FOSDEM 2026: Join Fedora, general organization and collaboration

Project Discussion
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What is FOSDEM? What is Fedora doing there?

FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas, and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in! FOSDEM 2026 will be held on 31 January and 1 February, 2025.

FOSDEM is the perfect place for Fedora people to gather if they have the opportunity to attend. Fedora will be present at FOSDEM with a booth and also as organizers of the Distribution devroom.

If I want to attend, what do I need to do?

If you are planning to attend, we encourage you to write down your name in the attendee list at the FOSDEM 2026 Fedora wiki article. In addition, you should check the “official” hotel. Currently we don’t have any room block or discount available but it is a safe option if you are in doubt of what hotel should you pick up. Folks from Fedora community will be around.

Could I be sponsored by Fedora?

While Fedora budget is quite limited, there is an opportunity to apply for sponsorship. Please keep on mind that we cannot sponsor everyone and that we might need to prioritize. If you want to boost up your chances, we recommend that you actively contribute to FOSDEM increasing Fedora presence i.e propose talks, workshops, BoFs..

If you want to apply for sponsor please add your requested budget to the budget proposal. Please keep on mind that event owners might reach out to you to ask questions or proposed alternative options for sponsoring.

Every sponsored Fedora folk will be asked to take some shifts at Fedora booth or Distribution devroom.

I am attending! How can I help?

Well, every year we need plenty of help during FOSDEM on Fedora booth or Distribution devroom. Reach out to the event owners mentioned in the FOSDEM 2026 Fedora wiki article for more information. They will also ask around multiple official channels calling for volunteers.

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Thanks @ffmancera for kicking this off! :tada: I’m looking forward to another super year with Fedora at FOSDEM. The Distributions DevRoom is accepted for a full day on Sunday. We are still awaiting the official news on the Fedora stand, but hopefully past precedent will be kind to us there. :crossed_fingers:

I am exploring whether I can get a discounted room block and let people self-book their rooms through the block, but this sort of stuff is complicated to figure out :thinking: If I have any updates here, I will share it here on this topic.

A thought I want to leave for consideration is for folks who might request travel from regions outside of Europe. Historically, we have spent a lot on FOSDEM as a project… but then it leaves us with less funds to do other events later in the year. In 2026, I hope that we can explore new events in regions where we have not been active in a long while. For example, there are some cool events happening in Asia-Pacific (COSCUP, FOSS Asia) and Africa (OSCAFest and the recent Fedora Docs regional workshops).

If you request sponsorship from a region where it is very expensive to fly you to Europe, this could mean we have less flexibility to do other events in new places later in the year. It could be more wise and smart for Fedora to support you in organizing events closer to your home. I am happy to chat more about this in a new Fedora Discussion topic or in the #ambassadors:fedoraproject.org Matrix room.

I guess after a month or two, y’all will need to a volunteer spreadsheet too. :slight_smile: If you cannot find the 2025 template, ping me on Matrix and I can share it.

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Thanks for kicking this one off @ffmancera and @dmellado (and thanks for the ping @jflory7[1]). Like the previous years, I am willing to help out with both Fedora Project (and CentOS Project) booths[2] and the Distribution Devroom. I will prolly add my name under the budget request area, given I am uncertain if I would be funded by the team for this trip - but yeah, feel free to tag me in for whenever you need any logistical help - spreadsheets and all etc .- I will help.

  1. Hush hush - Is it still early to announce the Fedora Badges hackfest thingy? ↩︎

  2. Assuming that they are besides each other - Please god, please let them be ↩︎

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Bonus reminder that we hold CentOS Connect on the Thursday and Friday before FOSDEM.

We have a larger space this year with lots of tables for impromptu meetings and hackfests. There will be Fedora contributors around, so plan to join if you’re able.

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RE: Fedora Badges at FOSDEM. I don’t think it is hush-hush, but this is a good opportunity to get the conversation out of Matrix and DMs, and into the open.

I am aware that there are a handful of folks who both are likely to be in Brussels and have some hands-on engagement with the Fedora Badges stack. I think @abompard and @ekidney are likely to be some of those people too? Aurélien represents a development POV and Emma represents a design POV. I also know you, @t0xic0der, have spent time on the Badges codebase and it sounds like you are also planning to be in Brussels.

Lately, the Fedora Data WG has done some interesting work to make it easier to access and work with various Fedora data sources. @rwright represents some of this work, and I already see his name listed as a planned attendee at FOSDEM.

I have also seen some interesting chats with @gwmngilfen, @jspaleta, and @moralcode around metrics for engagement with events, and using something like Fedora Badges to help us understand whether an event is actually helping us grow the community, and ultimately achieve the Fedora Strategy 2028 of doubling the number of active weekly contributors. It is a hard thing to measure, but Fedora Badges gives us a way to better understand whether an event is actually helping move the needle or not on this. I believe all three of them are likely to be in Brussels too.

So, after I realized this, I thought it might be a convenient time to get some meaningful work done on Fedora Badges. By late January, I think the Forgejo work will be much further along. It would be awesome to see the Fedora Badges stack unified in one place on Forgejo. Today, we are having Fedora Badges work and discussions across three different git forges (GitHub, GitLab, and Pagure). I also think it would be a good opportunity to actually evaluate an event that we all have some experience with. Could we look at the past few FOSDEM’s and figure out if we are actually growing the community each year? Or are we engaging with the same people year after year? Being able to walk away from Brussels with some of these insights, and knowing how we could repeat them for other events, would be especially interesting to me.

Right now, these are only ideas in my head. I don’t have the capacity to plan much. But if it did happen, I am sure I could find time to be in the room too. I used to be a Badges sysadmin and developer way back, so I could probably contribute something meaningful. But for this idea to come together, we would need someone to put together a proposal of how we can make the most of our limited, precious time there in Brussels together on Fedora Badges.

Thoughts?

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@ffmancera Last FOSDEM, I had the opportunity to be part of the Fedora booth. This year, I hope to be present again and support the Fedora team in any way I can. I’m always at your service to help with anything I can at this time! :slight_smile:

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FYI: Fedora project stand has been accepted officially!

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