Hacker houses in Europe

A residency usually runs for weeks or months and often comes with a program. A hacker house is lighter: a temporary home base where residents bring their own work. SOTI keeps the depth of those relationships and compresses the format into one focused week — long enough for trust to appear, short enough that you do not disappear from your company. As we wrote in why live together for one week while building, the constraint makes people pay attention.

It is also not an accelerator. Accelerators take equity and run a fixed curriculum. A SOTI house takes nothing and teaches nothing by default. The value is proximity. More on that in founder residency vs accelerator vs retreat and in the SOTI house model.

A hackathon is a short build sprint, usually a weekend, with a brief and a deadline. A SOTI house is a week of living and working together on your own projects. You do not show up to ship a throwaway prototype under a theme.

The other collision is hacker.house, a cybersecurity company. Same phrase, different category. SOTI House is an independent community project at soti.house. It is not that company, and it is also not SOTI Inc. at soti.net, a different business with no affiliation to us.

A selected group moves into one house for seven days. Days are for real work. Mornings and evenings bring shared meals, walks, demos and local rooms worth visiting. Calls still happen, deadlines still exist, laptops stay open. Before arrival, accepted members get an operating pack with cohort context, house norms and a draft agenda, so nobody cold-starts on day one. The house is small on purpose: enough density, not so many people that the room becomes anonymous.

Requesting a spot starts the conversation. It is not the same as being accepted. Each house is selective because the value depends on the people in it.

SOTI houses move by edition. The public ones you can read about today are the Barcelona 2025 week and the San Francisco 2026 edition. The site also lists earlier finished weeks in Valencia, Spain, and in Taranto, Italy. When a new edition is public, it will have its own page. This guide does not invent a next city.

Founders and operators around London often want a dense room of peers without stepping out of their company for a month. UK search results also include the cybersecurity company, and coverage of other houses in London. Those are part of the market, not SOTI editions. SOTI has not announced a UK house. If the one-week model fits, you join an edition, not a permanent London address.

Read hacker houses in the UK.

The phrase people search in France is still "hacker house", in English. Paris already has houses using that name — useful context, not a SOTI partnership, and not a Paris edition we have announced. The one-week model lets you keep the company moving, spend a week in a selected room, and go home with relationships a single meetup does not produce.

Read hacker houses in France.

Berlin comes up often in German results, alongside other founder programs and, again, the cybersecurity company at hacker.house. SOTI is none of those: it is a one-week house for founders, builders and operators, not a security product and not a months-long program. If you are building in Berlin, Munich or elsewhere in Germany, the reason to care is sharper context around work you are already doing.

Read hacker houses in Germany.

Switzerland punches above its size in interest for this term, but that is not a reason to invent a local edition or name Swiss communities we have not verified. There is no SOTI house announced in the country. A one-week house is still a realistic way for Swiss founders and operators to get proximity to a selected room without relocating. When an edition is public, it will be on the site.

People in Poland also search for "hacker house" in English. Two other phrases are easy to mix up: "startup house" often points at software agencies, and workshop-style AI houses are a different format again. SOTI is a one-week hacker house, not either of those.

Dealroom places Poland's startup activity mainly in Warsaw, then Kraków and Wrocław. That is ecosystem context, not a promise that SOTI will run a house in those cities. There is no public Polish edition today. Founders who want the format join a public SOTI week, the same way everyone else does.

SOTI has already run a public week in Italy: La Settimana, in Taranto. That is a past edition, not a standing campus, and it does not mean the next house will be in Milan, Rome or anywhere else we have not announced. The useful distinction is still the format: one week, your own work, a selected group. A longer reading is in what is a founder residency.

Spain is the one European country on this list with a public SOTI house page: the Barcelona 2025 edition, a one-week winter house. The site also lists a finished week in Valencia. In Spanish search results, "hacker house" can also mean a hackathon. That is a different intention. SOTI is a one-week house, not a weekend sprint.

SOTI is a one-week house. Around Europe you will also find longer residencies, standing houses and founder coliving. Those are useful options; they are not SOTI editions, and they are not the same format.

FR8 in Helsinki is a three-month live-in program with room and food included. The official page says participation is free and that no equity is taken for joining.

Apeira in Milan is a three-month hacker house. Residents have their own room; the official page prices the current cohort at €1,200 a month, with scholarships available.

European Robotics House in Zurich is a three-month residency for robotics builders, with a shared home and lab. The October–December 2026 edition is the one described on the official site.

START Foundation's Hacker House in St. Gallen and Buchs offers Alpine-region founders a place to live and build at CHF 0, with no equity taken, according to the official page.

Pausa Founder Residency in Ericeira, Portugal, is a small winter coliving for founders, from €865 a month, with a one-month minimum.

Hacker Bloc in Warsaw is a live-in house and hackerspace for people building robots and AI.

Totalism in Lanzarote is one of Europe's older live-in hackbases: an open, cooperative infrastructure project rather than a startup program.

Fortress Residency in Lappeenranta, Finland, is a three-week defence-tech residency. The official page says accommodation, meals and travel are covered, and that no equity or IP is taken.

If you want the one-week version of this idea — your own work, a selected room, then back to your company — that is what a SOTI house is for.

SOTI houses are selective. You can request a spot in a SOTI house. Acceptance depends on fit, contribution and the shape of the group. The format is the same wherever the next public edition lands: one week, your own work, and a small room of people you should probably meet earlier than life would normally allow.