Call for Proposals Extended for Talks and Lightning Talks

The Call for Proposals for FOSS4G North America 2026 has been extended for talks and lightning talks until July 20, 2026, or until identified program gaps are filled.

The conference will take place November 2–4 in Sacramento, California, and is already shaping up to include a strong mix of talks, lightning talks, workshops, and posters covering open geospatial tools, data, workflows, and real-world applications.

After reviewing the first round of submissions, we identified a few areas where we would like to strengthen the program. We are especially encouraging additional submissions in the following areas:

Business of Open Source

We would love to see more talks focused on the business, sustainability, governance, and funding models that support open source geospatial work. This could include consulting models, product and service businesses, nonprofit and foundation support, public-sector investment, project governance, contributor pathways, or lessons learned from building and sustaining open source organizations.

Community of Practice

We are also looking for more talks that highlight how communities form, grow, and sustain open geospatial work. These could include regional user groups, cross-sector collaborations, education and training efforts, documentation practices, mentorship, accessibility, inclusion, and the people-centered work that makes open source successful.

Water, Fire, and Resilience

We would like to include a few more presentations focused on water, fire, and resilience. This includes topics such as floodplain mapping, wetlands, water quality, drought, watershed management, wildfire risk, evacuation, fire modeling, disaster response, climate adaptation, and environmental decision-support tools.

Core Open Source Geospatial Tools and Infrastructure

We also want to bolster the steady, essential work that keeps open source geospatial strong. We welcome talks about long-standing tools such as GRASS, GeoServer, PostGIS, QGIS, GDAL, MapServer, PROJ, and GEOS, as well as the many libraries, plugins, standards, workflows, and maintenance practices that support the broader open source geospatial ecosystem.

These projects and communities are foundational to FOSS4G. We would love to hear from maintainers, contributors, users, educators, and organizations working with these tools in practical, technical, community, or operational ways.

Important Dates

  • Submissions for talks and lightning talks are now open through July 20, 2026, or until program gaps are filled.

  • Submissions for workshops are now closed.

  • Poster submissions will remain open as originally scheduled through September 15, 2026.

Submit your proposal ASAP! The Call for Proposals for FOSS4G North America 2026 has been extended for talks and lightning talks until July 20, 2026, or until identified program gaps are filled.

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From Tools to Community: The Heart of FOSS4G North America 2026