Every year, thousands of open source enthusiasts travel to Brussels for the unique experience of FOSDEM. This year was no exception, and Ubuntu could not miss it. Despite the winter chill, the ULB Solbosch campus was buzzing with the energy of thousands of open source contributors. This edition was particularly special: It was a marathon of engagement that started early with CentOS Connect, hackathon events, the GNOME advisory board, and ended late with Canonical’s Design and Documentation fringe event.
CentOS Connect: Building bridges… and homelabs
Before the main FOSDEM madness began, I had the privilege of speaking at CentOS Connect 2026. It is always refreshing to step outside our orange pond and collaborate with a different group of Linux contributors.
@gschiano and I took the stage to present Amazing Homelabs with CentOS Stream and LXD. We had a blast showing how these two technologies can work together to create powerful, flexible homelabs. And because we wanted to challenge ourselves, we ran a live demo with our own hardware, where we tested how deep we could nest layers of containers before our hardware would take no more!
Ready, set… FOSDEM!
Even for those who arrived early and attended fringe events, FOSDEM started fast and furious. Before we knew it, the opening talk was live, and the campus was suddenly glowing with the positive energy of the open source community! 
The Ubuntu Booth: An orange beacon of open source
If you walked into the H building, you probably saw the Ubuntu booth, a beacon of orange energy! We were absolutely swamped from the moment the doors opened.
It was incredible to meet old friends, representatives of open source projects, and so many new potential Ubuntu contributors! We answered questions about the upcoming 26.04 LTS, showed off the latest demos, and distributed a mountain of stickers.
Distributions Devroom: Linux architects at work!
Finally, on Sunday, the Distributions Devroom unleashed a barrage of brain tingling talks from all corners of the open source world. This was a labor of love; months of work organizing the Distributions Devroom with peers from other Linux distributions finally coming to life. The organizing group was thrilled to see that the room was always packed, the talks were well received, and the day was smooth.
Lennart Poettering opened the day with a stimulating talk about Varlink and D-Bus, and from there on, it was sparkles all the way! If you want to check some of the sessions, head over to the FOSDEM 2026 Distributions Devroom timetable, where you can find sessions, abstracts, and videos.
Design and Docs: The Fringe Event
FOSDEM didn’t end on Sunday for Ubuntu! On Monday, the Canonical Documentation and Design teams hosted a special fringe event.
We opened our doors to offer clinics and workshops for community projects. It was a quieter, more focused environment compared to the weekend chaos. We helped maintainers polish their READMEs, rethink their UI flows, and structurally improve their project documentation. Seeing the immediate impact of this collaboration was the perfect way to close out the trip.
Until next year!
FOSDEM 2026 was a mad rollercoaster of ideas, friends, waffles, and chocolate. The orange people of Ubuntu left Brussels exhausted but incredibly energized at the same time. Thank you to everyone who came to our talks, stopped by the booth, or joined us at the fringe event.
FOSDEM 2026 is a wrap, but the countdown to FOSDEM 2027 has already begun. See you there!