Three things close inside a week: CanExport SMEs at 12:00 PM ET on Sunday, August 31 (up to $50,000, non-US markets only — the US stream is fully allocated), DMZ's Fall 2026 incubator cohort on September 1, and Slush 100 on September 7, which puts €500,000 at zero equity on the table.
The most useful thing on this page isn't a deadline at all. Intellectual Property Ontario pays up to 80% of an Ontario company's IP legal bills — up to $100,000 a year, up to $300,000 lifetime — and the only gate is a free online course. It's rolling, so there's nothing to race. New this week, and nothing else here has that ratio of dollars to effort.
Last updated: August 29, 2026. Reviewed weekly.
Everything below was verified against the funder's or organizer's own page this week. Anything we couldn't verify is marked, not quietly included. Past deadlines get deleted every Friday, so if it's on this page, it's still live.
Which startup deadlines close in the next 30 days?
| Program | What it is | Amount | Deadline | Our read |
|---|
| CanExport SMEs | Federal export development grant | Up to $50,000 | 2026-08-31, 12:00 ET | The US stream's $3.1M is gone. If your expansion plan was "sell into America," this program can't fund it this year. Non-US markets only. |
| DMZ Incubator — Fall 2026 | 18-month Toronto incubator, max 10 companies | No fee; 2.5% common shares | 2026-09-01 ⚠ | 2.5% in common for the DMZ name is cheap. The MRR requirement is real and enforced — pre-revenue applications don't get read. See the flag below. |
| Slush 100 | Global pitch competition, final at Slush Helsinki | €500,000 at 0% equity | 2026-09-07 | The only half-million-euro prize on this page that takes no equity. You must buy a €395 Startup Pass to enter, so treat that as the entry fee. |
| OCI Collaborate 2 Commercialize — Defence & Dual-Use | Ontario R&D co-funding with an academic partner | Up to $50K OCI + up to $50K NSERC | 2026-09-15 | You cannot originate this cold in two weeks — it needs an Ontario university PI already lined up. If you have one, it's the best Ontario money open right now. |
| OCI Collaborate 2 Commercialize — AI | Same structure, AI-scoped call | Up to $50K + $50K (or $40K + $40K ARD) | 2026-09-15 | The 5-FTE floor and 2-year incorporation requirement quietly disqualify most seed-stage AI startups. Check eligibility before you write anything. |
| UK Cybersecurity Canadian Technology Accelerator | Free non-equity UK market-entry program | No cash; no program fee | 2026-09-01 | Three days out and the bar is recurring revenue or $1M raised. If you clear that and sell security, four hours a week for a London beachhead is a good trade. |
| Indo-Pacific AgeTech Canadian Technology Accelerator | Free non-equity Asia market-entry program | No cash; you cover travel | 2026-09-03 | One to two hours a week plus a single immersion week — the lowest-effort real door into Asia on this page. Growth-stage aging-care tech only. |
| Founder Institute Toronto — Summer 2026 | Pre-seed founder program | You pay $2,249 | 2026-09-09 | Listed so you can see the price next to the alternatives. DMZ and District 3 beat it on terms without a close second. |
| Innovative Solutions Canada — MINERVA | Federal defence R&D contracts, 5 open challenges | Up to $500,000 per Phase 2 contract | 2026-09-10 (then 09-21, 09-21, 09-24, 10-05) | The largest non-dilutive cheques on this page, and every one is uncrewed-systems hardware at TRL 5–9. A software founder cannot angle into this. |
| Innovate UK — Quantum sensing & PNT adoption | UK collaborative R&D | £14.3M total pot | 2026-09-16 | Collaborative-only and under three weeks out. Realistically closed unless you're already mid-application with partners. |
| DoD SBIR/STTR open topics | US defence non-dilutive contracts | Varies by topic | 2026-09-23 | 337 topics share one close date. The work is topic-matching, not writing — four weeks is enough only if a topic already describes what you built. |
| Innovate UK — Quantum computing applications | UK collaborative R&D | £13M total pot | 2026-09-24 | Same story: partners or nothing. |
Closed this week: DMZ's Black Innovation Summit application window shut on August 28. The summit itself runs October 28 in Toronto and is still worth attending — $150K+ in investments and grants gets awarded on stage.
