OKFN at Barcelona Open Tech Week 2026: Follow Our Sessions

Next week, Barcelona will become the world’s capital of open technology, and the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is proud to contribute to this ecosystem at multiple levels.

From 26–31 October 2026, the city will host the second edition of Open Tech Week (OTW), an international gathering dedicated to open technologies, digital rights and democratic innovation. Over five days, researchers, activists, policymakers and builders will come together across a programme that combines research, hands-on experimentation and a global assembly on the future of open technologies.

OKFN is co-hosting the Open Technology Research Symposium 2026, leading three sessions at the Mozilla Festival, and standing with long-time partners including Decidim Fest, the Open Technologies Policy Summit and Xnet’s 4D Conference. We are also bringing our latest practical resources to Barcelona: four new publications and a brand-new course on the School of Data.

Here is where you will find us, and what we are bringing to the week.

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Co-hosting the Open Technology Research Symposium

The week opens with the inaugural Open Technology Research (OTR) Symposium on 26–27 October at the University of Barcelona. OKFN is a founding member and co-host of OTR, alongside OpenForum Europe (OFE), the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund (D//F).

Themed “Shaping the Open Transition,” the Symposium is designed to move from diagnosis to action: from mapping the landscape to charting the path forward for the adoption, sustainability and impact of open technologies. The response to the Call for Proposals exceeded expectations, with more than 140 submissions from researchers, practitioners, governments and community organisations around the world.

The programme is organised around six research tracks:

• Governance, including governance and AI
• Open source hardware
• Sustainability and business models
• Behavioural change and adoption
• Open science and research infrastructure
• Public procurement ecosystem

👉🏾 Check the full programme here.
👉🏾 You can still register here.

The event will also feature keynote sessions, dedicated discussions on advancing a shared OTR research agenda, and the presentation of the Basil Cousins Award for an emerging researcher.

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Three Sessions at MozFest

From 28–30 October, MozFest returns to Fabra i Coats – a former industrial complex turned cultural powerhouse. Under the theme “Wilding,” the festival will bring together over 2,000 people and more than 200 experiences to explore how we can “re-wild” the web and build alternatives to the centralisation of technology.

OKFN is hosting three sessions during the festival:

🔵 Free your data! Using an MCP to let people access your data in new ways
Thursday, 29 October, 10:00 CET — A2 Room

This session explores how a Model Context Protocol (MCP) can act as a bridge between AI tools and trusted, open data sources—including CKAN, the open-source data portal software that OKFN has stewarded for 20 years. It draws on OKFN’s practical work connecting large language models to public open data in ways that keep information traceable and reliable. With Kannika Thaimai and Patricio Del Boca.

🔵 AI Learning Labs: How Do You Build a Responsible Climate Chatbot?
Thursday, 29 October, 10:00 CET — G1 Room

Drawing on our AI Learning Labs initiative, this session walks through the design choices behind CABot, a climate chatbot developed with the #semanticClimate team. It covers the practicalities of building AI that is accurate, transparent and grounded in trusted knowledge—turning real-world experimentation into replicable methods for public-interest organisations. With Renata Avila and Solana Larsen.

🔵 Cultivating Public Goods: Joint strategies to weeding out AI exploitation
Thursday, 29 October, 15:30 CET — G1 Room

This session convenes a strategic discussion on how the open movement can collectively resist and design against the exploitation of public goods by AI systems, moving beyond critique toward joint, actionable strategies. With Jolan Wuyts, Angela Odour Lungati (Ushahidi), Renata Avila (OKFN), Anna Tumadóttir (Creative Commons) and Lea Gimpel (DPGA).

👉🏾 Check the full programme here.

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Standing with Our Partners

Barcelona Open Tech Week is a collaborative effort, and OKFN is proud to support the programmes of several long-time partners.

Decidim Fest returns from 28–30 October at Canòdrom and Fabra i Coats under the theme “Democracy and technology in a multipolar world,” tackling the geopolitical challenges shaping digital governance. Decidim is a crucial part of the open digital infrastructure ecosystem, and we will be following and amplifying the conversations.

The Open Technologies Policy Summit 2026 is the first event on digital sovereignty and public policy to be held in Catalonia. We continue to support the work of bringing open source principles into policy-making at local, national and European levels.

The 4D Conference, promoted by our partners at Xnet – Institute for Democratic Digitalisation and Accent Obert, returns for its third edition on 29 October. Themed around humour, power and digital rights, it explores how satire and creativity can challenge power and inspire action. We will be present to support and learn from this vital work.

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Bringing New Knowledge to Barcelona

Beyond the stage, we are bringing our latest research and learning tools to share directly with the community.

We will be releasing and distributing four new OKFN publications at the events:

These works are results from two of our most recent initiatives, The Tech We Want and the AI Learning Labs, and represent the cutting edge of our thinking across open data, AI and the digital commons. We look forward to putting them into the hands of practitioners, researchers and advocates.

We are also launching a brand-new course on our learning platform, School of Data:

Developed from the real-world experience of building CABot in our AI Learning Labs, this hands-on course spans five modules and 35 lessons. It takes learners from the fundamentals of how Large Language Models work through to the full architecture of a responsible, source-grounded chatbot—with responsibility, fairness, privacy and sustainability at its centre.

The MozFest session on the Climate Chatbot will serve as a live, interactive companion to this course, offering a first-hand look at the principles it teaches.

See You in BCN

Barcelona Open Tech Week reflects the growing maturity and ambition of the open technology movement. From foundational research to hands-on AI literacy, OKFN is bringing a full spectrum of work to the city. If you are in Barcelona, come find us—whether at the Symposium, at one of our MozFest sessions, or in the corridors between events. Let’s shape the open transition together.

Follow OKFN online at Barcelona Open Tech Week 2026:

For media contacts and any other aspects relating to OKFN’s participation at the multiple events, contact info@okfn.org.