Call for Participation: Open Source Design Devroom at FOSDEM 2026

Please see the bottom of this article for the call for proposals link.

FOSDEM is the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting, a free and non-commercial two-day weekend event that offers all open source contributors a place to meet, share ideas, learn and collaborate. Every year, thousands of free and open source software contributors from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels, Belgium. After the success of open source design at previous FOSDEM’s, we are gearing up for the next edition of FOSDEM, taking place at the Université Libre Brussels on 31 January & 1 February 2026.

Open Source Design @ FOSDEM

Open Source Design has been part of FOSDEM for over a decade now! giving designers who work with or contribute to free, libre and open source software (FLOSS) a platform to share their ideas. You can find the link to our devroom here where talks will be annouced once they have been submitted and accepted. The timings and room will also be updated here too. https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/design/

Travel support

Open Source Design has limited fund to support travel, accomodation and expenses for speakers and can be found on our open collective page. We will be prioritising under-represented members of the FOSS community with these travel funds and can offer invitation letters for visas. Please send an email to core@opensourcedesign.net to be considered for travel stipend support.

Get involved!

We invite you to give a talk about contributing design to open source projects!

“Design” can mean anything including typography, graphic design, interaction design, user experience, human-computer interaction, accessibility, information architecture, content strategy, service design, user research, design research and more. You don’t have to be an expert in the field – you could have been involved in a project for as little as a year or as long as a decade. As long as you have been involved with design in any respect in an open source project, we’re interested to hear what you think!

Here are some topics that may inspire your talk:

  • Your experiences contributing to design in an open source project

  • How you use FLOSS tools to design

  • An open source project which is an example of great design

  • Your design process, research methods, and go-to resources while working with open source projects

  • Your ideas on fostering diversity and inclusion in design and open source

  • Anything else related to design and FLOSS!

Thunderbird: Building a Cross-Platform, Scalable Open-Source Design System Laurel Terlesky at FOSDEM 2025

CLI Design for Designers and DevelopersHartmut Obendorf at FOSDEM 2025

The Engineer’s Guide to Design: Merging Technical and Creative Skills in Open Source ProjectsKhushi Garg at FOSDEM 2025

Reimagining Personal Computing with E ink: Community Insights and Design Challenges by Alexander Soto at FOSDEM 2024

Liquid Prompt: yes, we can drastically rethink the design of a shell prompt by nojhan at FOSDEM 2024

Bad UX is Bad Security: Adventures in Qubes OS UX Design by Marta Marczykowska-GĂłrecka at FOSDEM 2024

Penpot 2.0 is here! by Pablo Ruiz-MĂşzquiz at FOSDEM 2024

Accessibility & Open Source: How open source is key to building a more inclusive world by Mike Gifford at FOSDEM 2023

Documenting a Design System: Lessons learned from open sourcing the Orbit docs by Aaron Collier at FOSDEM 2022

Open Source Design movement in Africa by Peace Ojemeh at FOSDEM 2020

What is the talk format?

In 2026, all talks at the Open Source Design devroom would be in-person and recorded/streamed. You will have the stage for 25 minutes in total, so you can have a 20-minute talk with 5 minutes for questions from the audience, or a 25-minute talk with no questions. Talks cannot be longer than 25 mins otherwise you get gently moved off ‘stage’. If you have a longer talk that is interactive, we can consider allocating you 45 minutes for two talk slots but this is a rare likihood.

How can I submit a talk?

Talk submissions will be sent directly to FOSDEM’s Pretalx system. Submissions for talks must select ‘Open Source Design’ under ‘Track’. https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp

There the Open Source Design Core Maintainer team will review talks and accept and reject. We should have space for around 6 20 min talks in the afternoon. You can request a certain time slot, earlier in the afternoon or later in the afternoon but please be aware this will be on a first come first serve basis and subsequent changes once given a slot must be discussed with the other speaker you want to swap with. Additionally we need you to be in the room for 15-20 mins before your talk (or attend the talk before hand) as the room can get quite full and it’s hard to set you up as a speaker if you’re stuck outside the room.

We’re investigating how we can fund a sign language interpreter or live captioning for 2026. To help fund this or discuss what you can offer in terms of support please contact core@opensourcedesign.net

What’s the deadline?

Submission of talks must be done by the end of November 2025

Accepted talks would be announced latest in December 2025.

All deadlines are 23:59 UTC. If your talk is accepted, an Open Source Design volunteer will keep in touch with you to help you meet deadlines and with any technical difficulties you may face.

Additional information

Be sure to read the FOSDEM Code of Conduct.

Date & Location

  • Date: 31 January & 1 February 2026
  • Time: Sunday 1 February 2026 13.00 - 17.00
  • Location: UniversitĂŠ Libre Brussels, Belgium