⚠ One flag left on the table above. DMZ's page still lists September 1 as both the application deadline and the cohort start date; confirm with DMZ before you rely on either. Two details are now verified that weren't last week: the equity is 2.5% in common shares, and the monthly-recurring-revenue requirement is real and enforced, so a pre-revenue build doesn't clear the bar. Slush 100's missing year is resolved — it's 2026.
What Canadian grants and non-dilutive funding are open right now?
Non-dilutive money in Canada is mostly rolling, which founders read as "no urgency" and then never apply. The rolling ones below have real queues — IRAP takes about three months to assess, Mitacs takes six to eight weeks of peer review. Apply on the timeline of when you need the cash, not when the deadline is.
| Program | Funder | Amount | Deadline | Who qualifies | Our read |
|---|
| Intellectual Property Ontario (IPON) | Government of Ontario | Tier 1 up to $25K/yr; Tier 2 up to $100K/yr, $300K lifetime; covers up to 80% of eligible costs | Rolling, until allocated | Ontario innovators and SMEs who complete IPON's free learning modules | New this week and the best-value item on the page. It pays most of your trademark, patent and IP-agreement legal bills, and the prerequisite is a free course rather than a pitch. Equity-deserving founders get another $25K/yr. |
| OCI Life Sciences Innovation Fund | Ontario Centre of Innovation | Up to $500,000 risk capital | Rolling (expression of interest) | Ontario-HQ'd, raising $1–5M pre-seed/seed, under $3M raised to date | Real Ontario risk capital with a form instead of a deadline. Strictly human health — no fit for general software. |
| FedDev Ontario — Regional Tariff Response Initiative | FedDev Ontario | $125K–$10M repayable interest-free, or $125K–$1M non-repayable | Continuous, runs to 2028-03-31 | Southern Ontario for-profit, incorporated 3+ years, 5+ local staff, tariff-affected | The largest open Ontario pot, and the eligibility tests exclude essentially every startup we talk to. Listed so you can rule it out in ten seconds instead of an afternoon. |
| CanExport SMEs | Global Affairs Canada | Up to $50,000 | 2026-08-31 | Canadian SMEs, non-US market development | Two days out. The split status matters more than the headline — see above. |
| OCI Collaborate 2 Commercialize | Ontario Centre of Innovation | Up to $100K combined | 2026-09-15 | Ontario for-profit, incorporated 2+ years, 5+ FTEs, academic partner | Two open calls (Defence & Dual-Use, AI). The academic partner is the gate, not the paperwork. |
| OCI Digital Competence Centre — DMAP | Ontario Centre of Innovation | Up to $15,000 | Rolling, first-come | Ontario for-profit, 1–499 employees, 1+ year operating | It pays a consultant to write you a digitalization plan. Useful mainly as the on-ramp to bigger OCI money — the $50K TDP follow-on already closed August 10. |
| OCI Digital Competence Centre — RMPG | Ontario Centre of Innovation | Up to $5,000 | Rolling | Ontario retailer with a physical storefront, $100K+ revenue | The storefront requirement rules out every software company. Listed so you stop reading past it. |
| NGen Industrial AI Readiness | Next Generation Manufacturing Canada | Up to $15,000 | Rolling until funds run out | Canadian manufacturers under 500 employees, IRAP-eligible | Projects must file final reports by end of December 2026, so the practical runway is much shorter than "rolling" suggests. Needs an existing ITA relationship. |
| OCI Ready 4 Market | Ontario Centre of Innovation | Up to $250,000 | Rolling (interest form) | Ontario academic/incubator IP, incorporated ≤5 years, <$1M raised | Private co-investment is mandatory. This follows a lead investor — it doesn't create one. |
| Mitacs Accelerate | Mitacs | $15,000 per 4-month unit ($20K postdoc); you pay $7,500 | Rolling | Canadian company + academic supervisor + eligible intern | Effectively 2:1 leverage on R&D salary — the best-value non-dilutive program in the country. Peer review takes 6–8 weeks, so it's not cash for this quarter. |
| NRC IRAP | National Research Council | Not published | Rolling, continuous intake | Incorporated Canadian SMB, ≤500 FTEs, real technical uncertainty | The biggest non-dilutive cheque most Canadian founders will ever see, and there's no form to hide behind — it starts with getting an Industrial Technology Advisor assigned. Call 1-877-994-4727 before you write anything. ⚠ The official page carries no current year; don't quote figures from it. |
| Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund | ISED, via delivery partners | Loans up to $50,000 | Rolling | Women entrepreneurs, especially start-ups and underrepresented groups | It's debt, not a grant, and terms vary by which delivery organization you apply through (WEOC, NACCA, Nventure, Evol). |
| Futurpreneur | Futurpreneur Canada | Up to $75,000 | Rolling | Entrepreneurs aged 18–39 | Loan plus mentorship. Hard age cap at 39, no exceptions, and the mentorship is the part people actually rate. |
| BDC Start-up Financing | Business Development Bank of Canada | Up to $150,000 | Rolling | Generally 12+ months of revenue | This is a bank loan with a friendly logo. Personal guarantees are normal and pre-revenue companies get referred out. |
Not on this list and you'll want to know why. SR&ED has no calendar deadline — you claim it with your T2 return, so it never appears in a deadline table. Six programs we couldn't verify last week now have answers, and most of them are bad news worth having:
- Canada Digital Adoption Program — dead, not merely closed. BDC's own page states it stopped accepting Boost Your Business Technology applications on February 19, 2024. If a blog post or a consultant is still pitching CDAP at you, they're working from a two-year-old page. OCI's DMAP is the live Ontario substitute.
