Software Freedom in Europe 2026

In 2026 we turned 25 years old! We continued enforcing and contributing to the development of DMA and followed up the technological sovereignty debates across Europe explaining why only Free Software gives public institutions control over the digital infrastructure. Ada & Zangemann and YH4F continued bringing software freedom to younger audiences.

This year marks a significant milestone for the FSFE: our 25th anniversary. What began in 2001 as a small organisation founded by a small group of European Free Software advocates to protect Free Software in Europe has grown into an effective Europe-wide, well-known organisation with hundreds of contributors, more than 10 employees, over a thousand supporters, and impact across several key areas. Over the past quarter-century, we used our public awareness, policy, and legal education skills to fulfil the mission our founders set out. One that is even more important today than ever.

This anniversary is more than a celebration of longevity; it is an opportunity to reflect on the journey that brought us here and on our work over these years. We have summarised our key achievements from the past 25 years in our timeline.

As we look back on 25 years of Software Freedom, we also look forward. The following report highlights the milestones of the past 12 monhts, work that builds on everything we have accomplished before, while also looking ahead to our vision for 2048.

Table of contents

1. Device Neutrality
2. Legal Education
3. Markets Regulations
4. Public Money? Public Code!
5. Young Generation
6. Volunteer Engagement
7. Organisational Development

Device Neutrality

Device Neutrality - everyone has the right to remove and install any software on any of their devices.

DMA Litigation and beyond

The FSFE continued working to ensure that the Digital Markets Act (DMA) translates into meaningful interoperability and Device Neutrality for Free Software developers and users. Over the year, we combined technical research, regulatory engagement and strategic litigation, with a particular focus on Apple and Google. We won one case in against Apple in front of the European Court of Justice, were admitted to a second one, and found out that none of the public interoperability requests was granted by Apple.

A major milestone came on 21 October 2025, when the FSFE participated as an intervener in the hearing of Apple v Commission (T-1080/23) before the European Court of Justice. We defended interoperability as a legitimate public-interest obligation and brought the perspective of Free Software developers and users into Apple’s challenge to its DMA designation and obligations. In July 2026, the Court dismissed Apple’s actions concerning the App Store and iOS designation; importantly, it held that Apple could not use the designation proceedings to challenge Article 6(7), without ruling on the substance of that provision. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) subsequently recognised FSFE’s contribution to the proceedings.

This ruling confirms what we have argued from the start: interoperability is not optional under the DMA, it is the law. Developers finally have legal certainty to build competitive alternatives to Apple's ecosystem, and we remain committed to monitoring enforcement of today’s decision,says Lucas Lasota, FSFE's Senior Programme Manager Legal

On 20 April 2026, we published a report into Apple’s request-based interoperability process. We found that, as of 22 March, none of 56 formal interoperability requests had resulted in a new publicly documented solution. Developers faced account requirements, fees, lengthy procedures and considerable gatekeeper discretion. We called for transparent procedures, stronger enforcement and greater reliance on open standards, while continuing to collect first-hand experiences from developers through our interoperability survey.

In May 2026, the FSFE was admitted as an intervener in a second case, Apple v Commission (T-359/25). This case goes directly to the practical implementation of Article 6(7), as Apple challenges the Commission decision specifying procedures for access to software and hardware features. Significantly, the Court recognised when admitting us that the outcome could have a substantial impact on the supply of Free Software and developers’ ability to interconnect their applications with Apple’s operating systems. Specialised media, including Tech Policy Press, covered our admission to the second Apple case, highlighting the growing role of civil society in DMA enforcement and the importance of the case for Free Software developers’ ability to build and distribute interoperable alternatives.

Our DMA work also increasingly focused on Google and Android. On 26-27 May 2026, at the SCiDA Conference in Düsseldorf, we presented our technical research into Android custom ROMs, device trees and commit histories, bringing evidence from Free Software development into discussions on digital competition enforcement. On 15 June, we contributed to the European Commission’s Android interoperability proceedings, calling the full uninstallation of LLM-based features to be possible and arguing that access to interoperability should not depend on Google’s developer-verification requirements. In our view, interoperability is not genuinely independent if developers must first register with, identify themselves to, or enter into a contractual relationship with the gatekeeper.

