Open Source Experience · 2026

Agoris analysis · updated October 2026

Key facts

• Open Source Experience is the Paris trade show for open source IT solutions, focused on digital sovereignty and the resilience of information systems. It is aimed at CIOs and IT decision-makers in the public sector, local authorities and businesses.
• Next edition: the 6th, on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 December 2026, from 9:00 to 18:00, at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, Hall 5.2. This is a new venue: the trade show has left the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, where the 2025 edition took place.
• Organiser: Systematic Paris-Region, a European competitiveness cluster, which backs the event through its Open Source Hub. Co-organiser: Infopro Digital Trade Shows, which handles day-to-day organisation on behalf of Systematic.
• Annual since its creation in 2021, with one edition each autumn or early winter in Paris.
• Scale advertised for 2026: 100 exhibitors expected and 130 conferences and workshops. In 2025, the trade show announced 90 exhibitors and 130 conferences, with more than 4,000 participants expected.
• Free entry on registration, strictly for professionals. The DEVOPS REX conference, which is paid, takes place on the same dates and at the same venue.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The exhibition area brings together software publishers, integrators, SaaS platforms, consultants, training providers and associations. What they share is the open source model: they come to present an open alternative to proprietary software, from collaboration suites to infrastructure monitoring, asset management, databases and security.

The offering is organised into six themes for 2026: digital sovereignty, governance and business models; open infrastructure, cloud and sovereign platforms; open AI, models, data and sovereign ecosystems; cybersecurity, trust and resilience; sovereign enterprise application platform; open source culture, skills and professions. Migration and exit from proprietary software are explicitly among the topics of the track on enterprise solutions, and the theme “Sovereign enterprise application platform” mentions “migration and exit from MS”.

Notable exhibitors

The 2026 sponsors and exhibitors list is published with stand numbers. It includes Atos, Red Hat, Linagora, XWiki, Nextcloud, Collabora Office, Eclipse Foundation, BlueMind, GLPI, Dalibo, Centreon, OW2, eXo Platform, OpenProject, Zextras, iTop and the Linux Professional Institute.

On the sponsorship side, Worteks is Premium sponsor of the 2026 edition. The Sponsors page lists FactorFX, GLPI, Linagora and Orange as Gold sponsors, and BlueMind, Eclipse Foundation, Red Hat, Tosit and XWiki as Silver sponsors.

The European Village, held for the third consecutive year with the APELL, the European professional association for free software, is due to bring together 12 European players in 2026. The first companies announced are B1 Systems, Bareos, KIX Service Software and Nitrokey.

Visitor quality

The trade show targets public and private IT decision-makers: CIOs, digital and innovation directors, system and network administrators, developers and IT project managers in charge of deploying open source, according to the organiser's communications. The weight of the public sector is a distinctive feature: government departments and local authorities are part of the stated core target, and the DINUM is among the 2026 ambassador partners.

Access is strictly limited to professionals: proof of professional activity may be requested before the badge is sent, entry is forbidden to minors and students are admitted from the age of 18.

On attendance, the organiser advertises more than 4,000 professionals, a figure announced for 2025 and repeated in its 2026 communications. It also states that more than 4,600 attendees followed the conferences in 2025. No audited attendance report of the OJS type is published: the detailed 2025 report is provided only on request.

Events & community

Conference programme

The programme is built from a call for papers, open from 29 April to 24 June 2026 (315 proposals received), then selected by a programme committee coordinated by Systematic's Open Source Hub. For 2026, the committee is co-chaired by Yannick Seiller, CEO of FactorFX, and François-Xavier Guidet, CTO and co-founder of FactorFX, with the editorial line “open source is no longer an option”. The organiser announces 130 conferences and workshops, with an emphasis on case studies, use cases and migration paths.

One novelty is announced: the Lightning Talks, five-minute presentations, on Thursday 10 December in the afternoon in the Ken Thompson room. Sixteen talks are to be selected by the programme committee (applications closed on 8 October 2026, selection announced around 15 October). The programme is also presented as six thematic tracks designed for visitors looking for an operational answer rather than a technology, including “Valoriser la data & l'IA” and “Sécuriser le SI”.

For reference, the 2025 edition was chaired by Ludovic Dubost, founder of XWiki, around the theme “Open source, the key to Europe's strategic autonomy”, with an international track run with the APELL.

Highlights

The CNLL's Acteurs du Libre awards, the tenth edition of the competition, are scheduled for Wednesday 9 December at 17:35. Six awards are to be presented, including the Business Development Award, the Best Open Source Strategy Award and a European Award in collaboration with the APELL.

The DEVOPS REX conference, devoted to DevOps feedback from practitioners, runs in parallel, with an exhibition area set up in the heart of the hall. The Open Source Experience badge gives access to the exhibition area, but the DEVOPS REX conference is paid.