- Scale AI's acceleration program doesn't fund startups directly. Their own page says so: they fund the accelerators, who then reimburse up to $50,000 of your eligible costs. You reach it through a partner program, not an application.
- ventureLAB's HardTech Pitch Competition is between cycles — the page shows 2023–2025 winners and says the next call will be "announced soon." Prize is $50,000 when it runs.
- Innovate BC's Ignite program is closed and its page still carries a July 2024 deadline. Alberta Innovates paused several intakes for a program review that began May 29, 2026. Both are province-gated anyway.
- SheBoot is alive but publishes no 2026 cohort dates, deadline or confirmed prize pool. Centech blocks automated reading of its program pages entirely, so we can't verify it and have stopped trying — check it manually if Montreal matters to you.
Worth diarizing rather than applying to. Four Ontario and federal programs are closed now and will matter when they reopen: the AI Compute Access Fund ($100K–$5M of compute, last closed July 2025), Toronto's Starter Company Plus ($5,000 micro-grant, closed June 2026), INOVAIT (Pilot Fund to $150K, Focus Fund to $2M, last closed March 2026), and OCI's Technology Demonstration Program (up to $50,000, closed August 10).
What global grants and accelerator money is open?
| Program | Region | Amount | Deadline | Our read |
|---|
| EIC Accelerator | EU + associated countries | Grant up to €2.5M, optional €1–10M equity | 2026-11-04, 17:00 Brussels | The last 2026 cut-off and the largest non-dilutive cheque on this page. Ten weeks is thin for a first EIC application, which normally takes months. UK applicants are grant-only. |
| EIC Pathfinder Challenges | EU + associated | Up to €4M per grant | 2026-10-28 | TRL 1–4 research money. If you have a product with users, you're already too far along to qualify. |
| NSF SBIR/STTR Phase I (NSF 26-510) | United States | Non-dilutive | 2026-11-04 | Read this carefully: the date applies to full proposals from teams who already hold an invited Project Pitch. If you don't have one, November 4 is not your date. |
| Innovate UK — Measurement & Sensing pilot | United Kingdom | £1M total pot | 2026-10-07 | Single-applicant SME-only, which is unusually clean for Innovate UK. No consortium to assemble makes the six-week runway workable. |
| Innovate UK — KTP Round 3 | United Kingdom | £12.5M total pot | 2026-10-14 | The academic partner leads the application, not you. Different workflow, slower to originate. |
| Innovate UK — DRIVE35 Scale-up Drawdown 5 | United Kingdom | £150M total pot | 2026-11-04 | Biggest UK pot open and single applicants are welcome, but DRIVE35 is automotive and advanced-propulsion scoped. Read the brief first. |
| Innovate UK — UK-Singapore CRD | UK / Singapore | £3M total pot | 2026-12-16 | Longest runway here, which is the point — finding a Singaporean partner is the slow part. |
| Sovereign Tech Fund | Germany-administered, global projects | Minimum €50K project cost | Rolling | Infrastructure funding for open-source maintainers, not startup runway. Their own site says roughly six months application-to-contract. |
Credits, not grants. These get listed on every "startup funding" page as if they were money. They're spend against one vendor's bill: AWS Activate (up to $200K, pre-Series B), Google for Startups Cloud (up to $350K for AI-first), Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub (up to $150K, explicitly non-convertible to cash), NVIDIA Inception (no cash, preferred pricing and credits, no deadlines or cohorts). Useful for burn. Useless for payroll. Don't put them in a funding slide.