We also contributed to the broader development of DMA enforcement. Together with civil-society partners, we participated in the Commission’s first formal evaluation of the DMA, advocating stronger Device Neutrality, effective side-loading and interoperability rules that work not only for large companies, but also for community projects, non-profits and independent developers. Our research also extended beyond individual DMA proceedings. In 2026, our colleague Lucas Lasota, who also works for the Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg published a comparative study of interoperability regulation in the EU, Japan, the UK and Brazil, examining how such rules can give Free Software access to features controlled by dominant proprietary platforms and enable smaller developers and communities to compete. We also were guests at diverse podcasts to talk about our advocacy in regulatory procedures involving Apple.

Throughout the year, we brought these experiences into the wider policy debate: at the ARTICLE 19 DMA Enforcement Symposium, CPDP 2026, the UCL/KCL conference on private enforcement, and through articles in specialised media examining developer-friendly DMA enforcement and the changing governance of Android. We also discussed our work through the SCiDA Podcast and, in August 2026, the Software Freedom Podcast on Keeping Android Open campaing.

Across these activities, our focus remained consistent: interoperability must work in practice, not only on paper. For the DMA to strengthen user choice and competition, Free Software communities, independent developers and users must be able to access platform features and install and run software of their choice without unnecessary gatekeeper control. The DMA has to keep gatekeepers accountable in a developer friendly way.

Router Freedom faces another reform at the EU level

While during the last years we worked a lot on the EU Member State level, in 2026, our Router Freedom work shifted increasingly to the European level. With the European Commission's proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA) now on the table, the FSFE saw an opportunity to finally close the fragmentation gap that has weakened Router Freedom since the last telecoms reform, when national regulators were left free to exclude this right for certain network topologies.

In February 2026, the FSFE called on the EU to establish strong and consistent protection of Router Freedom in the DNA. Whether users can actually exercise their right to choose their own router still depends on where the Network Termination Point (NTP) is defined: if it sits behind a provider-supplied router, Router Freedom exists on paper but not in practice. Pointing to continued fragmentation, we submitted our position to the European Commission's consultation on the DNA, calling for amendments to the text that would anchor the NTP at the passive physical point of the network by default across all Member States.

Looking forward, the FSFE is researching at how satellite internet providers are handling Router Freedom, and what the challenges under EU legislation are.

A decade-long victory for Radio Equipment Directive

Two months later came a second, decade-in-the-making success. In April 2026, we announced victory in preventing "Radio Lockdown": the European Commission decided to abandon Article 3(3)(i) of the Radio Equipment Directive, a provision that, since 2014, had threatened to force manufacturers to block users from installing their own software on WiFi routers, phones, and other radio devices. The Commission's decision followed an impact assessment that found the risks it was meant to address remained theoretical, and it explicitly cited the legal study the FSFE commissioned from Dr. Till Jaeger showing the provision was incompatible with licences like the GNU GPL. It is a strong reminder that patient, evidence-based engagement with EU policy processes pays off, even when it takes more than ten years.

Want to hear the full story behind this decade-long fight? Check out the episode 45 of the Software Freedom Podcast. There we sit down with our former colleague Max Mehl who first flagged the issue back in 2015 and trace together the Radio Equipment Directive timeline, from a printed-out draft directive to its final chapter.

Refund4Freedom

The initiative that started in 2025 in Italy continued during the previous months. While in Italy volunteers have continued organising events spreading the word about it and helping users to switching into GNU/Linux distributions, we have also raise awareness about this campaign in conferences and in events such as a GNU/Linux install parties.

Positive Hardware Evaluation

The FSFE's volunteer and open hardware passionate, Nicole Faeber read about the Teufel Mynd speaker announced as an "Open Source Project", so she decided to put it to the test. We bought one and she dug into analysing the mechanical design / parts, the electronics design, and the firmware.

Overall the verdict of the analysis was that the Teufel engineers did an extremely good job here! They definitely set the bar and have given a great example of how one can make open and sustainable consumer hardware.

Do you care about sustainability, repairability and Free Software? Did you do research about which products work best with Free Software? Have you ever tried to tinker with them? We would love to hear your experiences. Please, share your knowledge with us. We want to know which products work better when you want to be in control of your devices!Fill in our short survey

Moreover, if you are a skilled Free Software enthusiasts who would like to volunteer to also analyse devices, please get in touch with us, so we can work together towards our goal goal that everyone can install or remove any software on any of our devices.

Free Your Android

In the last months we have done some updates in our work towards helping users to regain control of their Android devices and their data. While in February we released a Software Freedom Podcast episode about the DMA and Android, and we have been working in the last months in checking different Free Software Android distribution. In September 2026 we started releasing those reports.

