Europe is facing structural questions about its digital sovereignty, a concept which now covers all of its strategic challenges in terms of competitiveness, market concentration, technological dependencies and systemic resilience. In this context, the 2026 edition of the EU Open Source Policy Summit will be held on January 30, 2026 in Brusselswith online participation possible.
The summit will bring together European public decision-makers, national administration officials, industrial leaders and major open source players around a central proposition: open source constitutes an operational lever of digital sovereignty for the European Union.
A program focused on public policies and their implementation
The programming will cover all the issues currently structuring the European digital agenda. The debates will focus in particular on the evolution of the automotive sector towards collaborative software development models, the security of open source within the framework of the Cyber Resilience Act and the European Sovereign Tech Fund, as well as the transformation of the cloud market.
Discussions will also address issues of interoperability, technological lock-in, public procurement and initiatives around EuroStack. Other sequences will be devoted to open trust infrastructures for artificial intelligence, digital identity and essential public services, to the role of Open Source Program Offices in the public sector, or to the prospects of a fourth European standardization organization dedicated to open development.
A summit anchored in European industrial priorities
The 2026 edition will pay particular attention to the links between open source and industrial innovation. The opportunities offered by open technologies at the semiconductor level, particularly around alternatives to CUDA and the RISC-V architecture, will be the subject of dedicated sessions. The aim is to examine how openness can support European technological autonomy while strengthening long-term innovation capacity.
Leading interventions
Among the keynote speakers are Henna VirkkunenExecutive Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of technological sovereignty, security and democracy, as well as Dirk SchrödterMinister of Digitalization of the State of Schleswig-Holstein. They will be joined by leaders from the European and international open source ecosystem, including Gabriele Columbro, Máirín Duffy, Frank Feldmann, Mike Milinkovich And Felix Reda.
Representatives of European institutions, including the Commission and Parliament, will also participate in the roundtables, alongside business leaders, open source foundations and large industrial users.
A day structured around the main axes of sovereignty
The day will open with a sequence devoted to the role of software in European industrial strategy, followed by panels on Europe’s place as a global hub for open source, on economic security and interoperability, and on the challenges of public procurement. The afternoon will delve into the role of OSPOs, European alternatives in the cloud and AI, as well as the impact of open source on the competitiveness of the automotive sector.
Several sessions will also be dedicated to structuring announcements, including the launch of the Open Technology Research initiative and a presentation linked to UN Open Source Week 2026 and the UN principles of open source.
A meeting for public and industrial decision-makers
The EU Open Source Policy Summit 2026 is aimed at politicians, administrations, large companies using digital technologies and open source players involved in the definition and implementation of European policies. By focusing on the alignment of regulatory frameworks, public procurement and industrial strategies, the event offers a factual reading of the conditions in which open source can contribute to a more structured and resilient European digital sovereignty.