Which accelerators and incubators are accepting applications?
Canada
| Program | Location | Terms | Deadline | Our read |
|---|
| DMZ Incubator — Fall 2026 | Toronto (virtual option) | No fee, 2.5% common shares | 2026-09-01 ⚠ | Best-known brand a first-time Toronto founder can put on a deck. Requires real MRR and an in-house technical lead. |
| NEXT 36 | Toronto | Free; you cover living costs | 2026-10-14 | Genuinely free and high-signal, but the full-time MayࠓAug 2027 summer with no other job permitted makes it a student program. Not for anyone already running a company. |
| District 3 | Montreal | Completely free, no equity, you keep your IP | Rolling, 2–3 week decision | Free and non-dilutive with no equity taken. For a pre-product founder in Montreal there is no argument against applying. |
| Antler Canada | Toronto | $250K for 9% at inception | Rolling ⚠ | 9% at day zero is expensive capital. It's really a co-founder dating program you get paid to attend — which is worth a lot if that's what you need and nothing if it isn't. Antler publishes no deadline. |
| Founder Institute Toronto | Toronto | $2,249 entrance fee + Equity Collective | Cohort closes 2026-09-09; runs to Nov 12 | You pay to attend and give up equity. DMZ and District 3 beat it on terms without a close second. Listed because it markets itself hard and founders should see the price next to the alternatives. |
| Genesis Centre | St. John's, NL | Not published | Rolling | Newfoundland's main on-ramp. No costs, deadlines or cohort dates published — you have to email them. |
| New York & London Fintech CTA | Remote + in-market NY and London | Free, no equity, no program fee | 2026-11-01 | The best-fit federal accelerator on this page for a software founder: free, non-dilutive, about four hours a week, runs Jan–Apr 2027. B2B fintech with recurring revenue or $1M+ raised. |
Closed for this cycle: Creative Destruction Lab's 2026/27 applications closed July 24, 2026. Worth diarizing for next spring — no fees, no equity, 17 locations. And to kill a recurring question: Techstars runs no Canadian program. Their own accelerator list is US cities plus London and Tokyo. If a blog post told you otherwise, it was guessing.
Global
| Program | Location | Terms | Deadline | Our read |
|---|
| Y Combinator — Winter 2027 | Bay Area (relocate) | $125K for 7% + $375K uncapped MFN | 2026-11-02, 8pm PT ⚠ | The Winter 2027 window is now open — batch runs January to March 2027, decisions by December 11. Free to apply, so there's no argument against it. ⚠ The page prints "November 2 at 8pm PT" with no year; 2026 follows from the stated batch dates. Aggregator sites are circulating a false September 25 date — ignore them and read YC's own page. |
| Techstars NYC / Anywhere / London — Spring 2027 | NYC, remote, London | $220,000 ($200K uncapped MFN + $20K for 5%) | 2026-11-18 | Techstars now runs one synchronized Spring 2027 deadline across programs, so choose on managing director and network, not on timing. Anywhere is the only option that doesn't force a move. |
| Z Fellows | Remote + one day in SF or NYC | $10,000 at a $1B cap | Rolling, no deadline | One week long, dilution is near-nominal at that cap, and there's no company required. The lowest-cost credible name on this page. |
| a16z speedrun SR008 | San Francisco | Up to $1M (SR007 was $500K for 10% + $500K follow-on) | Rolling; priority window Oct 12 – Nov 1, 2026 | Calling November 1 a deadline would be wrong — applications run year-round and that window only buys faster review. The year is now confirmed: the page states SR008 starts in early 2027. |
| Conviction Embed — Cohort 7 | San Francisco | $250K uncapped, no discount + ~$1.2M compute credits | ⚠ Not published | The most founder-friendly terms here by some distance, and no application deadline anywhere on the page. Email them before you plan around it. |
| Antler — global cohorts | Tokyo, Dubai/Riyadh, Singapore, Nairobi, London, US, Nordics | ⚠ Not disclosed on their site | Rolling; cohorts start Sep 22, Oct 5, Oct 11, Nov 2 | Antler says plainly these are start dates, not deadlines — seat availability is the real constraint. They publish no terms anywhere we could read, which is a diligence gap worth noticing. |
Applications closed: South Park Commons Founder Fellowship (closed August 2), a16z speedrun SR007, Techstars Fall 2026. AngelPad states its application is currently closed. MassChallenge shows nothing open. GitHub Accelerator's page still displays a 2024 cohort — treat it as dormant until it isn't.
