Last week I went to FOSDEM for the first time.
Travel
I went entirely by train, getting the train from York to London in the afternoon and staying overnight in London to then go on the Eurostar in the morning.
I had already been on the Eurostar a few years back, the check in was straightforward though it was surprisingly busy for a weekday morning.
About two hours later you arrive in Brussels, you just walk off the train and straight into Brussels Midi station. From there the plan was to just check in, meet up with some friends and have a look around the city centre, mainly the Grand Place and the EU Parliament.
The Conference
FOSDEM runs on the Saturday and Sunday, throughout most of the day (9am-6pm). This was the first conference that I have ever been to, and will probably be the biggest ever. There are over 8000 attendees (over the two days) and 1000 talks you could go to.
To get there you can take public transport, it’s possible to buy a ticket or just pay with a contactless card. I saw that the trams and buses were packed, so myself and my friends (some went last year) walked there.
But walking there isn’t for everyone, it’s quite a distance from the centre of Brussels and I think some people do overestimate how far they think they can walk. Since people coming and going is more distributed Saturday evening and Sunday morning, travelling on the tram wasn’t too hard on those days.
Most rooms have a specific topic, like databases, package managers, legal and policy, etc. Others like Janson (the largest one) were more varied. It’s possible to sit in the same room for a few hours to watch multiple talks, but my plan was to visit a few different rooms.
You will find that it’s very busy. The most popular rooms (databases, for instance) had long queues and you might not be able to get into the talk unless you arrive for the previous one.
Aside from the talks, there are also lots of stands from all sorts of projects dotted around. You can pick up things like stickers for free, others like Mastodon were selling pin badges.
Talks I Attended
Saturday:
- Welcome to FOSDEM 2026
- FOSS in times of war, scarcity and (adversarial) AI
- Name resolution in package management systems - A reproducibility perspective
- Server, Storage Engine, Protocol, Client: Suspects of a MySQL Performance Mystery
- The story of the Vizio lawsuit - a historic case for user rights, nearly complete!
- “Online Safety” laws: reflections for FOSS projects
- Lightning lightning talks 1
- Adversarial Interoperability - Writing a Microsoft Bob application
- raylib: a 12-year adventure as a solo-maintainer
Sunday
- Who Funds the Egg? Cracking the FOSS Funding Paradox
- Fear and Loathing in the App Stores: when FLOSS principles collide with the Gatekeeper interests
- Open Source Design, the wake-up call for developers!
- The Geopolitics of Code: From Digital Sovereignty to Global Fragmentation
- The Hacker Folk Art of Esoteric Code
- Lightning lightning talks 2
- Open Source Security in spite of AI Looking back at the list, I only went to three of the talks which I planned to. Mainly because I had to find my way around and found others on the day, particularly the ones on Vizio, Microsoft Bob and esoteric programming languages.
Food
There are multiple food trucks down the middle of the university, selling things like hotdogs and burgers, waffles and drinks. It was busy there at lunchtime, so some people might want to bring food to save time / travel elsewhere for more options.
For breakfast every supermarket will have some sort of bakery with the usual pastries. Hotels will charge a lot more, so assuming you don’t want anything hot it’s definitely worth considering doing this.
Brussels isn’t short of independent restaurants, there will be many authentic brasseries serving typical Belgian food (carbonade flamande, moules frites) but you’ll find other cuisines too which will have vegetarian/vegan options which aren’t just salads.
One of the nights we went to the Wolf food market near De Broukère station. It’s quite a casual place with all sorts of street food which is worth going to if you’re looking for something quick. There aren’t many big tables and it was packed when we went, so its better suited if there’s just a few of you.
Overall
- There is a lot there. I think everyone could find something they were interested in.
- Main talks and rooms get busy, as well as food, so you need to allow plenty of time and arrive early. Staff will close the rooms when they get too full and there isn’t much standing space.
- Noticeable number of people are on their phones or laptops in talks. Some taking notes, others trying to pass the time…
Will I go again? Maybe. I enjoyed going to quite a few of the talks but going for two days did feel quite long. If I did go again, chances are I would stay fewer nights overnight or only go on one day to make it less exhausting.