Open Source Conference Luxembourg 2026

Belval spends a lot of the year being the place where research happens quietly. On Wednesday 7 October it gets to be the place where the conversation happens out loud.

The Open Source Conference Luxembourg returns to the Terres Rouges building for a full day built around one question: what does digital sovereignty actually look like when you stop talking about it and start building it. The organisers put it plainly. While some considered digital sovereignty an impossible endeavour, others decided to lead by example and invest in open source software and skills to show that it is indeed possible.

The programme runs across several tracks, and the spread tells you who this is for. Public sector, and specifically how organisations set up an Open Source Program Office and manage the transition. Artificial intelligence, with a focus on open models and who gets access to them. Cyber security, covering both the vulnerabilities and the tools that guard against them. EdTech and academia. Decentralised and self-hosted technologies. Plus a broader strand on community, governance and the business of open source.

The full programme is now out: about ninety sessions from 09:00 to 18:00, in the main auditorium and ten rooms alongside it. The morning opens in the auditorium with Marco D’Amico of the Digital Learning Hub and the Minister for Digitalisation and Higher Education, then a talk on the European Union’s open source strategy. From 11:30 the day splits into tracks, and the titles give a good flavour: how the French Ministry of Education is building digital commons for its teachers, a view from the open source office at CERN, twenty-five years of Jabber and XMPP, and hands-on workshops on Qubes OS and on building an AI assessment sandbox. The agenda has every session by room. The atrium handles the part everyone actually turns up for, which is the standing around with a coffee talking to someone who solved last year’s problem.

Two practical things. Tickets are twenty euros, and five euros if you are a student, which for a full day of talks by people who build this software for a living is close to free. And the organisers ask everyone to register, so they can plan the catering, the T-shirts and the size of each room; schools, institutions and companies wanting tickets in bulk can contact them for a group booking.