Registration for ORConf 2026 is now open! Mark your calendars: ORConf, the FOSSi Foundation's weekend of presentations and networking dedicated to free and open source silicon, returns from Friday to Sunday, September 11-13, 2026, at the Zebrastraat event center in Ghent, Belgium.
Whether you've been to ORConf before or this is your first time, now is the moment to register, book your travel, and start thinking about a talk to submit.
Ghent, the mystic lamb edition
Ghent is one of Belgium's most beautiful cities: a compact, walkable medieval core criss-crossed by canals, with a lively student population, great food, and (of course) excellent beer. It's also home to the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck's "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb", which is where this year's ORConf gets its nickname. Easily reachable by train from Brussels and other major European cities, Ghent is a wonderful place to spend a few extra days exploring before or after the conference.
Co-located with FPL
This year ORConf will be co-located with FPL 2026, the 36th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, which takes place at the same venue from Monday, September 7 to Friday, September 11. If you're attending FPL, stay on for ORConf! And if you're an academic working on FPGAs, FPGA toolchains, or reconfigurable computing, ORConf is a great opportunity to meet the open source silicon community, learn what's happening with open source EDA tools and IP (including plenty that's directly relevant to the FPGA space), and present your own work to a wider audience.
Register now
ORConf is free to attend. If you're able to, please support the event by getting a "Pay what you want" ticket with a donation, and if you're attending on behalf of a company, consider a professional ticket.
Head over to the ORConf page to register now, and we'll see you in Ghent in September!
Book your travel
ORConf runs as a single track of talks on Friday and Saturday, with a social event on Saturday evening, followed by an unconference day with workshops and discussions on Sunday. We recommend arriving on Thursday, September 10, so you're ready for the morning sessions on Friday, and leaving on Sunday evening or Monday morning so you can make the most of your time at ORConf and in Ghent. Ghent is easy to reach by train, car, or plane: Brussels Airport is about an hour away by train, and Ghent-Sint-Pieters station has frequent connections to Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, and beyond. If you're combining your trip with FPL, plan to be in Ghent for the better part of two weeks: FPL runs September 7-11, with ORConf picking up the same day and continuing through the weekend.
Submit a talk
Presentation submissions are open and can be made as part of the registration process; if you already registered, drop us an email at orconf@fossi-foundation.org with your talk proposal.
ORConf is the right venue for talks about anything related to free and open source silicon: EDA tools, IP blocks, logic design and verification, hardware description languages (HDLs), FPGA and ASIC topics, and more. The only requirement is that the work is open source or very strongly related to free and open source silicon.
Full talks are typically around 10 minutes plus time for questions, and lightning talks are 3 minutes, so even if you've only just gotten started on a project, there's a format for you.
Talk submissions close on August 16, 2026. Please submit early, as slots tend to fill up quickly!
Get involved
ORConf is free to attend, but not free to run. We're looking for sponsors to help make this year's event a success: get in touch at orconf@fossi-foundation.org or take a look at our sponsorship prospectus.
Join the #orconf2026:fossi-foundation.org Matrix room to chat with other participants, ask questions, and stay up to date as the schedule comes together.
We can't wait to see you in Ghent!