Legal Education

Legal Education - licensing and legal decisions are based on facts, rather than fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Next Generation Internet (NGI)

Since 2018, the FSFE has been a consortium member of the Next Generation Internet Zero (NGI0) initiative, supported by the European Commission. The mission of the NGI has been to provide support to various free and open data, hardware, and software projcets across Europe, in order to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet into a value oriented, human-centric, and inclusive platform that can yield a net benefit for society.

Over the past 8 years, the FSFE has been providing guidance to successful grantee software projects on legal and licensing issues, in addition to helping them become REUSE compliant. Through individual assessments and direct assistance, we aim to promote the display of unambiguous, human-readable, and machine-readable licence and copyright information. Other consortium partners provide support on issues that can improve each grantee software project, such as security, accessibility, and translations, among others.

Unfortunately, our work under the NGI umbrella will be winding down, as funding for the vast NGI project ecosystem has been cut. While we have heavily criticised this before, during the last months of 2024 and in 2025, this has in turn led to funding projects such as NGI to no longer be part of future Horizon Europe funding drafts and work programmes. The FSFE is currently working on 2 separate NGI0 projects, with both expecting to conclude by mid-2027.

Nevertheless, while one door closes on the NGI0 projects, another opens. Together with familiar consortium partners that the FSFE has been working with over the past 8 years, the FSFE had been searching for an alternative to provide similar support for Free Software projects in Europe. We are happy that our efforts to do so can continue, as we will be part of 3 newly approved Horizon Europe projects: “Restack” that started in June, “GeoCommons” and Rebase, both starting in 2027.

Europe’s need for control over its own digital infrastructure has grown more urgent. The “cloud-first” strategy that has dominated in the past decade has shown itself to be an unsustainable long-term strategy in light of geopolitical stressors. Under Restack , the FSFE will support software projects in Europe that help to strengthen the Free Software ecosystem, improve the resilience of the internet, improve transparency in digital technology, and promote European digital sovereignty. Similarly under GeoCommons, the FSFE will work to support Free Software compatible geospatial data, standards, and tools.

REUSE tool

The FSFE's team provides guidance to successful grantee projects on legal and licensing issues, and helps them become REUSE compliant. Through individual assessments and direct assistance, we aim to promote the display of unambiguous, human-readable, and machine-readable licence and copyright information. In three steps, REUSE software addresses a fundamental problem with Free Software licensing at its source: what licence is a file licensed under, and who owns the copyright? The REUSE project consists of a set of best practices and a tool that makes it easy and simple to add this legal information to every single file in a project.

One At the end of 2025, the REUSE helper tool has migrated from GitHub to Codeberg and during 2026 we have continued our work on maintaining this software so more and more developers can use it.

FSFE's Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW) 2026

The FSFE's Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW) is an annual conference for members of the Legal Network community to meet face-to-face and share legal expertise. In 2026, the event moved to Berlin and it once again fostered the kind of collaborative environment where professionals can share insights, debate complex issues, build a cohesive understanding of the legal landscape affecting Free Software, and to grow a sense of community of those “who can hear tomorrow coming”, to borrow the words of David Bowie, who was referenced many times during the conference by his Legal Network fans.

The 2026 brought together over 100 legal and compliance professionals, technologists, and policy experts from all over the globe. LLW continued to explore the evolving legal landscapes impacting Free Software, with many discussions focusing on how software licensing is impacted by the advent of large language models.

Legal Corner

Last year, the FSFE started a new series of articles diving deeper into legal topics of current relevance. Over the past months, our Legal Corner series has continued, covering the following topics:

• adblockers;
• Apple’s “notarisation”;
• the freedom to study code in Spain;
• Apple, interoperability and the DMA and others.

We also appeared in renowned content producers to talk about age verification laws and the impact on Free Software.

Train-the-trainer programme

In 2026, the former Italian-based Edulife project in which we train Italian students in legal topics expanded with a train-the-trainer programme, which kicked off in Verona in November 2025 with a in-situ training session. The future trainers then continued working with the curriculum modules throughout the year, helping to broaden the reach of the programme. New opportunities to bring these trainings to additional ITS (Istituti Tecnologici Superiori) are also being explored.

Markets Regulations

Market Regulations - all regulatory frameworks encourage the use and development of Free Software.

