The annual cyber defence exercise Locked Shields 2026 concluded on 24 April. The exercise brought together over 4,000 participants from 41 nations to practise defending critical infrastructure and military systems against ongoing cyberattacks in real time. In this year's edition of the exercise, a combined Swedish-French team finished in third place.
Locked Shields has been conducted annually since 2010 under the framework of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) and is carried out in cooperation with industrial and academic partners within NATO. Estonia serves as the host nation for Locked Shields.
The exercise was conducted across 16 multinational teams which, under realistic scenarios, managed attacks against systems including energy infrastructure, communications networks, air defence, and digital voting systems. According to the organisers, the objective of the exercise is to strengthen participants' ability to detect, analyse, and manage advanced cyber threats under time pressure.
Estonia's Minister of Defence, Hanno Pevkur, highlighted the significance of the exercise in light of the growing and increasingly complex cyber threat, pointing to the need for continuous readiness development to protect critical societal functions.
– As cyber threats continue to grow in both complexity and scale, exercises like Locked Shields play an important role in helping us maintain preparedness. This year's focus on crisis management and the protection of critical systems reflects the type of challenges we are increasingly facing in reality, said Estonia's Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur in the press release from CCDCOE.
In this year's edition of Locked Shields, a combined Swedish-French team competed. During the exercise, the French Cyber Defence Command (COMCYBER) hosted the Swedish participants. Major General Emmanuel Naëgelen, Commander of COMCYBER, argued that cooperation between the two countries is important for the future of cyber defence.
– It is important for us to be able to work with our Swedish counterparts so that together, tomorrow, we can ensure the protection of an information system in operational use, he said in a press release from COMCYBER.
France's Defence Attaché in Sweden, Sylvain Lautier, commented on the combined team's performance on social media:
– Congratulations to the Franco-Swedish team for their podium finish in the world's largest cyber defence exercise, a strong demonstration of their expertise in cyber defence and cyber crisis management, he wrote on X.
Iceland and Norway also participated together as a joint NATO team in this year's edition of the competition. In 2023, a Swedish-Icelandic team competed in and won Locked Shields, as NDS reported.