FOSDEM 2026 wrapped February 1 in Brussels with a clear message: digital sovereignty isn't a hobby project anymore. The volunteer-run conference drew 1,196 speakers across 71 tracks, continuing growth from 787 speakers in 2023.
What's changed isn't the scale—it's the tone. Sessions on self-hosted infrastructure, community-operated networks, and vendor-independent systems dominated discussions. The FreeBSD project demonstrated long-term governance models for sovereign infrastructure. Smaller projects like SmolBSD showed how minimal, auditable operating systems challenge bloated commercial alternatives.
Worth noting: DN42 network automation and BoxyBSD received attention for lowering barriers to BSD adoption. These aren't enterprise tools yet, but the pattern matters—technical leaders exploring alternatives to hyperscaler lock-in.
The enterprise angle
FOSDEM's 71 tracks included Confidential Computing, Containers, and SBOM devrooms—areas where CIOs are actively making decisions. The conference's strict no-vendor-compensation policy means sessions focus on implementation challenges, not sales pitches.
Virtualization talks covered Rust-VMM (memory-safe hypervisors), Garage S3 operational practices, and VM mobility in Kubernetes clusters. The convergence of traditional virtualization and container orchestration reflects what many enterprises are already doing: running hybrid environments that don't fit vendor marketing categories.
What this signals
FOSDEM's growth—from 63 tracks in 2023 to 71 in 2026—tracks with enterprise interest in open-source infrastructure as a sovereignty play. European organizations particularly are evaluating community-governed alternatives to commercial platforms.
The conference remains free entry, funded by donations and sponsorships. That model scales because the community sees value in independent infrastructure knowledge sharing.
History suggests: When FOSDEM topics move from fringe to mainstream tracks, enterprises start procurement discussions within 18 months. Digital sovereignty sessions weren't in side rooms this year—they were central programming.