Email is the workhorse of digital communication. It's one of the oldest decentralized messaging platforms, and we must keep implementations up to date with new standards/techniques/programming languages.
We'll have a "Modern Email" devroom again at FOSDEM 2026, and we're looking for speakers!
We want to get together as email developers/users, learn about each other's projects, have technical discussions, exchange implementation/operational experiences, and share plans and visions for the future of email.
FOSDEM is an annual conference about free and open source software. It takes place at the ULB Solbosch Campus, Brussels, Belgium on 31 Jan/1 Feb 2026. See https://fosdem.org/2026/.
The devroom will be held on Saturday 31 January 2026 (full day). The submission deadline for talks is Wednesday, 10 December, 2025 (end of day).
Please distribute this CfP as widely as possible to interested parties!
Some suggestions for talks:
- Overview of the current state of email (as a keynote).
- Your free/open source software project(s) related to email. From demo to details.
- Current developments, upcoming standards, e.g. JMAP, structured email, ...
- Efforts to modernize our email ecosystem, e.g., through implementations in modern languages.
- Integrating email with other software, e.g., through APIs.
- Message/transport security/authenticity.
- Experiences with deliverability, email operations, anti-spam, hosting, ...
- Related technologies such as calendaring/PIM.
- Visionary talks
- ...
We ask for a short talk abstract (+ proposed duration) and a speaker biography (+ contact info). Any material that shows your affinity to the field is also appreciated, e.g., a collection of links to your work, talks, projects, blog posts, etc.
Submissions must be made through Pretalx (https://fosdem.org/submit) no later than Wednesday, 10 December, 2025.
The suggested duration for a talk is 25 minutes (20 minutes presentation + 5 minutes Q&A). However, we explicitly invite you to propose the best duration for your talk. If the best way to present your project is a 5-minute lightning talk, we'll happily arrange a lightning session!
Depending on the proposals, we may contact you to adapt the time of the session to fit the devroom schedule.
Once the devroom schedule is finalized, we will contact you to help you prepare your talk.
- 30 Oct: Modern Email devroom open for talk submissions
- 10 Dec: Modern Email devroom submission deadline
- 15 Dec: Announcement of final schedule
- 30 Jan: pre-FOSDEM Modern Email Hackathon
- 31 Jan: FOSDEM - "Modern Email" devroom day!
- 31 Jan: Modern Email dinner in evening
We will organize an informal pre-FOSDEM email hackathon on Friday before FOSDEM (30 January). Please contact one of the organizers through email or the matrix channel and/or put your name up at https://github.com/modern-email/FOSDEM-26/wiki/Hackathon-and-Dinner if you're interested in joining.
We need to know who'll attend by January 25 due to building access registration policies.
Following last year's good practice, we will reserve a table for an informal "friends of email" dinner/drinks session, on Saturday evening, January 31, at the end of the devroom day. Put your name up at https://github.com/modern-email/FOSDEM-26/wiki/Hackathon-and-Dinner and/or contact one of the organizers so we can guess the group size (last year we reserved for 15 and 40+ showed up). Venue proposals welcome as well.
Talks and Q&A sessions at FOSDEM will be recorded. The recordings will be published under the same license as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). By being present in the devroom, you give permission to be recorded. The organizers will agree to make exceptions only for exceptional and well-reasoned cases.
For the latest details, see: https://github.com/modern-email/FOSDEM-26
Join the matrix room (also for coordination during FOSDEM): https://matrix.to/#/#modern-email:matrix.org
Contact the organizers:
- Mechiel Lukkien, [email protected]
- Hans-Jörg Happel, [email protected]
- Arnt Gulbrandsen, [email protected]
- Damian Poddebniak, [email protected]
- Benoit Tellier, [email protected]
- Mauro De Gennaro, [email protected]
- Ben Bucksch [email protected]
We are looking forward to a great day at FOSDEM with you!
