fosdem-2026

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

The concept is simple: Any project or community can reserve a timeslot (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.

To apply for a BOF session, enter your proposal at https://fosdem.org/submit. Select the BOF/Unconference track and mention in the Submission Notes your preferred timeslots and any times you are unavailable. Also mention if you expect a large audience (most rooms are 40, one has 80 persons).

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

Attendees should be aware of potential transportation disruptions in the days leading up to FOSDEM.

Rail travel

Railway unions have announced a strike notice from Sunday January 25th, 22:00 until Friday January 30th, 22:00. This may affect travel to Brussels for FOSDEM and related fringe events.

While there will be a guaranteed minimum service in place, train frequency may be significantly reduced. Also note that international connections might be affected as well.

Road travel

From Saturday January 31st (evening) until Sunday February 1st (noon), the E40 highway between Leuven and Brussels will be fully closed.

Traffic will be diverted via the Leuven–Brussels expressway.

Further details and links to official railway and traffic information sources are available on our transportation page.

We are pleased to announce the schedule for FOSDEM Junior. Registration for the individual workshops is required.

Links to the registration page can be found on the page of each activity. The full schedule can be viewed on the junior track schedule page.

The room formally known as “Lightning Talks” is now known as /dev/random.

After 25 years, we say goodbye to the old Lightning Talks format. In place, we have two new things!

• /dev/random: 15 minute talks on a random, interesting, FOSS-related subject, just like the older Lightning Talks
• New Lightning Talks: a highly condensed batch of 5 minute quick talks in the main auditorium on various FOSS-related subjects!

Last year we experimented with running a more spontaneous lightning talk format, with a submission deadline closer to the event and strict short time limits (under five minutes) for each speaker.

The experiment was a success, so we’re going to continue using this format in the upcoming FOSDEM edition and expand it slightly.

To avoid getting the existing lightning talk room mixed up with the new format lightning talks, we have renamed it to /dev/random. The format is still the same as in previous years, with 15 minute talks about various random but interesting subjects.

If you have something interesting you want to talk about which didn’t make it into one of the other devrooms, trim it down to 15 minutes and submit here!

To propose a /dev/random talk, go to https://fosdem.org/submit and select /dev/random as the track.

The deadline for /dev/random submissions is the 10th January, with accepted talks being notified around the 17th.

Keep an eye out for more details about taking part in the new lightning talks, but expect:

• Around 5 minute time limit
• Submissions opening closer to the event, and closing a day or two before
• Slides submitted as .pdf as part of the proposal
• Two sessions, one on each day

With great pleasure we can announce that the following project will have a stand at FOSDEM 2026!

• ASF Community
• BSD + FreeBSD Project
• Checkmk
• CiviCRM
• Cloud Native Computing Foundation + OpenInfra & the Linux Foundation: Building the Open Source Infrastructure Ecosystem
• Codeberg and Forgejo
• Computer networks with BIRD, KNOT and Turris
• Debian
• Delta Chat (Sunday)
• Digital Public Goods
• Dolibar ERP CRM + Odoo Community Association (OCA)
• Dronecode Foundation + The Zephyr Project
• Eclipse Foundation
• F-Droid and /e/OS + OW2 FOSS community / Murena degooglized phones and suite
• Fedora Project
• Firefly Zero
• Foreman
• FOSS United + fundingjson (and FLOSS/fund)
• FOSSASIA
• Framework Computer
• Free Android World: From Hardware to Apps – An Open, Sustainable Ecosystem (BlissLabs, IzzyOnDroid & SHIFTphone)
• Free Software Foundation Europe
• Furi Labs
• Gentoo Linux
• GitLab
• GNOME
• GNU Radio
• Google Summer of Code
• Grafana
• Hex sticker booth by NLnet Foundation
• Homebrew
• Infostand on amateur radio
• Internet Archive Europe (Saturday)
• ISRG (Let’s Encrypt, Prossimo, Divvi Up)
• Jenkins
• Joplin
• KAIYUANSHE (China Open Source Alliance)
• KDE
• KiCAD + FreeCAD
• Kiwi TCMS (Saturday)
• Kotlin Community Stand
• LibreOffice
• Linphone
• Linux Foundation Europe + Open Source Security Foundation
• Linux on Mobile
• Luanti (formerly Minetest)
• MapLibre
• MariaDB Server
• Mastodon
• metal-stack
• Mozilla
• MySQL
• Nextcloud
• Nix and NixOS
• Open Culture Foundation + Taiwan Open Source Community
• Open Source at CERN
• Open-Source Firmware Foundation
• OpenAgri Software Services - democratising digital agriculture
• OpenFlexure Microscope
• openHAB
• OpenMandriva
• OpenNebula
• OpenPrinting
• OpenRemote
• OpenSSL Foundation
• openSUSE Project
• OpenTofu & OpenBao (incl. Q&A)
• Percona
• PINE64 Community (Sunday)
• PostgreSQL
• postmarketOS
• privacyIDEA
• Proxmox VE
• Python & Django
• Qubes OS + Genode OS
• RISC-V International
• Rocky Linux
• Software Freedom Conservancy
• Software Heritage (Sunday)
• SOGo Webmail

• Sovereign Identity for server, desktop, and a cloud: Keycloak

  FreeIPA

  SSSD

  OpenWallet (Saturday)

• Sovereign Tech Agency (Sunday)
• T2 SDE Linux
• The Matrix.org Foundation
• the Perl & Raku Foundation - Battle Tested; Future Proof
• Thunderbird
• TinyGo, Mechanoid & WasmVision
• Tor / Tails / NoScript
• Ubuntu Community booth
• VideoLAN
• Weblate
• Wireshark
• wolfSSL
• XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra
• Xen Project
• XMPP & Realtime Lounge

We will announce the location of every stand closer to the event.

Submit your proposal for the FOSDEM main track before it’s too late!

The deadline for main track submissions is earlier than it usually is (16th November, that’s in a couple of days!), so don’t be caught out.

For full details on submission information, look at the original call for participation.