Call for Participation: Open Source Design Devroom at FOSDEM 2027

Call for Participation: Open Source Design and Open User Research Devroom at FOSDEM 2027

TL;DR: Submit session proposals for the Open Source Design Devroom of FOSDEM 2027 in Brussels until end of November 2026.

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 January 30th & 31st 2027.

Open Source Design @ FOSDEM

Open Source Design has been part of FOSDEM for over a decade now! giving designers and user researchers who work with or contribute to free, libre and open source software (FLOSS) a platform to share their ideas. Much like the previous years, Open Source Design is applying for a devroom at FOSDEM 2027 and will update this article if and when we are accepted and also what day/times we have for the open source design and open user research devroom.

Travel support

Open Source Design has limited fund to support travel, accommodation 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.

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 FOSS 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!

Some examples of previous talks featured at the Open Source Design devroom at FOSDEM are:

The UI Layer of Security: What could go wrong? Elio Qoshi and Anja Xhakani at FOSDEM 2026

Design Systems in Open Source: The KDE Plasma Desktop Andres Betts at FOSDEM 2026

You Don’t Need to Be a Designer to Design: Fixing UX in Open Source Archita Gorle at FOSDEM 2026

Understanding developer needs - User research in Forgejo Otto Richter at FOSDEM 2026

Use eye tracking to figure out usability issues, the open source way Dmitriy Kostiuk at FOSDEM 2026

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

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

What is the talk format?

In 2027, 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’. Unfortunately we cannot support remote talks being given live at FOSDEM 2027 or playing a recorded talk in the room.

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 & Open User Research’ under ‘Track’.

Then the Open Source Design Core Maintainer team will review talks and accept and reject. We should have space for between 6-10 talks depending on whether we are awarded a half day or a full day.

What’s the deadline?

Submission of talks must be done by the end of November 2026

Accepted talks would be announced latest in December 2026.

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 and also the news from the FOSDEM team.

More information: https://fosdem.org/