Which startup events are actually worth the ticket?
The one we'd pay for: Elevate Festival, Toronto, September 22–24. The Startup Pass is $325 and it's the densest concentration of Canadian early-stage founders and investors in the calendar year. One condition: it's only worth $325 if you book Meeting Exchange slots in advance. Walk-up networking value at a festival that size is close to zero, and people who buy the pass and then wing it always come home disappointed.
Canada — next 90 days
| Event | Date | City | Cost | Our read |
|---|
| Brampton Venture Expo | 2026-09-10 | Brampton, ON | Not published | Regional and municipal in flavour. Strong for Peel-area visibility, thin for capital. |
| Waterloo Tech Week | 2026-09-12 to 09-17 | Waterloo, ON | Mostly free | Decentralized and open-submission, which means you can host your own session instead of buying a sponsorship. Pick two or three satellite events; don't try to attend "the week." |
| Velocity Pitch Competition | 2026-09-12 | Waterloo, ON | Free to attend | Two-minute pitches, no slides, $5,000 top prize. Free to watch and the room is full of people actively building. |
| TechTO Together Toronto | 2026-09-14 | Toronto, ON | $40 GA — sold out | The cheapest repeatable touchpoint in the GTA when you can get in. The $40 tier evaporates; membership is the only reliable way through the door. |
| LSO Ideas to Action Forum | 2026-09-15 | Toronto, ON | Paid | Policy-and-pharma heavy. Useful only if you're in life sciences and want regulator or payer contact. |
| ALL IN | 2026-09-16 to 09-17 | Montreal, QC | 2026 pricing not published | Canada's largest AI conference, weighted toward enterprise and policy. Early-stage founders get more from the hallway than the stage. |
| CodeLaunch Canada | 2026-09-16 | Toronto, ON | Not published | Attend-only now — the competitor deadline was May 10. Hackathon September 13–14 feeds the finale at El Mocambo. |
| Scale Canadian Tech Connect Mixer | 2026-09-17 | Waterloo, ON | Not published | A standard mixer, but it falls inside Tech Week, so it's a free add-on to a trip you're already taking. |
| Hack the North | 2026-09-18 | Waterloo, ON | Free, selective | 1,000+ student builders. Recruiting-adjacent rather than a founder event — go to hire, or to put a tool in front of people who'll actually run it. |
| Life Sciences Week | 2026-09-21 | Calgary & Edmonton, AB | Not specified | Multi-city; the listing gives a start date only. |
| Elevate Festival | 2026-09-22 to 09-24 | Toronto, ON | $325 Startup Pass | See above. Top pick. |
| Guarding the Breakthrough | 2026-09-24 | Waterloo, ON | Not stated | Physical security and insider risk for deep-tech founders. Unusually specific for an incubator event — worth it if you have real IP exposure, theatre if you don't. |
| LiONS LAIR | 2026-09-24 | Oakville, ON | Paid | 350+ Southern Ontario founders and angels around a pitch competition, no travel required. As a spectator event it's solid; as a competition you're likely too late. |
| GCXpo | 2026-09-29 | Ottawa, ON | Free | Live demos for government buyers at Area X.O. Narrow but high-intent if you sell to the feds. |
| IEEE Venture Summit Toronto | 2026-10-20 to 10-21 | Mississauga, ON | Free to apply | Applications reviewed by actual hard-tech investors and free to enter. One of the better deep-tech shots on this page — and no stated deadline, so apply now. |
| IP Strategy as a Catalyst for Startup Growth | 2026-10-08 | Brampton, ON | Not published | Pairs exactly with the new IPON listing above — same subject, and one of them pays for the other. |
| Startup Global National Pitch — Grand Finale | 2026-10-29 | Mississauga, ON | Free to enter | $68K pool, $30K to the winner. Three-minute verbal pitch, no slides. |
| 17th Canadian EdTech Leadership AI Summit | 2026-10-28 | Mississauga, ON | Not published | Seventeen editions means a real audience. Edtech buyers behave like regulated buyers, which makes it more relevant than it looks. |