Shaping the implementation of the Cyber Resilience Act

The implementation of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) remained a key focus of our work on Free Software Markets. Building on our first stakeholder survey on the role of Free Software in the CRA, we developed recommendations based on the experiences and concerns of Free Software projects, potential stewards and manufacturers. We brought these findings into our exchanges with the European Commission and market surveillance authorities, helping to shape the Commission’s practical guidance for implementing the CRA.

As the implementation process moved forward, we turned our attention to remaining questions, in particular the role of Article 25 of the CRA. At FOSDEM, the FSFE discussed these issues together with representatives of the European Commission and the German market surveillance authority. Our Software Freedom Podcast took a closer look at stewards, security attestations and the CRA implementation process.

Article 25 foresees voluntary security attestation programmes for Free Software, which will be specified in a delegated act. We launched a new survey specifically dedicated to Article 25, incorporating input from individual developers, Free Software projects, manufacturers and other stakeholders. The survey results were presented at FrOSCon, where we discussed how they can feed into the upcoming delegated act. Going forward, we will continue to advocate for an appropriate framework that does not place disproportionate burdens on individual Free Software developers and groups.

Public Money? Public Code!

Public Money? Public Code! - all public funding for software is used for Free Software only.

The EU "Open Source Strategy", Tech Sovereignty & Interoperability

Technological sovereignty has been at the centre of debates across Europe this year. The European Commission's Tech Sovereignty Package (TSP) contains a long-overdue revision of the EU Open Source Strategy and the proposal for the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), which introduces a provision promoting Free Software solutions for public cloud and AI procurement. But despite the TSP citing our “Public Money? Public Code!” demand, several concerns remain, and the FSFE will continue working with the co-legislators to push for a pragmatic, strong, and transparent Free Software first provision.

The year 2026 marks two years since the adoption of the Interoperable Europe Act (IEA). We have continued engaging with members of the Interoperable Europe Board to make sure its implementation is underpinned by the principle of “Public Money? Public Code!”. Under the new IEA umbrella, the European Interoperability Framework is undergoing its first update in nine years. The FSFE is calling for Free Software and Open Standards to be the default model for digital public services and for the development of procurement guidance to prevent openwashing.

The upcoming revision of EU procurement rules will shape software procurement in Europe for years to come. The FSFE contributed to the European Commission’s consultation, calling for strategic procurement rules that enable public administrations to choose, adapt, and jointly develop Free Software. We also warned that “made in Europe” criteria alone do not foster digital sovereignty. Only Free Software gives public institutions control over the digital infrastructure they rely on. In addition, we call for effective safeguards against vendor lock-in and openwashing in public procurement.

Digital sovereignty requires Free Software

Over the past year, the FSFE has continued its work to make Free Software the foundation of digital sovereignty. As European governments are increasingly looking for alternatives to their dependence on large non-European technology companies, we have warned that “buying European” alone does not solve the sovereignty problem. European proprietary software creates new dependencies and vendor lock-in. In our feedback to the German government’s consultation on the “Germany Stack”, we therefore called for the platform to be developed entirely as Free Software, aligned with similar efforts across Europe and backed by secure, long-term funding.

Showcasing best practices and challenging setbacks

Our watchdog activities remain an important part of “Public Money? Public Code!”, as progress towards public code is not linear. When reports emerged that NHS England intended to make most of its public source-code repositories private by default, the FSFE publicly challenged the plan. Removing source code from public view is not an effective security measure. Instead, it prevents independent scrutiny, reuse, and collaborative improvement. Although NHS England has not reversed its course as of now, the FSFE sent a clear public signal that publicly funded code must remain public and will continue to follow the issue. We have also continued criticising openwashing and raising awareness about misleading practices and how they can be tackled.

Alongside our policy and watchdog work, we continued showcasing practical experiences with Free Software in public administrations. In a Software Freedom Podcast episode, we presented X-Road as an example of shared Free Software infrastructure and discussed some of the challenges such projects face in public institutions.

Young Generation

Young Generation - young people have the opportunity to tinker, experiment and code with Free Software as the default.

Inspiring the next generation to understand and actively shape the surrounding technology has been at the heart of the FSFE's work since the beginning, although it is not until some years ago when this commitment was translated into two specific initiatives. "Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream" keeps reaching new audiences, as an illustrated book and as a movie. Thanks to the dedication of our contributors, the book has over 35 translations and has been published into Norwegian and Dutch!

