Three Things
In One Room
Darkroom puts builders, buyers and operators in the same room for a day, and then makes them play out a fight together. Companies show what they have built and pitch what is ready to field. Then everyone sits down at a map table, splits into teams, and finds out what those systems are actually worth against an opponent who is trying to win.
Hardware on tables, software on screens. Open floor, no stage. You stand next to your system and answer questions from people who will have to use it or pay for it.
Short slots for mature capabilities: things already trialled with a unit, fielded, or in production. Not roadmaps. Slots are assigned during review, and there are fewer of them than there are applicants.
A tabletop wargame on a paper map, run with a senior industry player. Teams plan, an adjudicator rules, the map changes. You can take a seat at the table or watch from the side.
What Tabletop
Wargaming Is
A tabletop wargame is an argument with rules. Teams get a map, a scenario, a set of forces, and an opposing side that wants them to fail. Each turn a team declares what it does. An adjudicator rules on what happens, moves the markers, and everyone plans again from the new position.
Nothing is simulated. There is no model producing a score at the end. The output is the argument itself: what people assumed, which assumptions broke, and what the force actually needed at the point where it mattered.
The kit is deliberately low-tech. A paper map, markers, and clear acrylic sheets stacked above the surface so air and drones sit at their real altitude instead of being flattened into the ground picture. Anyone can walk up and read the whole situation in a few seconds, which is the point.
Why it is worth your day
Most capability conversations put the capability in the middle and work outwards. A wargame puts the mission in the middle, which means you have to find out where your system fits, what it depends on, and what it needs from everything else on the table. Where that answer is uncomfortable is exactly where the useful conversation starts.
You do not need any wargaming experience. Most people at the table are doing it for the first time, and the rules are explained on the day.
How It Works
Submit the form below. It takes a few minutes. Tell us who you are, what you build, and whether you want a seat in the wargame or a chair beside it.
Every registration is reviewed by the Darkstar team. Pitch slots and seats at the table are assigned in the same pass. The room stays small on purpose.
Approved attendees receive a personal QR entry credential by email, with the address and the running order.
Doors at 11:00. Bring a government-issued ID matching your registration. Your QR credential is scanned at the door.
The exact address is disclosed to approved attendees only. Registrations are encrypted before storage, kept on EU infrastructure, used solely for attendee validation and approval, and deleted after the event. See the privacy policy. Photographs published from Darkstar events have faces redacted, as on this page.
Request Access
Open to defence companies and to invited military, government and industry participants. All fields marked * are required.