This is a blog focused on technology, but, dear reader, if you would indulge me this time and read about what happened to me personally during Accelerate 2026, and the accompanying Ultimate Fabric Challenge, I would be grateful, because this topic is near and dear to my heart.
What are these things?
Accelerate is Fortinet’s yearly convention where the focus and strategy of Fortinet is made public, big changes are announced, and the newest things, like hardware, products or features, are presented. For me personally, the focus has always been about networking and the Tech Expo, where booths are staffed by Fortinet product experts you can ask questions, or in my case, bother them about things (and I am always sorry to be such a bother). I write „has always been“ with purpose, because this time the biggest focus was the Ultimate Fabric Challenge (UFC).
The UFC started as an internal competition among Fortinet employees, where you configure Fortinet products to accomplish tasks. These tasks can range from creating firewall policies, security profiles, automation flows, and so much more. It went from humble beginnings, with tasks on paper, and using FortiGate address objects to confirm said tasks, to a full-blown game, written in Godot, where you walk around a virtual environment, collect hints, and configure a wide range of products. At some point, the UFC was made available as a competition to external people and at this point, it’s a huge part of the community.
Every major region (USA, EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and Canada) has its own UFC at the associated Xperts Summits, which serve as qualifiers, and the best of each region compete against each other in a 45-person free-for-all at the global final at Accelerate every year. At the finals, it’s not just about bragging rights, but also about a cash prize. $10000 for 1st place, $5000 for second, and $2500 for third place.
Accelerate 2026 was my first global UFC, but before I tell you about that, I have to turn back time to 2025.
In 2025 I attended Accelerate 2025 in Berlin and as I was watching the global final there with Christina Bäck, head of channel management at Fortinet Austria, she said to me „Kevin, you have to participate. You always place well in workshop competitions and you won the Austrian Fabric Challenge last year. Sign up for the Xperts EMEA UFC and you will surely qualify.“.
Before that sentence, I hadn’t really thought about competing in the UFC, but I took the encouragement to heart and signed up for the qualifier that would be held a few months later in Vienna, so I had the hometown advantage at least.
Long story short, I placed 3rd, and since the top 10 go to the global final, my next goal was clear. I want to upgrade from bronze.
Oh, and I told my friend, Florian Fuchs from Arrow, that if I get into the money at the global final, we’re going to go to a cowboy outfit store and get cowboy hats to wear at Accelerate, so that was also a nice incentive.
Preparing for the global Ultimate Fabric Challenge final
My idea was to start a four-week preparation phase before Accelerate, where I would go over new features of recent beta releases and work on things I know I’m weak on. A bit before my official start, the other Austrian who qualified for the global final, Dominik Vollman from d-con.net, and I did two older UFCs at the Fortinet office in Vienna as preparation, which helped us to get into the mindset of what to look out for.
Pretty much right as I started with my preparation, all global final participants got an email from David Chan, the person who is responsible for everything UFC-related at Fortinet, with a survey on our experience with certain Fortinet products and topics. I copied the list and immediately sent an email to our channel manager at Fortinet in which I asked for trial licenses for all products in the list, plus a few more. While waiting on the licenses, I formulated a plan of what I am going to study, now that I have a list, and how to do it. I downloaded relevant release notes, assembled lab and new features guides, and with the licenses in hand, I installed the following virtual machines on my Proxmox server:
- 2x FortiGates (8.0.0 and 7.6.6)
- FortiManager (8.0.0)
- FortiAnalyzer (8.0.0)
- FortiClient EMS (7.4.5)
- FortiAuthenticator (8.0.1)
- FortiPAM (1.8.1)
- FortiNAC (7.6.5)
I already had some virtual Windows and Linux machines, and I also got my FortiSwitch 424E and a physical Windows client out for some 802.1X/MAB/NAC topics.
With all that set up, I went through as much as possible in the following four weeks.
There isn’t much to say when it comes to studying itself. The 8.0 release notes and new features were easy to go through. I assembled as many configuration examples as possible, cemented my dislike for FortiNAC, and finally demystified FortiAnalyzer playbook variables for myself (this was really necessary, because Security Operations tasks are historically the hardest for me in Fabric Challenges, and playbook variables play a big part here).
Each week had anywhere from 12 to 16 hours of UFC study time, and I also studied for the FortiSASE Enterprise Administrator exam on the side, because during Accelerate, you can take one free exam, and I needed to refresh my FortiSASE exam status.