Community & networks

The Associations Village hosts the free software communities. In 2025, it notably brought together April, Framasoft, LinuxFr, VideoLan, FreeBSD, Drupal and the Mozilla Association. For 2026, the organiser announces a new space, “La Place des Asso”, and the AssoVeraineté social gathering.

The 2026 ambassador partners include the CNLL, OW2, the APELL, the OSPO Alliance, the CIGREF, the DINUM, Cybermalveillance, PLOSS-RA, France Digitale and the RPLL.

On the media side, L'Usine Digitale, Programmez, Developpez, Linux Magazine, IT Social, Solutions Numériques and ITPro are among the media partners.

On site: what to know

The trade show occupies Hall 5.2 of Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, with entrance A1 on place de la Porte de Versailles. It is open from 9:00 to 18:00 on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 December 2026.

The organiser recommends public transport: metro line 12, Porte de Versailles station, exit 1; trams T2 and T3a, Porte de Versailles - Parc des Expositions stop; buses 80 and 39. From Montparnasse station, line 12 reaches the exhibition centre in about twenty minutes. By car, car parks 1, 6 and 7 of the exhibition centre are indicated.

The visitor badge is free and is created online on the registration page. The organiser has set up a hotel partnership with Revolugo for negotiated rates nearby.

How much does it cost to exhibit

Planning your visit

For exhibitors

• Contact the sales team early via the Become an exhibitor page: the 2026 edition is moving into a new venue, Hall 5.2.
• Check membership of Systematic Paris-Region, which opens up preferential exhibiting terms.
• For a future edition, watch for the opening of the call for papers (in spring in 2026): speaking is a visibility lever, but the 2026 calls, for conferences and Lightning Talks, are closed.
• For a European company based outside France, consider the European Village; for a non-profit association, the Associations Village, whose call for applications is relayed on LinuxFr.org.

For decision-maker visitors

• Register online before coming: the badge is free but reserved for professionals, and proof of activity may be requested.
• Choose a thematic track before arriving, as the grid of 130 sessions is dense over two days.
• Prepare your migration questions: costs, timelines, support and managed services are at the heart of the 2026 editorial line.
• Plan for a separate ticket for the DEVOPS REX conferences if they interest the operations team.

CSR policy & initiatives

The trade show's website publishes a page titled “Notre démarche RSE” (“Our CSR approach”), subtitled “L'enver(t) du décor”, which describes the approach of Infopro Digital Trade Shows, under way since 2020: stands and furniture shared between the group's trade shows with a target of at least ten reuses, 100% LED stand lighting, free carpooling with Mobicoop, and a document on sorting rules drawn up with Paris Expo Porte de Versailles and Paprec Recyclage, distributed to exhibitors and stand builders. A large part of the measures described, notably catering, anti-waste efforts and sorting partnerships, relates to SIDO in Lyon and the Centre de Congrès de Lyon, not to Open Source Experience.

No measure specific to the 2026 edition and no carbon footprint assessment of the trade show is published, and no ISO 20121 certification specific to the event is displayed.

The venue provides a documented framework: Viparis, operator of Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, states that in 2014 it was the first events player in the world to be ISO 20121 certified across all its sites and activities.

Responsible digital technology also features in the content, within the theme devoted to sovereignty and governance and the track devoted to data and AI, and software eco-design in the track devoted to development. These are programme topics, not a commitment by the organiser.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The trade show was born in 2021 at the Palais des Congrès de Paris, launched in 2021 by 656 Éditions, a subsidiary of Infopro Digital, and designed with Systematic Paris-Region, alongside the first edition of SIDO Paris. The two events then published a joint report: 270 exhibitors and 5,584 participants for the two trade shows combined, including 80 exhibitors for Open Source Experience. The trade show stayed at the Palais des Congrès for four editions, then moved to the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in 2025, before joining Porte de Versailles in 2026. The organiser presents this latest move as a way of supporting the event's growth.

In size, the trajectory is stable rather than rising: 80 exhibitors in 2021 and announced for 2022, 90 from 2023 to 2025, 100 expected in 2026. The clearest change is editorial. The trade show first presented itself as the tech, usage and business event for the sector; since 2025, it has centred on European strategic autonomy and then, in 2026, on sovereignty and resilience, with tracks geared towards purchasing decisions and migration. For an open source publisher or integrator, this means positioning aimed at public buyers and CIOs rather than at technical contributors alone, according to the stated editorial line.

The association with DEVOPS REX, on the same dates and at the same venue since 2024, widens the audience to operations and platform teams, without merging the two events, whose figures remain separate.

The dates of the 2027 edition had not been announced at the time of writing.

All data that does not mention its source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (opensource-experience.com).