| Calgary Innovation Week | 2026-11-02 to 11-05 | Calgary, AB | Not specified | Alberta's main ecosystem week. Energy and industrial-tech skew; weak for consumer or pure SaaS. |
| SAAS NORTH | 2026-11-04 to 11-05 | Ottawa, ON | $725 early bird (2+), $1,199 regular | The only genuinely useful Canadian SaaS conference for revenue-stage companies. At $1,199 it's steep pre-Series A unless you're actively raising. Note TechTO runs an Ottawa social the night before — deliberate piggyback. |
| Innovation Factory office hours & Sales Bootcamp | Ongoing; Bootcamp Sep 8, 15, 22 | Hamilton, ON + virtual | Free | Free one-to-one sessions with Deloitte on SR&ED, Smart & Biggar and BLAZE on IP, AngelOne on capital. Highest value-per-dollar item on this entire page, because the dollar is zero. |
Workshops and hands-on sessions — Greater Toronto, next 90 days
Every roundup of this kind, ours included, has over-indexed on conferences and grant deadlines. But a $10 workshop with thirty people in the room does more for a first-time founder than a $1,199 conference badge, and these are almost impossible to find because Luma and Eventbrite both killed public event search. Here is the list we couldn't previously build.
| Session | Date | City | Cost | Our read |
|---|
| AI Foundations — a three-part series | Sep 23, Oct 7, Oct 21 | Toronto, ON | Free | Run by Innovation Boost Zone, Sheridan's incubator. Three sessions: AI in Regulated Industries, Scaling Your Business With AI, and AI & The Future of SMEs. Free, small, and aimed at operators rather than engineers. Go to all three — showing up once is networking, showing up three times is a relationship. |
| Women in AI: Pitch Competition | 2026-09-10 | Toronto, ON | Free | Black Founders Network at U of T. Free, and it puts named early-stage AI founders on a stage, which is the highest density of people actually building anything in the first half of September. |
| The AI-first startup playbook | 2026-09-15 | Toronto, ON | Free | MaRS programming pitched at founder level rather than engineer level. ⚠ The confirmation email contradicts itself on venue and time — confirm the room with MaRS before you travel. |
| From AI User to AI Builder | 2026-09-15 | Toronto, ON | Free | Base44 and the AI Collective. Whatever you think of the vendor framing, the room will be full of people who use AI tools and want to build with them — which is the exact moment before someone hits a wall. |
| Claude 101 for Accountants | 2026-09-17 | Toronto, ON | Free | Four hands-on hours at Intuit Canada. A regulated profession being taught to build with AI is the clearest signal on this page about where the next wave of non-technical builders comes from. |
| Agentic Commerce Pioneers Hackathon | 2026-09-21 | Toronto, ON | Free | At OneEleven, with a demo-day-only ticket if you don't want to build. The demo pass is two hours for a room of people shipping agents. |
| Dev Days Toronto #3 | 2026-09-04 | Toronto, ON | Free | At Microsoft Canada's HQ, agentic development practices, genuinely technical. |
| Civic Tech Brampton — hackathon winners demo | 2026-09-03 | Brampton, ON | Free | People who just shipped something, in Brampton, for nothing. |
| The Foundry Vol. 1: Water Hackathon | 2026-10-17 | Toronto, ON | Free | Twelve hours at TMU, student-heavy. Worth the demo hours, not the full day. |
| Agentic AI for Business: Build Smarter Workflows | 2026-10-24 | Toronto, ON | $30 | Independently run and directly competitive with what a lot of consultants sell. Thirty dollars is a cheap look at how this is being priced. |
| Toronto Physical AI Workshop | 2026-11-11 | Toronto, ON | Free | Voxel51. Deep technical and narrow, but it's a real workshop and the attendees are serious. |
How to find these yourself. Neither platform will help you: Eventbrite shut off its public event-search API in February 2020 and Luma never had one. Both still render their listings to a logged-in browser, which is the only reliable way to sweep them — and it's why this section didn't exist until now.