The last day before leaving for Las Vegas was spent setting up my lab to be accessible remotely, because I knew I would spend the day of the UFC preparing as much as possible. My remote lab consists of:
- A FortiGate 70G that serves as a VPN gateway and switch controller, connected to the regular LAN and an out-of-band (OOB) network
- The aforementioned Proxmox server, which runs all the virtual machines and is connected to the regular LAN and the OOB network
- A FortiSwitch 424E connected to the FortiGate
- A physical Windows client that connects to the FortiSwitch and the regular LAN
Do you want to see what that looks like? Are you ready? No, you’re not.
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I am truly a world-class professional.
Saturday morning, before leaving for the airport, I noticed that David Chan sent out our UFC onboarding mail with some information to help us prepare, but there wasn’t anything unexpected in the provided information as far as topics are concerned. I still downloaded a few more things just in case.
On the flight itself, I read through various administration and lab guides, watched some entertainment media, and slept for about three hours total on my 18-hour journey.
Leisure time in Las Vegas
I arrived at the Mandalay Bay hotel on Saturday evening, and after getting myself situated, I met up with some people from the Fortinet community (all but one being UFC competitors) to go out to dinner at Best Friend at MGM Park’s Eataly. We got ourselves some Banchan samples, fries and the Big Boy Platter. I have no problem recommending the location if you have a craving for some good food.
Sunday started with a nice breakfast of Salmon Benedict at Seabreeze Cafe, which I enjoyed greatly.
After that, I went to Maverick Helicopter for a Grand Canyon tour. The day before, I was luckily offered an upgrade to a more expensive package, which I gladly accepted, and Cirque du Soleil’s Ka show in the evening. The Grand Canyon tour is an easy recommendation. Getting out of the helicopter and feeling tiny next to these majestic rocks is quite an experience. Ka, on the other hand, wasn’t that exciting. Go see O instead if you care about what I think.
In between the tour and the show, I also did my Accelerate registration, got the recording for my UFC battle card done and picked up my UFC competitor shirt.
Last-minute prep
My plan for Monday, competition day, was clear:
- Wake up at 6 AM and start studying
- Go for breakfast at 07:30, and incidentally meet the Australian NSE8 legends
- Study until 12:45
- Go for lunch and pick up my NSE8 welcome gift
- Study until 14:15
- Walk around the venue and do some shopping in the FortiStore until 16:00
At 16:15, I was at the UFC stage and was greeted by a nice setup.
At around 16:45, the briefing for the UFC started, where we got some information on the new game client release we are going to use (all the features are greatly appreciated, by the way!) and some last-minute information on what to expect in the competition itself.
At around 17:03, we started.
The Accelerate 2026 Ultimate Fabric Challenge global final
The best of the best compete for three hours to gain glory, the gold medal, and the $10000 prize, and I wanted it all.
The competition was split into three parts. FortiOS 8.0 features, FortiDLP, and OT, which turned out to be mainly Security Operations. I had already decided to tackle the sections as I just listed them, so I went to configure 8.0 features.
It all started pretty good. I knew what to do and executed, but I hit a snag on the last configuration point of the first subsection, which was simply making sure that traffic gets blocked by a web filter, and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, because the actual validation was correct. After spending too much time on it and not being able to progress, I went to FortiDLP, but quickly ran into an issue there as well with a rather simple task. After troubleshooting and getting staff to look over the issue it came to light that what I did on the FortiOS part impacted the FortiDLP part, and once I got the FortiOS web filter part correct (only due to the help of the other Austrian in the competition) I was able to progress on both sections, but not before falling all the way down from 2nd to 32nd place.
Since I was already on FortiDLP, I continued there and, with a single exception, had no issues with anything. I don’t have any practical experience with FortiDLP, but I did a lab at Xperts EMEA 2025 and still had the lab guide, so I had a bit of an advantage over several other competitors in this regard. The FortiDLP administration guides were also part of my in-flight reading material, so nothing was completely new to me here.
With the FortiDLP section done, I went back to FortiOS 8.0 features, and on every task, I immediately knew what to do, so nothing kept me occupied for too long, because I had already gone through everything as part of my preparation. If I needed a refresher, I just opened a prepared list of documentation links and got back to configuring.
FortiOS 8.0 and FortiDLP were done, so only OT remained, and I was now in around 11th place. I was not looking forward to OT, because I didn’t quite know what to expect. It turned out OT was mainly working with network segmentation, FortiAnalyzer event handlers, and security profiles. This I can do, and I can do it well, since I’ve held FortiAnalyzer workshops before and have gotten so much training on exactly these things.
