TL;DR. Cuchara sits in Lommel, Belgium [1]. A 30 km circle reaches Eindhoven (~26 km, NL) [2] and Mol (~15 km, BE) [3] but misses Hasselt (~33 km) [4] and Genk (~32 km) [5]. Practically every IT/tech event in radius runs on the High Tech Campus / Brainport ecosystem in Eindhoven [6]. If you can extend by two weeks, the free public HTC Open Day on Saturday 13 June 2026 [8] is the cleanest weekend match. The Cuchara weekend itself (29–31 May) has no tech event in radius.
The 30 km radius
Cuchara is at Lepelstraat 3, 3920 Lommel [1]. Straight-line distances from that point:
| Place | Country | Air distance | In radius? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mol | BE | ~15 km | ✓ [3] |
| Pelt | BE | ~12 km | ✓ [3] |
| Geel | BE | ~25 km | ✓ [2] |
| Eindhoven | NL | ~26 km | ✓ [2] |
| Turnhout | BE | ~25 km | ✓ [2] |
| Genk | BE | ~32 km | ✗ [5] |
| Hasselt | BE | ~33 km | ✗ [4] |
Practically: the radius captures the Brainport / Eindhoven tech corridor to the north, plus quieter Belgian towns (Mol, Geel, Pelt) where SCK CEN and VITO sit but where public IT events are rare. Hasselt and Genk — Belgian Limburg’s actual tech hubs — fall just outside.
Around the Cuchara weekend (29–31 May 2026)
The dinner weekend itself is quiet for IT events in radius. The closest in time:
| Date | Event | Venue | Topic | Distance from Cuchara |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 28 May | Signature Event 2026 (Big Chemistry) | HTC Conference Center, Eindhoven | AI-driven autonomous robot labs for chemical formulation [7] | ~26 km |
| Thu 11 Jun | AI Impact Summit Live | AI Innovation Center, HTC | AI impact and applications [12] | ~26 km |
| Sat 13 Jun | High Tech Campus Open Day | HTC Eindhoven, campus-wide | Free public tech festival, demos and labs open [8] | ~26 km |
| Tue 23 Jun | MBSE in Action: Beyond Documents | AI Innovation Center, HTC | Model-based systems engineering, digital engineering [12] | ~26 km |
| Tue 23 Jun | Physical AI: Robotic Manipulation | 3EALITY, HTC 37 | Robotic manipulation in the open world [12] | ~26 km |
| Tue 30 Jun | Claude Code on Amazon Bedrock | AI Innovation Center, HTC | Hands-on AI coding workshop with AWS [12] | ~26 km |
The HTC Open Day on Sat 13 Jun is the only Saturday tech event in radius worth planning around — same weekday slot as the Cuchara dinner, free, family-friendly, and the only campus-wide public day on the HTC calendar [8].
Recurring meetups (worth knowing if extending the trip)
| Group | Cadence | Venue | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eindhoven Innovation Café — Tech & Design | Monthly, last Thu | Kazerne Downtown Eindhoven | Design × tech, English [13] |
| Ehv.dev Eindhoven Developers Meetup | Irregular | Eindhoven | Software dev community, 1.6k members [14] |
| 040coders.nl | Irregular | Eindhoven | Systems / low-level, recruiter-free [15] |
All three sit in Eindhoven, ~26 km from Cuchara [2].
Bigger 2026 conferences in radius (later in the year)
If “weekend trip near Cuchara” can also mean “next time you’re in the area”:
| Date | Event | Venue | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 28 Sep 2026 | LEVEL UP 2026 | Evoluon, Eindhoven | The Netherlands’ flagship tech-startup acceleration event [10] |
| 17–25 Oct 2026 | Dutch Design Week | 100+ Eindhoven venues | Northern Europe’s largest design event, strong design-tech crossover [11] |
| Thu 12 Nov 2026 | AI Summit Brainport 2026 | Evoluon, Eindhoven | Annual industrial-AI summit, co-organised by AI Hub / Province NB / EAISI; ASML, Philips, TU/e in orbit [9] |
Brainport Industries Campus (BIC) and Brainport Eindhoven’s regional calendar surface smaller events year-round in the same radius [16] [18]. For context, HighTechXL’s annual demo day (XL Day 2026) ran 8 May 2026 at HTC — already past for the Cuchara weekend [17].
Just outside the radius — worth knowing
The 30 km circle stops short of Hasselt and Genk, where Belgian Limburg’s actual IT scene lives. If the trip can stretch ~5 km further south:
| Event | When | Venue | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| BSides Limburg 2026 | 12–13 Mar 2026 (past) | Corda Campus / PXL-NeXT, Hasselt | Community cybersecurity con, ~33 km from Cuchara [19] [4] |
| FTI Festival 2026 — Limburg leg | 16 Oct – 15 Nov 2026 | Corda Campus (Hasselt), Thor Park (Genk) | Flanders’ largest tech festival, opens Corda Arena 13 Nov 2026 [20] [21] |
| Corda Campus community events | Year-round | Hasselt | Corda keynotes, business speed-dates, FTI tie-ins [22] |
| Devoxx Belgium 2026 | 5–9 Oct 2026 | Antwerp | ~75 km — well outside, but the region’s flagship dev conference, listed for completeness [23] |
Bottom line
If the goal is “dinner Sat 30 May + a tech event in radius the same weekend,” there isn’t one — the closest weekend match is the HTC Open Day on Sat 13 Jun 2026 [8]. If a weekday extension works, the Signature Event 2026 on Thu 28 May (two days before the dinner) [7] and the cluster of HTC AI / engineering sessions on Thu 11 Jun, Tue 23 Jun, Tue 30 Jun are the densest IT calendar in radius [12]. For a bigger return trip later in 2026: AI Summit Brainport (12 Nov), LEVEL UP (28 Sep), or DDW (17–25 Oct) — all in Eindhoven, all inside the radius [9] [10] [11].