[Event Report] Japan's Only Incident Response Contest 'PagerDuty Challenge Cup': The Top 6 Elite Teams Battle It Out for Victory!
PagerDuty Inc. held the final round of the 'PagerDuty Challenge Cup,' Japan's only incident response contest, as part of 'PagerDuty Tech Day 2026.' The 'CTO ni Anmin wo' team from NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation won, recognized for their technical skills, teamwork, and communication abilities with stakeholders.
📋 Article Processing Timeline
- 📰 Published: May 9, 2026 at 01:10
- 🔍 Collected: May 8, 2026 at 16:32
- 🤖 AI Analyzed: May 8, 2026 at 20:52 (4h 20m after Collected)
PagerDuty Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and President: Nobuyuki Yamane; hereinafter: PagerDuty), a provider of incident management solutions, held 'PagerDuty Tech Day 2026' at Tokyo Midtown Hall on Wednesday, April 15, 2026. This event was a technical conference where practitioners shared real-world examples under the theme of 'Discovering the 'fun' in operations.' In addition to lectures and user case study sessions in the main hall, a special event, the 'PagerDuty Challenge Cup Final,' was held in the hands-on room, with many participants including engineers.
The scene from the 'PagerDuty Challenge Cup' final held on Wednesday, April 15.
■ What is the PagerDuty Challenge Cup?
It is Japan's only contest that comprehensively competes on skills necessary for incident response, such as rapid initial response, accurate judgment, teamwork, and communication with stakeholders. Participating teams use PagerDuty to respond to incidents occurring in a simulated incident environment called 'PagerChat' and are scored based on the following four criteria:
[Scoring Criteria]
Incident Response Score: Identifying and resolving the root cause
Communication Score: Appropriate information sharing with stakeholders such as CTOs, customer support, and public relations
MTTA Score (Mean Time To Acknowledge): Speed of incident recognition
Post-Incident Review Score: Quality of the post-incident resolution review
In this year's final, the difficulty level was significantly increased from the preliminary rounds, with up to four incidents occurring simultaneously in an AWS Kubernetes environment. Not only was the identification of technical root causes evaluated, but also appropriate communication with 'CTOs,' 'customer support,' and 'public relations' roles played by the organizers, making it a highly advanced content that tested both technical and interpersonal skills.
■ Scenes from the Final Round ~Tense Incident Response Unfolding in Real-Time~
CTO (role) checking on participating teams during the Challenge Cup competition.
In the final round, real-world situations that could occur on-site, such as sudden system failures, simultaneous failures of multiple services, and inquiries from management, occurred one after another.
Real-world developments on site
Six elite teams that won the preliminary rounds on Wednesday, February 25, and Tuesday, March 10, competed in the final. During the contest, incidents continuously occurred in the virtual chat service 'PagerChat.' On the simulated SNS 'PingPost,' AI Bots and spectators posted complaints as users, such as 'Chat is unusable!' and 'When will it be restored?', and these were displayed on the venue's screen. Furthermore, a problem occurred where the virtual chat tool itself became unusable, creating a tense atmosphere akin to a real incident.
In addition to constantly changing incident statuses and real-time updated scoreboards, teams quickly responded by dividing roles such as Incident Commander, Responder, and Scribe to tough questions from the CTO role, such as 'When will it be restored?' and 'What is the business impact?' Cheers were heard from the audience as teams worked frantically and the real-time scoreboard was displayed.
■ PagerDuty Challenge Cup Final Results Announcement
When the winning team was announced, all teams were applauded for their efforts, and the entire venue gave a big round of applause. The operating staff who played the role of CTO also offered words of appreciation for the efforts of each team, and the venue was filled with a warm atmosphere.