OT also had the single best task I’ve ever seen at a fabric challenge. I can’t go too deep into the specifics of the task, but it required you to configure something that could normally take over an hour and lots of analysis to accomplish. There was a hint in the environment that told you to use generative AI along with a prompt, and after asking ChatGPT, it gave me the result. This all took about two minutes. Quite the improvement from possibly more than an hour of work. This is how AI shows its value. By assisting, not replacing us.
I went through the OT section with confidence and speed, and I moved up and up the leaderboard until I was in 2nd place, where I got to a task that wouldn’t complete. I checked and rechecked, and re-rechecked, but couldn’t find the error, so I waved some staff member over, and it turned out the backend check itself had an error. While the check got fixed, I completed some other task, because if you get stuck on something, you can’t hammer away at it forever. You need to use your time efficiently and get points somewhere else.
With the task fixed, I quickly moved on to the last OT subsection, and this is where it all has to end one way or another.
There were only 10 minutes left, and I was still in 2nd place. If I get a medal, I don’t want it to be silver. I either win it all or barely get onto the podium. I don’t want to barely not get 1st place.
The last section had four tasks. I quickly got the first two done and read through the description of the third task. It seemed to take too much time considering how little of it I had by this point, so I read through the fourth task and knew this was doable in the remaining time. I configured and waited for the check to complete.
The time between „finishing“ your configuration and seeing if it’s correct can be agonizing and everything was riding on it now. The check turned green. In the corner of the screen, I saw „Rank 1“. Now I either finish the third task to solidify my number 1 rank or hope that 2nd place doesn’t get any more points.
It was 20:00. That’s when the competition should have ended, but we had a late start, so there were still a few more minutes, but something weird happened. As I was trying to finish the configuration for the last task, the environment froze. My keystrokes didn’t register; I lost the connection to my FortiGate. The competition environment must have been on a timer, and going over the three-hour mark shouldn’t have happened, but it did. After about a minute, everything turned back to normal, but my frustration was visible to everyone watching.
I configured my last application control profile and, assuming it is correct, I only needed to attach it to four policies, and I would have completed all tasks, but I ran out of time. I heard the countdown, and as it came to 3, I realised that I had won. The „Hands off!“ from the side signalized my number 1 spot, my gold medal, my $10000, my preparation being rewarded.
After becoming the best
Euphoria is what hit me. I needed a moment to internalize what just happened, but there were people around who were rooting for me. Colleagues, friends, competitors who are also friends, and they all got a hug. It didn’t matter if I knew the person at that time. If you were close to me, you got hugged. I cannot think of a moment in my life that felt better.
Once I was done going around and celebrating with everyone, I needed to take care of myself. I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch, and I purposefully drank very little throughout the day. I asked if there was food around, which there was, and if I could get something to drink, and I did. I sat down and had a nice winner dinner on the UFC stage.
I talked with the other Austrians at the event until the opening party was over, then we went down to a bar to celebrate some more until 01:00, closing time, and we retreated to our rooms. Sleep was something I didn’t get much of that day. I slept for 1 hour and 22 minutes that night, presumably because of the excitement of it all, but a new day began, and it was Accelerate 2026 proper now.
Accelerate 2026 itself
Needless to say, there were quite a few people who came up to me throughout the week to congratulate me, and every time it happened, it felt like I was on the stage again. Accelerate isn’t just the UFC, however. It’s about where Fortinet goes, new products and solutions, and networking.
Tuesday began with the keynote, which reinforced what we already knew:
- AI isn’t going away, with a focus on securing AI usage and using AI for security
- OT security continues to be highly relevant
- Security Operations also continues to be highly relevant, as shown by Fortinet’s new offering FortiSOC, which provides a single pane of glass for FortiSOAR, FortiSIEM and FortiAnalyzer
These three topics will accompany us for quite some time going forward.
A topic on the side that I thought was incredibly interesting is how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) will be integrated into various Fortinet products in the future, where Fortinet seems to be the first to market
After the keynote, it was a mixture of the Tech Expo, lunch and networking until it was time for the NSE8 event, which was at Speed Vegas, and the activity was driving supercars. I didn’t drive personally, because in my sleep-deprived state it would have been a bad choice, but even driving shotgun in a Lamborghini Huracan is worth experiencing. I sadly had to leave the event shortly after dinner, because I was double-booked and needed to head back to the strip to attend an Exclusive Networks event at Chéri Rooftop. There, I found a fitness soulmate who sees working out and dieting much like me, which was scary, because I am quite idiosyncratic when it comes to these things, but I can’t complain.
