An RSAC 2026 All Access Pass runs between $2,195 and $2,995 depending on when you buy. A BSidesSF 2026 early-bird ticket? $100 through February 19th, $110 after. That’s a 20x-to-30x spread before you factor in San Francisco hotel rates, expo-hall small talk, or the sinking feeling of watching a vendor demo three times in four hours.
The gap between what the two kinds of events cost and what they actually deliver has never been wider. RSAC 2026 pulled its usual 40,000-plus attendees to Moscone Center in March, stacked with keynotes and a 600-vendor expo floor. Meanwhile, the BSides circuit — BSidesSF, BSidesLV, BSides Seattle, BSides Atlanta, BSides SLC, BSides San Diego, BSides NOLA, BSides Prague, BSides Kerala, BSides Tampa, and roughly 200 others worldwide — continues to be where a lot of working practitioners say the real technical conversations happen. This piece is about why that is, which 2026 events are worth your travel budget, and how to get the most out of the community-event model without pretending RSAC doesn’t exist.
Where BSides Came From and Why It Still Matters
BSides started as a rejection pile. In 2009, Black Hat USA received too many CFP submissions to fit. The rejected talks, several of them from well-known researchers, became the seed of an alternative event. The first BSides took place July 29–30, 2009, in Las Vegas. Chris Nickerson provided venue space and secured sponsorships, Jack Daniel handled logistics, Travis Goodspeed created badges, and community members donated their time.
It worked. By the next summer, the Las Vegas conference had about 650 participants across two tracks with 25 organizers, and BSides events launched in Berlin, Ottawa, Dallas, Delaware, Atlanta, Kansas City, Denver, Boston, Austin, and San Francisco, each drawing 100 to 300+ participants. By 2011, over 40 events took place globally, reaching Australia and Africa. Mike Dahn registered Security BSides as a California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in March 2011.
That 501(c)(3) structure is the hidden load-bearing wall of the whole movement. It gives local organizers a legal framework to run events without inventing one from scratch, and it’s why BSides has grown to more than 650 events in more than 50 countries. No central organization tells BSides Tampa what talks to accept or BSides Nairobi what badge to print. Each event is locally run, locally funded, and answerable to its local community.
That’s also why BSides feels different from RSAC. RSAC is a trade show — an excellent one, with real research content — but its center of gravity is the expo floor and the deals it enables. BSides has no expo floor in the RSAC sense. Sponsors exist (they have to; BSides San Diego is a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit and all ticket purchases are tax deductible, and ticket revenue alone doesn’t cover venue costs), but they sit at tables, not walled-off kiosks with retractable banners. Jack Daniel, one of the three co-founders, has described the magic of BSides as providing a venue for great talks which otherwise might not get heard, talks which may appeal to a small group of passionate people, and talks which may not fit into a category other conferences want to tackle.
That last bit is the point. BSides is where the talks that are too weird, too niche, or too early-stage for a 1,200-person RSAC track end up — which is exactly where most practitioners want to be.
The 2026 Cost Comparison, Honest Version
The “1/20th the cost” headline isn’t marketing. Here’s what the math actually looks like once you include the trip, not just the ticket.
The ticket-only ratio is dramatic. The full-trip ratio is less dramatic but still serious, and for any practitioner who can get to a regional BSides without flying — BSides SATX if you’re in Texas, BSides Atlanta if you’re in the Southeast, BSides Charm if you’re in the Mid-Atlantic — the effective cost collapses further. A day of PTO and a $40 ticket gets you more technical content than most people extract from a full RSAC badge.
What You Actually Get That RSAC Doesn’t Offer
RSAC content is good; this isn’t a “BSides is better” argument in disguise. It’s a “BSides is different” argument. Three things consistently show up at BSides events that RSAC’s scale makes structurally impossible.
Speaker access. At BSidesSF 2026, organizers sifted through almost 600 submissions for a conference that caps attendance in the low four figures. That ratio — hundreds of submissions for a small audience — means speakers are available. You can corner a researcher after their talk, ask a follow-up, and have a 20-minute conversation. At RSAC, the speaker has a handler and a 4-minute window before the next keynote.
Research that isn’t vendor-shaped. The BSides CFP process is run by volunteer review boards that filter for technical merit. Sales pitches get rejected. Organizers are blunt about it — one BSidesLV endorsement reads “I don’t go to BSidesLV for yet another sales pitch; I want to meet the engineers and know they actually work in the community”. RSAC’s content slate is genuinely strong, but it’s also structurally intertwined with which companies are paying for presence. BSides doesn’t have that filter.
Villages and hands-on content. BSides Atlanta 2026, scheduled for Saturday, October 3rd at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center, features 13 content areas across over 18,000 sq. ft. That includes lockpicking villages, hardware hacking tables, CTFs, and red-vs-blue panels. BSidesLV’s format is similar. Some regional events go further — BSides Groningen 2026 handed attendees a CAN-to-USB adapter badge that by the afternoon had people hooking it up to car instrument clusters in the hallway, poking at CAN traffic between talks. You don’t get that at RSAC.
The 2026 BSides Map Worth Your Attention
There are well over 200 BSides events running globally in 2026. Not all of them are worth flying for, and that’s by design — most serve local communities. The ones below either have outsized reputations, particularly strong 2026 programs, or fill specific niches worth the trip.
