NATO DIANA Cohorts Compared: 2024, 2025, 2026 and Warfighters
By Alliance Tech Tracker research · Published 2026-08-23 · Updated 2026-08-23
Every NATO DIANA selection round side by side. Announced figures come from official NATO DIANA communications; verified figures count the individual company records in this tracker. The Warfighters Challenge is a special track outside the annual cycle.
| Cohort | Companies | Applicants | Challenge areas | Countries | Selection rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 44 | 1,300+ | 3 | 22 | ~3.4% |
| 2025 | 72 | 2,600+ | 5 | 20 | ~2.8% |
| 2026 | 150 announced / 149 verified | 3,600+ | 10 | 25 | ~4.2% |
| Warfighters | 10 | 427 | 1 | 6 | ~2.3% |
How the programme changed
The programme roughly tripled its intake in two years: 44 companies in 2024, 72 in 2025 and 150 announced for 2026. Applications grew at the same time, from 1,300+ to 3,600+, so selection rates stayed in low single digits throughout.
Challenge structure widened from 3 broad areas in 2024 to 10 in 2026, and geographic spread widened with it: the 2026 cohort covers 25 countries in the tracker, up from 22 in 2024.
The Warfighters Challenge differs in kind, not just scale: contractual funding instead of grants, a TRL focus of TRL 7+ focus, and live demonstrations planned for December 2026. Cohort-level detail is on the cohorts page.
Cite Alliance Tech Tracker
Alliance Tech Tracker maintains an independently verified dataset of NATO DIANA companies, cohorts, challenges and programme outcomes. The dataset is licensed under CC BY 4.0: researchers, journalists and organisations may reuse it with attribution and a link to alliancetechtracker.com.
Alliance Tech Tracker. NATO DIANA Company Dataset, version 2026.08, updated 2026-08-23. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://alliancetechtracker.com/data. Changes: [state whether changes were made].
Dataset version 2026.08 · data as of August 2026 · last reviewed 2026-08-23 · methodology · download CSV or JSON
All figures computed from the Alliance Tech Tracker dataset, last reviewed 2026-08-23. See the methodology for how we verify data.