Tuesday ended at around 01:00 again, but this time I got a normal amount of sleep.
After breakfast, Wednesday had the global channel session, which is mainly about partners, so it was relevant to me, but what was more relevant was what I talked about with a friend. Remember that cowboy hat thing from further up? Well, on Wednesday, Florian and I went to Boot Barn and got cowboy hats and a shirt to wear at Accelerate. I actually dragged another good friend, Daniel Lamster from Base-IT, along, who is a self-proclaimed cowboy fanatic, meaning he was quite stoked, so we were three people who arrived back at the convention centre with some cowboy attire.
The rest of Wednesday was much the same as Tuesday until the evening, which was the night of the Austrians. It started with a Hummer limousine trip to Smith & Wollensky for a nice dinner, and then a showing of The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere.
The night ended with some gambling at Caesar’s Palace (I only lost), and a midnight chicken wrap with a return to my room at 00:45. Progress.
Thursday was when I wanted to do my FortiSASE Enterprise Administrator exam, so I walked around the convention centre for an hour doing some final preparation, quickly completed the exam and went back to the usual program of annoying Fortinet employees at the Tech Expo, attending technical sessions, and networking.
Thursday was special for a specific reason, however, because it had the closing party, and the closing party also had the UFC award ceremony.
The final night
At 18:30, the closing party opened, and I immediately went to get something to eat, because I had been waiting the entire day for dinner, and I wanted to eat one of everything. Since the ceremony started at 19:00, I wanted to eat half the things beforehand, do the ceremony, and then go for the other half later. Bad choice as it turned out.
Shortly before 19:00, I ran over to the stage and got a little briefing about the ceremony and helped David Chan with pronouncing my and my employer’s name, because he wasn’t confident in his research. Respect to David for actually researching how to say my name on his own. Haven’t had anyone do that yet.
As the ceremony started in earnest, my adrenaline shot up again until it was my turn to get the medal, and my cheque with $10000 on it. It was amazing to have both things in my hands after all the work I put in. After some obligatory pictures, I had to find out how to get this massive cheque back to Austria, and after a lot of talking and pleading, Filippo Cassini said he’ll take care of it. Huge thanks to Filippo for this. The cheque is almost more important to me than the monetary value written on it.
If you want to watch the award ceremony itself, then I have uploaded it to YouTube:
Once I was done eating a bit at the stage and talking with some more people, I went back on the closing party floor, and the number of people who wanted a picture of me, my cheque and my medal, as well as congratulating me, was crazy and a nice ego boost as well.
I came across the Australians again, and after some talking, Australian banter, and an attempted joke at my height using the cheque, I had to leave, because food was waiting for me.
Shouldn’t have let it wait. Due to the ceremony and all the talking, it got so late that the food was already being taken away, and all I could grab for myself was a single Falafel slider. Sad, but that’s how it went.
After the closing party, it was time for the Goo Goo Dolls concert and before, during, and after, there was lots of picture taking and congratulating on the menu again, which I happily did.
The day ended with a helicopter tour across Las Vegas at night, which is a great experience and something I can easily recommend, and a casino visit, though I didn’t gamble. Again, an end at 01:00, so back to the usual sleep cycle.
Friday was the last day of Accelerate, but it’s just departing, and since my plane left at 16:40, I had lots of time to just walk around Las Vegas and do some last-minute shopping before I had to go to the airport. I have actually written this entire thing on my flight from Denver to Munich, though the editing and publishing were done in Austria.
And that’s it for the Fortinet Accelerate 2026 and my first showing at the global Ultimate Fabric Challenge.
The last exciting event of the week was actually at the airport in Vienna. My parents surprised me with a congratulatory banner right at the exit, which put another smile on my face and this, plus the dinner after, was the best end I could have hoped for.
What now?
As far as personal things are concerned, I need to take a bit of time to rest. I came into Accelerate overtrained, dieted down to my lowest weight yet and was stressed out due to the UFC. Week-long events are also quite exhausting, because you’re almost constantly on your feet, days are long, and nights are short.
When it comes to the blog, I already have the next topic planned. I actually got the idea while preparing for the UFC and had to stop myself from writing it because I needed to spend the time preparing for the competition. If you paid special attention while reading this post, you might be able to guess what the topic is going to be.
Until my next post comes out, I thank you, dear reader, for making it this far. This isn’t the type of post I want to make often, but it was a special occasion.