Global — next 90 days
| Event | Date | City | Cost | Our read |
|---|
| Bits & Pretzels | 2026-09-28 to 09-30 | Munich, Germany | Not published pre-checkout | Capped at 7,500. Day three is an Oktoberfest tent, which is the actual reason people go. Budget blind — they won't show prices without starting checkout. |
| TechCrunch Disrupt | 2026-10-13 to 10-15 | San Francisco, USA | $849 attendee / $899 founder early bird | Early Bird pricing shows no expiry date, so the "save $300" countdown is unfalsifiable. Buy on whether you want the room. Battlefield 200 entry closed June 8. |
| Web Summit Lisbon | 2026-11-09 to 11-12 | Lisbon, Portugal | €950 discounted general / €1,595 list | Biggest crowd on this page by a wide margin, which cuts both ways. €950 is the only rational entry point; startup ALPHA pricing is hidden behind an application. |
| Slush | 2026-11-18 to 11-19 | Helsinki, Finland | €395 Startup Pass | Best investor-density-per-euro anywhere on this page. The Ecosystem tier is already sold out, which tells you the rest will tighten. |
Just outside the window: GITEX GLOBAL runs December 7–11 in Dubai, now re-merged with Expand North Star. We'll list it properly next month.
Which pitch competitions are still open?
| Competition | Prize | Entry deadline | Eligibility | Our read |
|---|
| Slush 100 | €500,000 at 0% equity | 2026-09-07 | Founded 2023+, raised under €10M, seed or earlier | Zero equity for half a million euros. Year now confirmed 2026 — the same page prints the full timeline through the November 19 final. The €395 pass is the real entry fee. |
| LiONS LAIR | 2026 pool not published; $1M+ awarded historically | ⚠ Not published | Must already be in Innovation Factory's Founders Fast Track | The real gate is Fast Track admission, which also has no published deadline. |
| Startup Global National Pitch | $68,000 pool; $30,000 to the winner | ⚠ "Open now," no close date published | Canadian, $50K–$1M revenue, <$1M raised, <8 years, export intent | The revenue floor and export test are the real filters, not the pitch. Victoria qualifier September 29; finale October 29. |
| Startup Global pop-up — Ottawa | $15,000 + $1,000 people's choice | Event 2026-11-18 | CPG businesses only | The CPG-only restriction is easy to miss and disqualifies most tech founders. If you sell physical product, $15K for three minutes is a good hourly rate. |
| Desjardins Startup Prize | $100,000+ across tiers | Applications Oct 13 – 2026-11-23, 5:00 PM | At least one founder must be a current U of T student, postdoc, or 2024+ grad | Hard U of T gate; non-affiliated entries are removed outright. It also requires completing U of T IP Education Level 1 by the deadline, so start that now, not in November. |
| IEEE Venture Summit Toronto | Investor exposure, not cash | No stated deadline | Hard-tech startups | Free to apply, screened by hard-tech investors. The absence of a prize is why nobody applies, which is exactly why you should. |
| XTC AI:360 | ⚠ Not published | ⚠ Not published | Global, applied AI aligned to UN SDGs | Says applications are open, names a November 2026 California summit, publishes no deadline and no prize. Their /apply page 404s. Email before you invest time. |
Frequently asked questions
What's the biggest startup grant in Canada? For most companies it's NRC IRAP — the cheque size isn't published, but it's routinely the largest non-dilutive funding a Canadian SMB will receive, and it's continuous intake rather than deadline-driven. The catch is that it starts with a conversation with an Industrial Technology Advisor, not an online form, and assessment takes roughly three months. Mitacs Accelerate is the best value per dollar of effort: $15,000 per four-month internship unit for a $7,500 contribution.
When is the Y Combinator deadline? The Winter 2027 batch is open, with an on-time deadline of November 2 at 8pm PT and decisions by December 11. The batch runs January to March 2027 in San Francisco. One caution: YC's page prints the date without a year, and several aggregator sites are currently circulating a September 25 deadline that contradicts YC's own page. Read the source, not the summary. The Fall 2026 window closed July 27 and is no longer worth chasing.
Does Techstars run a program in Canada? No. As of August 2026 Techstars' own accelerator list covers US cities plus London and Tokyo, with no Canadian program. The Techstars Anywhere program is fully remote and open to Canadian founders, with a Spring 2027 deadline of November 18, 2026.
