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How to create a chapter

How to create a chapter

Last Updated: Jul 10, 2025

So you want to start a chapter? Great! Before you create a Start a New Chapter ticket, you need to do a bit of work first:

  • You need at least two and at most five OWASP members to start a chapter. Please find a friend to help you. We do this to ensure that every chapter does not have a single point of failure, and that scheduled chapter meetings go ahead.

  • Every potential leader must read the chapter policy, and agree to the included leader agreement, which requires you to adhere to the code of conduct, amongst other things. Please read these before agreeing to them.

  • Every potential leader needs to be an OWASP Member. If you haven't already, please join OWASP and provision your GSuite account. You will need to provide all the necessary owasp.org email addresses in the application form. You’ll need a new one. OWASP requires every GSuite account to have MFA enabled, so make sure you have a secondary email address on file. You must accept your GSuite invite within 7 days or it will expire. If that happens, log a ticket.

  • In Glue Up, enter your city of residence and Zip or postcode, because at the moment, we validate that you live within 80 km (50 miles) of the chapter location. That might change in the future. For the moment, we will return the ticket to you until all leaders fill this in.

  • Every leader needs to have a GitHub account. If you don’t already have a GitHub account, please sign up, and remember your GitHub username. We require GitHub repo administrators to have MFA enabled, so please enroll in MFA. You need to accept your GitHub invite within 7 days, or it will expire. If it expires, you need to log a ticket.

  • Check that there isn’t already a chapter near your planned chapter’s location. You will need to provide an address for the first chapter meeting. Any other chapter within 80 km (50 miles) will need to be consulted before your chapter will be opened, and it will only be opened if there is no nearby chapter or the other chapter is okay with you opening a chapter.

Once done, you’re ready to click Start a New Chapter.

  1. Fill in the form with all the details from above, and click Send.

  2. We will validate your responses. If they are not ready or correct, we will return the ticket to you.

  3. Once validated, your chapter will be created within three days.

Once you have your chapter, you will need to:

  1. Update your Chapter’s home page in GitHub

  2. Find a speaker and schedule a meeting within 60 days of the chapter being created

  3. Publish the meeting on Meetup.com. This should automatically update your chapter’s home page.

We will check in with you at around day 60 to make sure that you’ve held a meeting and that you’ve got everything you need. If you’ve not held a meeting, please seek help from the Chapter Committee, because if you’ve not held a meeting by day 90, your chapter might be disabled or closed.