Book meetings with decision-makers now, pick Devcon 8 side events by host, choose between Devcon's last days and ETHGlobal Mumbai, and claim the cheapest ticket you qualify for.
To get the most out of Devcon 8 in Mumbai (3 to 6 November 2026), do the work before you fly. Devcon is the Ethereum Foundation's conference for the people who build on Ethereum, and this year it runs at Jio World Centre in Bandra Kurla Complex. Ask now for 15- to 30-minute meetings with the people who decide things (grant staff, hiring managers, sponsors' developer relations leads), and pick side events by who hosts them and who they're for, not by title. At a developer week like Devcon, most of the builders you want are at the main venue, so the hallway between talks is worth more than a crowded side event across town.
Facts, prices and prize figures checked on 15 October 2026.
At Devcon, the main venue. A side event is a meetup, workshop or dinner run by a company or community during a conference week, outside the official program, with its own guest list. A developer week like Devcon draws people who ship on one ecosystem, so they're all at the venue; a market week built around funds and exchanges pushes them out to side events.
Lane Rettig, a long-time Ethereum contributor, wrote after Devcon VII in Bangkok in November 2024 that he skipped side events during the conference days because each one cost half a day in traffic. He spent the week in the hallway track, the unplanned conversations in corridors and coffee lines, and wrote that he "met easily four or five builders for every investor or marketing person."
Pick by host first, then by who the page says the event is for, then by distance. A dinner hosted by a protocol you integrate with, or by a fund that backs teams at your stage, beats a 900-person side event, because the host chose the guests for the same reason you'd go.
Devcon's travel guide warns that a 3km trip that takes 10 minutes at dawn can take "45 minutes at 6pm". Jio World Centre is in BKC, so an evening event in South Mumbai costs you the evening.
The week's side events are scattered across Luma pages and Telegram groups, which makes sorting them by host slow. Dapping's conference calendars list each side event with its host company, the Devcon 8 calendar included, with 13 side events listed as of 15 October.
Go to at least one event run by an Indian builder community: those are the builders still working in Mumbai after the week ends. Skip events that sell seats at an investor table.
Treat the registration form as an application. On approval-based Luma events, the host sees each pending guest's registration answers before deciding. Answer with one line on what you're building and a link the host can check in ten seconds, not "Name, dev".
Make that link show shipped work: a repository with a working demo, a verified contract, or a proof page with your projects and verified roles. Join waitlists even late, since hosts can approve waitlisted guests and free events usually lose some people who registered.
Start asking now and confirm a week or two out: fund partners and senior developer relations leads fill their calendars early. Nick Sawinyh, founder of DeFi Prime, put the rule plainly in his conference pipeline guide in 2025: "Your calendar should already be full when you land."
Build the list from what your project already depends on: the teams whose contracts or SDKs you use, the grant programs of the chains you deploy to, and the side-event hosts whose work touches yours. Send each one a short message by X DM or the email on their site:
"I'm building [one line] on [chain] and we use [their product] for [x]. I'm at Devcon from 3 to 6 November. Could I have 15 minutes near Jio World Centre on [day] to ask [one specific question]? Repo: [link]."
Book about five of these and leave the evenings open. Hunting for a job? Add the sponsors and hosts that are hiring, and check each role on the open Web3 jobs board or the company's careers page.
For Ethereum grants, the route has changed: the Ecosystem Support Program paused open applications in August 2025 and now funds through a Wishlist and Requests for Proposals. Book one of its 20-minute Office Hours before Devcon to ask whether your project fits an item; other open programs are on the grants list.
In the hallway, end every conversation by agreeing who sends what, a repo link or an intro to a named person, and note it on your phone before you walk away.
Only if you'll give it the days. ETHGlobal Mumbai runs from 5 to 7 November, so it overlaps Devcon's last two days. If there are two of you, one can take the hackathon while the other keeps the meetings.
The ETHGlobal rules ask for a stake to confirm your spot, returned only if you check in and submit, and default to "from scratch", with no project code written before kickoff. If you already have a product, use the Continuity track instead, which lets you keep building on an existing codebase as long as you document what existed before. In Mumbai, 1inch and Definitive have posted prizes open only to Continuity entries.
