fosdem-2025

As in previous years, some small rooms will be available for Birds of a Feather sessions.

The concept is simple: Any project or community can reserve a timeslot (30 minutes or 1 hour) during which they have the room just to themselves.

These rooms are intended for ad-hoc discussions, meet-ups or brainstorming sessions. They are not a replacement for a developer room and they are certainly not intended for talks.

Schedules: BOF Track A, BOF Track B, BOF Track C.

To apply for a BOF session, enter your proposal at https://fosdem.org/submit. Select any of the BOF tracks and mention in the Submission Notes your preferred timeslots and any times you are unavailable.

Reservations can be made in advance or during the event itself subject to capacity.

If your non-geek partner and/or kids are joining you to FOSDEM, they may be interested in spending some time exploring Brussels while you attend the conference.

Like previous years, FOSDEM is organising sightseeing tours.

With FOSDEM just a few days away, it is time for us to enlist your help.

Every year, an enthusiastic band of volunteers make FOSDEM happen and make it a fun and safe place for all our attendees. We could not do this without you. This year we again need as many hands as possible, especially for heralding during the conference, during the buildup (starting Friday at noon) and teardown (Sunday evening). No need to worry about missing lunch at the weekend, food will be provided.

Would you like to be part of the team that makes FOSDEM tick? Sign up here! You could really help us out with the following:

• Build-up - Setting up the venue on Friday: this mostly involves carrying tables to their destinations and setting them up, putting up signage, covering the walls in brown paper... in short: transform the campus into a conference venue. We need as many volunteers as possible for this task.
• Network - Deploying the network on Friday: rolling out, neatly securing and crimping UTP cables. People with experience rolling out networks and crimping cables are very welcome!
• InfoDesk - Be available at the InfoDesk during the weekend: help out fellow attendees with their questions, sell t-shirts etc. Proficiency in English is a must, but if you are proficient in other languages as well, it certainly wouldn't hurt.
• VirtuaL InfoDesk - Want to volunteer, but cant be present at the ULB? We also have our InfoDesk on Matrix. Provide technical support for people watching streams, or pic up other questions about FOSDEM as them come in.
• Heralding - Briefly introduce the speakers and the topics of their talks, make sure all talks end on time by giving speakers cues near the end of their time slot. Keep an eye out on room safety and report potential issues such as overcrowded rooms before it becomes more than a "potential" issue.
• Video - Capturing and recording video. Ensure the livestreams to thousands are up and running and all talks are recorded.
• Tear-down - (and cleanup) on Sunday evening: collecting beer bottles, tearing down the network, pulling brown paper off the walls, taking down the signage, stacking the rental tables in neat heaps, broom the floors etc. Basically, make sure we're welcome again next year.
• Upacking the van on Monday - All of our gear needs to come out of the vans and back into storage after the conference.
• And many the many other tasks and ways to volunteer over the weekend.

For more information, please have a look at our volunteer FAQ

If any or all of these sound like your kind of gig, pick your task(s) at our volunteer tool, subscribe to the volunteers mailing list and keep an eye on #fosdem-infodesk on Matrix Feel free to shout out and introduce yourself!

We were made aware of planned protests during the upcoming FOSDEM 2025 in response to a scheduled talk which is causing controversy. The talk in question is claimed to be on the schedule for sponsorship reasons; additionally, some of the speakers scheduled to speak during this talk are controversial to some of our attendees.

To be clear, in our 25 year history, we have always had the hard rule that sponsorship does not give you preferential treatment for talk selection; this policy has always applied, it applied in this particular case, and it will continue to apply in the future. Any claims that any talk was allowed for sponsorship reasons are false.

At FOSDEM, we have always allowed and welcomed protest, even when that protest was directed at the organization or one of our sponsors. Open Source and Free Software are inherently political, and as such it is normal and expected that our attendees are more vocal about the wider world, and about FOSDEM in particular. As such, if a peaceful protest were to take place during the talk in question, we will not take action, provided the protest is indeed peaceful and does not disrupt the proceedings.

We would appreciate if anyone organizing a protest would contact us in advance at info@fosdem.org so we can ensure that we’re able to meet our crowd control and fire safety obligations.

FOSDEM Junior is a collaboration between FOSDEM, Code Club, CoderDojo, developers, and volunteers to organize workshops and activities for children during the FOSDEM weekend.

These activities are for children to learn and get inspired about technology. This year’s activities include microcontrollers, embroidery, game development, music, and mobile application development.

Last year we organized the first edition of FOSDEM Junior. We are pleased to announce that we will be back this year.

Registration for individual workshops is required. Links can be found on the page of each activity. The full schedule can be viewed at the junior track schedule page.

You can contact the organisers by using the dedicated email address: junior@fosdem.org. There is a mailing list for public discussions about FOSDEM Junior, which can be subscribed to via junior-discuss.

The deadline for talk submissions is rapidly approaching!

If you are interested in talking at FOSDEM this year (yes, I'm talking to you!), it's time to polish off and submit those proposals in the next few days before the 1st:

• Devrooms: follow the instructions in each cfp listed here
• Main tracks: for topics which are more general or don't fit in a devroom, select 'Main' as the track here
• Lightning talks: for short talks (15 minutes) on a wide range of topics, select 'Lightning Talks' as the track here