🥇 Winner: 'CTO ni Anmin wo' Team (NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation)
"We were able to achieve victory by leveraging the knowledge and teamwork of our team members. We feel that we were highly evaluated for actively utilizing the status update and post-mortem functions, which were not fully utilized in the preliminary rounds, to embody more practical incident response using PagerDuty in the main competition. Through the competition, we realized the importance of technical skills, as well as information sharing and role division with the team and stakeholders. We believe that coordinating with each member's role in mind, especially for reporting and adjusting the situation to stakeholders including the CTO, which was particularly challenging, led to this result. We want to apply this experience to our future work and contribute to providing better services."
(Mr. Kazuki Mori, Mr. Taiga Kimura, Mr. Yasunari Taguchi, Platform Operations Department, Office Solutions Business Division, DX Solutions Business Headquarters, NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation)
🥈 2nd place: '99x' Team
The scene from the 'PagerDuty Challenge Cup' final held on Wednesday, April 15.
■ What is the PagerDuty Challenge Cup?
It is Japan's only contest that comprehensively competes on skills necessary for incident response, such as rapid initial response, accurate judgment, teamwork, and communication with stakeholders. Participating teams use PagerDuty to respond to incidents occurring in a simulated incident environment called 'PagerChat' and are scored based on the following four criteria:
[Scoring Criteria]
Incident Response Score: Identifying and resolving the root cause
Communication Score: Appropriate information sharing with stakeholders such as CTOs, customer support, and public relations
MTTA Score (Mean Time To Acknowledge): Speed of incident recognition
Post-Incident Review Score: Quality of the post-incident resolution review
In this year's final, the difficulty level was significantly increased from the preliminary rounds, with up to four incidents occurring simultaneously in an AWS Kubernetes environment. Not only was the identification of technical root causes evaluated, but also appropriate communication with 'CTOs,' 'customer support,' and 'public relations' roles played by the organizers, making it a highly advanced content that tested both technical and interpersonal skills.
■ Scenes from the Final Round ~Tense Incident Response Unfolding in Real-Time~
CTO (role) checking on participating teams during the Challenge Cup competition.
In the final round, real-world situations that could occur on-site, such as sudden system failures, simultaneous failures of multiple services, and inquiries from management, occurred one after another.
Real-world developments on site
Six elite teams that won the preliminary rounds on Wednesday, February 25, and Tuesday, March 10, competed in the final. During the contest, incidents continuously occurred in the virtual chat service 'PagerChat.' On the simulated SNS 'PingPost,' AI Bots and spectators posted complaints as users, such as 'Chat is unusable!' and 'When will it be restored?', and these were displayed on the venue's screen. Furthermore, a problem occurred where the virtual chat tool itself became unusable, creating a tense atmosphere akin to a real incident.
In addition to constantly changing incident statuses and real-time updated scoreboards, teams quickly responded by dividing roles such as Incident Commander, Responder, and Scribe to tough questions from the CTO role, such as 'When will it be restored?' and 'What is the business impact?' Cheers were heard from the audience as teams worked frantically and the real-time scoreboard was displayed.
■ PagerDuty Challenge Cup Final Results Announcement
When the winning team was announced, all teams were applauded for their efforts, and the entire venue gave a big round of applause. The operating staff who played the role of CTO also offered words of appreciation for the efforts of each team, and the venue was filled with a warm atmosphere.
🥇 Winner: 'CTO ni Anmin wo' Team (NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation)
"We were able to achieve victory by leveraging the knowledge and teamwork of our team members. We feel that we were highly evaluated for actively utilizing the status update and post-mortem functions, which were not fully utilized in the preliminary rounds, to embody more practical incident response using PagerDuty in the main competition. Through the competition, we realized the importance of technical skills, as well as information sharing and role division with the team and stakeholders. We believe that coordinating with each member's role in mind, especially for reporting and adjusting the situation to stakeholders including the CTO, which was particularly challenging, led to this result. We want to apply this experience to our future work and contribute to providing better services."
(Mr. Kazuki Mori, Mr. Taiga Kimura, Mr. Yasunari Taguchi, Platform Operations Department, Office Solutions Business Division, DX Solutions Business Headquarters, NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation)
🥈 2nd place: '99x' Team