BSidesLV is still the headliner. BSides Las Vegas will be held August 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2026. BSidesLV is extending to two and a half days this year, with two full days of content and activities on Monday and Tuesday and a half day of sessions on Wednesday. The schedule puts it right in front of Black Hat and DEF CON at Tuscany Suites — the whole “Hacker Summer Camp” triangle happens in the same five-block radius. If you can only do one BSides per year and you can get to Vegas, this is the one.
BSidesSF is the RSAC adjacent play. It runs March 21–22, 2026, with tickets starting at $100 early bird. Travel once, hit both. If your employer will only pay for RSAC, you can add the BSidesSF weekend on your own dime for the price of two nights of hotel and come home with more technical content than the week of keynotes gave you.
Regional picks depend on where you are. BSides Atlanta, BSides SLC, BSides San Diego, BSidesNYC, BSidesCharm (Baltimore), BSides SATX (San Antonio), BSides Seattle, and BSides Tampa all run solid annual events. The newer ones — BSides Mussoorie, BSides Groningen, BSides Joburg — are smaller but earn strong word-of-mouth because they’re run by people who actually show up.
How to Get Real Value From a BSides Trip
The BSides format rewards different behavior than RSAC rewards. A few practical rules:
Prioritize CFP-driven tracks over keynotes. The keynote is usually a respected person but often not the best talk of the day. The gold is in the 30-minute technical sessions — especially the ones from first-time speakers presenting original research. Skim the schedule ahead of time and pre-commit to three or four talks that hit topics you actually work on.
Hit the villages even if it feels out of your depth. The lockpicking village is not about lockpicking. It’s a conversation-starting mechanism. Same for the hardware hacking bench, the car hacking village, and the CTF. Sit down, fail publicly at something, and the people next to you will talk to you. This is the networking model.
Volunteer if you can afford to. BSidesSF says it directly: about 200 volunteers help the BSidesSF staff to make the weekend a smooth experience for everyone, and as a volunteer, you get to help keep everything flowing, see some of the behind the scenes work, and support the local BSides event. A half-day volunteer shift gets you free admission, deeper relationships with the organizers, and a credential that travels well in hiring conversations.
Buy the “Patron” or sponsor tier if your employer reimburses. BSides San Diego is explicit about this: if your employer reimburses you for your conference fees, the Patron tier covers the full cost of the event, and the higher tier you donate, the more gratitude the organizers give and the better they can make this year’s and future BSides SD events. These events run on thin margins. If your company is paying $2,500 for RSAC anyway, spending $250 of that on a BSides Patron tier is a rounding error that materially helps a nonprofit.
Skip the evening party at least once. The parties are fun but they’re also the place where BSides looks most like every other conference. The afternoon hallway conversations between sessions tend to produce more durable professional connections.
The Honest Tradeoffs
BSides is not a complete RSAC substitute, and pretending otherwise is dishonest.
You will not meet your CISO’s vendor shortlist at BSides. If the reason you attend a conference is to evaluate a dozen tools in two days, RSAC’s expo floor genuinely does that better than anything else in the industry. BSides does not pretend to.
Content is uneven. BSides is a distributed network of volunteer-run events, which means quality varies. A first-year BSides in a new region is a gamble. A mature one — BSidesLV, BSidesSF, BSides Atlanta, BSides Prague — is predictable. Check the speaker list before committing.
The community has had real problems. The movement isn’t immune to the issues that hit the broader security community. In 2022, BSides Cleveland was criticised for booking Chris Hadnagy who was previously banned by DEF CON for undisclosed misconduct claims. Hadnagy was a surprise speaker, and not revealed until his talk began. The decision resulted in a number of experts withdrawing from the event, and the organiser stepped down and was replaced by a four-person team supported by BSides central organisers. Local autonomy means local accountability works imperfectly. Most events enforce codes of conduct seriously; a small number have failed to.
Travel costs can swamp ticket savings. A $100 ticket to an event 2,000 miles away is still $1,500 of flights and hotel. The cost argument is strongest for locals and for people combining BSides with existing travel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is BSides only for technical practitioners? No. Most events have some mix of technical, governance, and career-oriented content. BSides Groningen 2026 explicitly ran a governance-and-AI track alongside its technical program. But the center of gravity is hands-on technical work, and attendees who come expecting executive-track content often leave disappointed.
Can I submit a CFP as a first-time speaker? Yes, and BSides is arguably the best place in the industry to give your first conference talk. Review boards actively look for new voices. BSidesSF processed nearly 600 submissions for 2026 — the acceptance bar is real but the culture is welcoming.
How do I find my local BSides? allbsides.com maintains a crowd-sourced directory of global events. bsides.org/events is the official BSides Inc. event list and tends to have more accurate ticket links.
Do employers recognize BSides attendance for professional development? Most do, especially for CE credits. If your employer requires formal accreditation, check whether the event offers CPE credit certificates — many do, but not all.
The Verdict
If you have one conference budget and you want to meet vendors, hear headline speakers, and shake hands with executives, RSAC is still the venue. It does that job extraordinarily well.
If you want to hear original research before it hits a trade publication, talk to the people doing the work, and come home with actual techniques you can apply on Monday — book a BSides. Book two, if your travel budget allows. The math is not close. A $100 ticket to BSidesSF, a $99 ticket to BSides Seattle, and a weekend in Las Vegas for BSidesLV will cost less than a single RSAC All Access Pass, and the content density tilts heavily in their direction for working practitioners.
The 2009 rejection pile that became BSides is, seventeen years in, the most reliable signal of where the technical community is actually paying attention. The RSAC badges will still get you into the expo hall. But the conversations that will shape your next project are probably happening at a BSides.