The money is in sponsor tracks, and most of Mumbai's still weren't written with under three weeks to go:
| Sponsor | Prize pool | Track rules published |
|---|---|---|
| 1inch | $7,000 | Yes: a ranked $5,000 track (1st $2,500, 2nd $1,500, 3rd $1,000) and a $2,000 Continuity-only track |
| Definitive | $5,000 | Yes: a $3,500 track and a $1,500 Continuity-only track |
| World | $12,500 | Not yet |
| 0G, Uniswap Foundation, Arc, Hedera, Arkiv, Whitechain, Ethereum Foundation | $15,000 each | Not yet |
| ENS | $10,000 | Not yet |
| Chainlink | $5,000 | Not yet |
Compiled from the ETHGlobal Mumbai prize page on 15 October 2026: 12 sponsors and $144,500 in sponsor prizes by our count, with track rules published for two of them, the same two as when we first checked on 8 October.
Read each track's structure when it appears. A ranked track pays a few teams properly, while a pool splits a fixed sum among every team that qualifies: at ETHGlobal Buenos Aires in November 2025, World's $3,000 pool was split with up to 30 teams, capped at $100 each. Pick ranked tracks with few serious entrants, and for the ten sponsors still to publish, ask their developer relations staff at Devcon, before kickoff, what a strong integration looks like.
Builders can usually pay well under general admission, per the Ethereum Foundation's ticket announcement and the ticket FAQ:
| Ticket | Price | Who it's for | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| General admission | $499 in ETH or $999 in fiat (current wave as of 15 October; final waves, date not yet announced, $599 or $1,199) | Anyone | Buy |
| Indian student | $25 | Students in India | Apply |
| International student | $49 in ETH or $99 in fiat | Students elsewhere | Apply |
| India resident | $149 | People living in India | Self-claim |
| Ethereum public goods contributor | $349 in ETH | Contributors to Ethereum public goods | Self-claim |
| Sanctuary Tech builder | $349 in ETH or $499 in fiat | Builders on Sanctuary Tech projects | Apply |
| Past Devcon POAP holder | $449 | Past attendees holding a Devcon POAP | Self-claim |
| Core developer | Free | Ethereum core developers | Self-claim |
The final student round closes on 23 October, with answers by 30 October. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and places are limited per round, so apply early in the round rather than on the last day.
Most visitors from outside India do: apply now through India's official e-Visa portal, since scam visa sites exist, and Devcon can't provide visa support for general attendees. Devcon asked for ticket confirmation letter requests at least 90 days out, by 5 August, and can't guarantee requests in the final two weeks, so 20 October is the last date you can count on to ask for one. Book your flight out early as well: Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November, and the travel guide warns that rooms go fast around it.
Check every event page and every person through an official channel before you sign, install or join anything. In late 2025, security researchers documented fake "Ethereum Events" sites that drain any wallet connected to them, and the Security Alliance's Zoom hardening guide describes attackers posing as investors and podcast hosts to get remote control of a laptop on a call.
Sort your contacts before you reply to any of them. For a builder the top tier is short: the grant contact, the hiring manager, the team you might integrate with, the person who offered an introduction. Message each of them that same week, naming what you discussed and the next step.
Include your Dapping proof page in each message, since a Telegram handle won't tell them what you built when they reread the thread three months on. While the work is fresh, ask the people you built or judged with this week for a written recommendation there.
Everyone else can wait a week or two.
Devcon 8 runs from 3 to 6 November at Jio World Centre, and the deadlines that decide your week fall in the three weeks before it:
This week, send the first of your ten meeting requests to the team whose SDK you depend on most.
Yes. Devcon publishes its sessions on archive.devcon.org. Go to a session when you want to ask the speaker something afterward, since the conversation at the edge of the stage is the part you can't watch later.
Only a general admission ticket. The ticket FAQ says general admission tickets are anonymous and transferable, with the name and email changed through the link in the original order confirmation email; discounted tickets can't be transferred. Buy only from someone you know, and never pay a stranger in crypto for a transfer.
Devcon's travel guide lists Metro Line 3 from the airport toward Bandra Kurla Complex, about five minutes to BKC, against 20 to 60 minutes by car depending on traffic. Official prepaid taxi counters sit inside the airport, a simple fallback if your phone isn't set up yet.
