Applications for the 2026 cohort, three named summits across four days in Long Beach, open August 1. The week is curated and seats are capped at ~150 per summit. Join the notify list and we'll send the window the moment it opens.
The whole room on the Long Beach waterfront before the summits begin. The full cohort with partners, primes, allied attachés, and capital. No agenda, just the room.
Space, sea power, and the geometry of deterrence: from the seabed to low Earth orbit, one integrated picture. The defense-exclusive day.
Energy, grid, ports, and the systems that move the country: the nuclear renaissance, hardened supply chains, and the build we can't outsource.
Advanced manufacturing, AI, and robotics: the factory rebuilt, and the operators scaling hard-tech from prototype to production at national scale.
Satellite forums, lab tours, hangar receptions, and partner-hosted side events running alongside the summits, open by application across the district all week.
An operational sprint inside SDTW Summit Week. Builders, engineers, and student teams ship working prototypes against one or two real maritime-industrial operational problems, scoped with industry subject-matter experts, mentored and judged by the operators who live them.
Not a weekend coding contest. Five days inside the Week with industry SMEs in the room, follow-on routing through Q4, and award by advancement: priority pilot consideration, not a cash purse.
Southern California is the spine of the American industrial renaissance: the aerospace corridor from El Segundo to Long Beach, the advanced-manufacturing belt of Orange County, the test ranges of the Mojave, and the ports anchoring Indo-Pacific logistics. SDTW brings this ecosystem into one room for one week each September.
We program across four pillars: Sea to Space, Build It in Time, The Capital Stack, and The Allied Base, with three named flagship summits, keynote firesides & cohort discussions, parallel VIP dinners, an OTA clinic, and a Long Beach corridor showcase.
Opening & closing receptions and the public-policy forum on the Queensway promenade.
Floor walks and corridor showcase across the Long Beach aerospace & manufacturing belt.
Flagship summits and founder dinners in East Village & Pine Avenue.
Operating thesis, three-year arc, and how the Week is structured.
Read about → 02Numbers, moments, quotes, and coverage from last September.
View recap → 0374 partners across two editions: primes, programs, capital, operators.
View partners → 0422 questions across attending, program, sponsors, and press logistics.
Read FAQ →Three ways to get on the 2026 program: apply for the cohort, request the sponsorship prospectus, or host a side event under the SDTW banner.
Invite-only. Founders and operators building critical technology, general partners at deep-tech and defense funds, program leads at DIU / AFRL / ONR / DARPA, and executives from the industrial primes. The cohort is curated; applications are reviewed rolling.
SDTW runs as a hybrid. The flagship summits and founder dinners are invite-only. District-wide satellite forums, lab tours, and the opening and closing receptions are open by application. Roughly a third of the week is open-access.
Yes. Sponsorship is gated behind the 2026 prospectus. Request the deck here. Tiers range from event partner through title sponsor; we respond within five business days.
Yes. Funds, primes, labs, and community builders can host satellite events under the SDTW banner. Apply to host. The host council reviews weekly through August 2026.
Monthly dispatches from the SDTW team: partner news, program drops, and the occasional memo from the ecosystem. Built for people who'd rather read than tweet.
We'll email you when applications open, plus the monthly program dispatch.