    Bright minds from across the country compete, collaborate and innovate — coding challenges, robotics, workshops and technology-driven competitions.

    19events
  • 02

    Tech Talks

    Experts from art, administration, politics and defence deliver compelling talks on current issues, in active discussion with the audience.

    1event
  • 03

    Campus & Expo

    The parts of ENGINEER that spill out of the lecture halls and onto the campus itself.

    10events
  • 04

    Shows & Nights

    Dazzling tech to electrifying nights — the shows that close out each day of the fest.

    9events
See the competitions

Where it happens

NITK Surathkal

NITK sits on the coast at Surathkal, Karnataka. The fest runs on a campus that already does this work year-round — the research centres below are the reason an event here can borrow a lab rather than stage one.

  • Regional Academic Centre for Space

    MoU between ISRO & NITK

  • Centre for Sustainable Energy Engineering

  • Centre for System Design

  • NITK Science & Technology Entrepreneurs' Park

    NITK-STEP

Research domains · Wireless comms / Robotics / Artificial intelligence