Where do you find startup workshops, as opposed to conferences? Not through search, which is the whole problem. Eventbrite removed public event search from its API in February 2020, and Luma has never offered one, so the small hands-on sessions that are genuinely useful to a first-time founder are effectively unlisted. Both platforms render their city and topic pages fine to a signed-in browser, which is how the workshops section above was assembled. If you're doing it manually: check Luma's topic pages weekly rather than searching, and follow the specific organizers who run series — in the GTA that means Innovation Boost Zone, MaRS, the AI Collective and Dev Days Canada.
Which startup event should I go to if I can only afford one? If you're Canadian and early-stage: Elevate Festival in Toronto, September 22–24, $325 for a Startup Pass — but only if you book Meeting Exchange slots ahead of time. If you're raising and can travel: Slush in Helsinki, November 18–19, €395, which is the best investor density per euro on this page. If your budget is genuinely zero: Innovation Factory's free one-to-one office hours in Hamilton will do more for you than any conference badge.
Are AWS, Google and Microsoft startup credits the same as grant funding? No, and treating them as funding is a common and expensive mistake. Credits are spend against one vendor's bill — they reduce your infrastructure burn and can't pay a salary, a contractor or a lawyer. They're also lock-in by design. Take them, use them, and don't put them in the funding line of a deck.
How often is this page updated? Every week. Deadlines that have passed get deleted rather than left standing, entries older than six months get re-verified or removed, and the "what changed" section below records every addition and removal. If a deadline on this page is dead, that's a bug — tell us.
What changed this week
Week of August 29, 2026 — first refresh. 14 entries added, 1 removed, 6 unverified programs resolved.
- Added — workshops, a whole new section. Eleven hands-on sessions in the Greater Toronto Area, most of them free. This page has over-indexed on conferences and grant deadlines since it launched, and small workshops were missing entirely because Eventbrite killed public event search in 2020 and Luma never had one. They were pulled from a signed-in browser session instead.
- Added — money: Intellectual Property Ontario (up to 80% of IP legal costs, rolling — the best-value item now on the page), OCI Life Sciences Innovation Fund (up to $500K, rolling), FedDev Ontario's Regional Tariff Response Initiative, Innovative Solutions Canada's five MINERVA challenges (up to $500K each, first closes Sept 10), and three federal Canadian Technology Accelerators including the New York & London fintech program, which is the best-fit non-dilutive accelerator here for a software founder.
- Added — events: IP Strategy for Startup Growth (Brampton, Oct 8) and the Canadian EdTech Leadership AI Summit (Mississauga, Oct 28).
- Removed: the Velocity Pitch Competition entry line — applications closed August 28. The event itself stays listed; it's still free to attend on September 12.
- Corrected: Y Combinator's row now reflects the Winter 2027 batch (deadline November 2, decisions December 11), replacing the closed Fall 2026 late-application entry. Founder Institute Toronto's cohort deadline is September 9, not a rolling September 17 refund cutoff. DMZ's terms are now specific: 2.5% in common shares, with an enforced monthly-recurring-revenue requirement that rules out pre-revenue applicants.
- Year flags resolved: Slush 100 is confirmed 2026, and a16z speedrun's priority window is confirmed as October 12 – November 1, 2026. Both ⚠ marks are gone. Conviction Embed still prints no year anywhere and keeps its flag. Y Combinator's own page prints no year either, so that row gains one.
- The eight unverifiable programs, chased. Six now have answers, and most are worth knowing precisely because they're negative: the Canada Digital Adoption Program has been dead since February 2024, not merely closed; Scale AI does not fund startups directly at all; ventureLAB's pitch competition is between cycles; Innovate BC's Ignite page still carries a July 2024 deadline; Alberta Innovates paused intakes for a program review. SheBoot is active but publishes no 2026 dates. Centech blocks automated reading of its pages, so we have stopped trying and say so.
- Still flagged for a human: DMZ's September 1 serving as both deadline and cohort start. Antler publishing no terms and no deadlines anywhere. LiONS LAIR and Startup Global publishing no entry deadlines. XTC AI:360 claiming open applications with a 404 on its own apply page.
- A note on sourcing: a widely-syndicated aggregator was found publishing a Y Combinator deadline that contradicts YC's own page by five weeks. Every date on this page comes from the funder or organizer directly, which is slower and is the entire point.
More living guides
We keep this page current because we use it ourselves. If you want it in your inbox instead, subscribe to the Canadian Founder Radar.
