Conference-Europe-2026

Call for venue

FOSS4G-Europe conference committee invites all interested groups from Europe to Call for venue for FOSS4G-Europe-2026

The proposals shall be submitted by end-of-day 2025-08-31 to Conference-europe mailing list.

Selection process

Background

FOSS4G-Europe conference is an international symposium, where people meet to discuss and present latest development in the open source software for geospatial.

The conference is usually held in the beginning of summer. The overall schedule is not formalized, and is up for the organizers to decide. Usually it includes day(s) for workshops, spoken word presentations and OSGeo Community sprint. And don't forget social/networking events. Although FOSS4G conferences are dev/user confs, they are also a place for meeting old friends and making new ones - they are our community festival. They are the time for us all to get together and celebrate the things we have achieved and discuss how we should move onward.

Historically the number of attendants at FOSS4G-Europe has been around 200-300 people (or less) with the exception of:

• Conference-Europe_2015-Como (Como, Italy) with 400 participants,
• FOSS4G-Europe-2024 (Tartu, Estonia) with 450 in-person attendees and about 100 attendees remained on the waiting list(!).
• FOSS4G-Europe-2025 (Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina) with 380 participants

Capacity planning is very important and if possible you should be ready to accommodate changes as they become apparent.

As a regional conference FOSS4G-Europe should create excellent opportunities for participating for those who have never been to a FOSS4G before or will not be able to join the global conference. Please keep this in mind during budgeting and coming up with ticket prices.

Before submitting a proposal, read the FOSS4G_Manifesto#FOSS4G_Europe_Manifesto and feel free to reach out to any of the previous event organizers.

How to submit proposal

Let's try to keep the process informal - preparing a "full-blown" proposal takes time to prepare, as well as working through them. And we do not want to create an atmosphere of competition between the interested parties. In order to understand the options that we have, please send an e-mail to the Conference-Europe mailing list answering following questions:

• Where the conference should happen - country, city
• What is your proposed venue? (include access to Internet, room sizes, maximum attendees, wheelchair access, ventilation and air-conditioning)
• Who are the LOC members and what is their experience with organizing FOSS4G-type events
• Are you partnering with a local university? Which one and what is the nature of this partnership
• Are you partnering with the local municipality? What is the nature of this partnership
• Are you partnering with any other local NGO or not-for-profit?
• Livestream/recording - will the event have it?
• Dates - when would the conference happen (note differences in vacation periods across Europe North to the South)
• A rough schedule overview for the week (include social events)
• What are the traveling options from Europe (trains? ferries? buses? airplanes?)
• What are the accommodation possibilities (include rough costs)
• Early thoughts on prices of conference attendance? (indicative estimates)
• Do you plan for child care?
• What do you expect, FOSS4G-Europe conference will bring to your region
• Please indicate, is your proposal valid for this time only, or would you also be willing to stay on a waiting list for later years.

Proposal deadline: 2025-08-31 end-of-day

Additional information for the proposal

• Expect around 400 attendees. So far, the number has been between 100+ at FOSS4G-CEE in Prague (2012) to ~450 in Tartu (2024). We do not set any upper limit to attendees number - this lies solely with the LOC.
• Recordings of the parallel sessions is a must. Livestreaming is a possibility and helps us reach wider audiences.
• Regardless of the expected number of attendees, capacity planning is very important and if possible you should be ready to accommodate changes as they become apparent.
• The growing number of participants is not the main goal of the event. We rather prefer modest costs for attendees, therefore co-organising the event with universities might be a good way, how to keep the costs lower.
• Cooperation with universities of course implies careful selection of conference date, which is usually, but not necessarily, in the holiday season.
• At the same time keep in mind the typical vacation times in Europe which differ from North to South.
• Although the mobile data roaming policy in the European Union has changed, we still advise you to make sure, that the venue is covered with stable and reliable WIFI connectivity. This is especially the case when the venue is not situated in a EU member state. Consider also, that a significant portion of participants are coming from non-EU countries.
• If the venue is not located in a EU member state, please be advised to use (an extra) EU-based bank account. SEPA payments really makes lives easier.
• The communication language of the conference is English
• FOSS4G Europe usually has a 3-day main conference, with ~4-5 parallel sessions, each talk slot arranged for 30 minutes (including discussions, and time for exchanging rooms), or 5-minute lightning talks.
• FOSS4G Europe main conference usually has a separate Academic track during the parallel sessions with proceedings published in the days leading up to the conference.
• Workshops are also part of the conference. You should organize the rooms but it is fine to expect participants to use their own laptops. The workshop slots are typically 4-hours, but could also be full day 8-hours slots.
• The conference week should also host a B2B (business-to-business) meeting, preferably on the evening before the main conference start. B2B helps companies and individuals running FOSS-based businesses to network. There is no formal setup for the event but usually includes some form of pitching-time and/or speed-dating.
• Provide space and administrative help to organize the Geochicas take <your city name> event. This event is organized in cooperation with GeochicasOSM and a local feminist or women-led organisation. It should be scheduled on the evening before the main conference start, but not clashing time-wise with B2B or other conference events.
• You should also provide several rooms during the conference for BoF (Birds-of-a-Feather) meetings.
• Community Sprint events are part of the conference and take place before or after the main conference (1-2 days). If you can cover both time frames, it would be appreciated. You should provide quiet work-rooms and offer administrative help as needed.
• Please refer to FOSS4G-Europe Manifesto for further details
• There is also FOSS4G Handbook you might find useful
• We believe, students are our future - please take significant discount for students into your budget proposal
• What will you do if travel is significantly restricted in 2026? What is your financial strategy to make the event sustainable in this complex situation?

Position of the Local organisation committee to OSGeo and Conference committee Europe

• The FOSS4G-Europe Conference committee will, after the selection process, "kindly ask" the best venue offer, to host FOSS4G-Europe on behalf of OSGeo-European chapter (in formation)
• Program committee shall be delegated from nominees from LOC as well as OSGeo on mutual understanding manner. The best would be to have a mix of OSGeo representatives with a previous FOSS4G Program Committee experience and LOC members co-chairing the committees (2-3 people max).
• The LOC can count for the help of the OSGeo Conference Resources group https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Resources

Dates

Item	Date
Start and end of proposal submission. Proposals shall be sent to Conference-Europe mailing list	2025-08-01 - 2025-08-31
Selection period. Discussions on the mailing list / video calls	2025-09-01 - 2025-09-21
Vote by FOSS4G-Europe Conference committee committee (if required)	Last week of September 2025
Venue announcement	End of September 2025
Call for papers and workshops	December 2025 - February 2026
Papers and workshops selection period	February 2026 - March 2026
Conference and accompanying events	Summer 2026