For teenagers ready to go beyond reading about software freedom and start building it themselves, Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) remains our flagship programme. Each year, young people from across Europe develop their own Free Software projects, gaining hands-on experience while becoming part of a growing community of young hackers who understand that technology should serve, not control, its users.

Together, these two initiatives reflect FSFE's continued investment in a future where the next generation grows up with the skills and values to shape technology that serves our democratic society.

Ada & Zangemann

Ada & Zangemann has continued entering the kids homes worldwide, as an illustrated book and as a movie. While we finish the year with the news about the Italian movie (released at SFSCON 2025) and a reading at 39C3, we started 2026 with some fantastic news! Thanks to the amazing (and constant) work of our volunteer Nico Rikken we presented the Dutch version at FOSDEM! Furthermore, Nico and Matthias Kirschner gave a keynote about the automatisation of the book translation process. As if this would not be enough good news, FOSDEM provided us with another surprise: a Braille version of the book in English and German. It is thereby the first book that was embossed with Free Software and an Open Hardware embosser.

Meanwhile the Austrian Ministry of Education created an Ada & Zangemann online course which includes interactive activities, discussion guides, and traditional exercises. It presents complex topics such as monopolies, lobbying, the digital divide, software freedom, digital autonomy, the Internet of Things (IoT), and electronic waste in a child-friendly way as part of an engaging storyline. A great addition to the resources be the French Ministry of Education. Furthermore we are happy that Fedora included Ada & Zangemann into their default #Firefox bookmarks pack.

Started in December 2021 as a one pager about the German book and the plans to publish an English version, the Ada & Zangemann now got a larger update and covers information about the book, the movie, reviews, additional resources, events and how to get involved.

The following months gave us plenty of happy news and translations! The Norwegian version was published as well as a Czech version too! Originally published in German and English, it is now published in 11 languages and there over 35 translations.

Over the past twelve months, we have continued to bring Ada & Zangemann into schools, libraries, and homes worldwide, whether through the book or the movie, the latter of which has now been viewed more than 47,000 times (this is the number on the places we know and where we can measured it but as it is published under Creative Commons BY-SA and spread in many different places it is hard to measure the exact reach).

Building on the previous year’s pilot project in Italy “They are young + they need the code,” the FSFE’s educational activities around Ada & Zangemann have now been further developed and integrated into the FSFE’s broader Ada & Zangemann activities. The educational format helps children understand the importance of having control over their own technology through a combination of storytelling and hands-on activities.

Volunteers all over Europe continued to bring the format to schools and libraries, reading the book aloud or showing the movie and guiding children through activities such as treasure hunts, robotics labs, and drawing sessions. A comprehensive collection of suggested activities is available in a dedicated guide.

Software Freedom in high schools

A new educational activity was also initiated by Emanuele Solferino, an 18-year-old student, who introduced the principles and ethics of Free Software to high school students. Between February and April 2026, Emanuele Solferino, delivered a series of three events across three high schools in Como, Busto Arsizio, and Pesaro, engaging a total of 200 students. The initiative offered students the opportunity to explore the values behind Free Software and reflect on the role of freedom, autonomy, and control in the technologies they use every day.

Youth Hacking 4 Freedom

Youth Hacking 4 Freedom has developed into an annual event for us and many teenagers from Europe! Currently, we are still running our fifth edition, YH4F 2026, and young Europeans had the chance to participate in it once more. In the 2025 edition, the fourth one, we had the following winners:

• Ultimate Hacker Award: Marius & Jonas with OpenLingu, a flexible, Free Software language learning platform that allows users to learn languages through interactive lessons while providing tools for content creators to build and share educational content.
• Elite Hacker Award: Pingu & Tuxilio with custom rom list, a project that automatically fetches Custom ROM devices and versions and displays it on a page. If you're a developer, a file devices.json is generated.
• Awesome Hacker Award: Mario with Scroll Wheel, a big high-resolution scroll wheel inspired by Engineer Bo.
• Green Robot Award: Vinícius with Smart Plant Watering Robot, a robot that can water your plants at home.
• Beautiful Maths Award: Corentin with Hyper – A Hyperbolic Rendering Engine for visualizing non-Euclidean geometry. It renders an infinite world, offering an Educational, interactive view of hyperbolic tilings and maze algorithms.
• Thinking Out of the Box Award: Augustin with dcg which aims at being a fast distributed revision control system analysing files syntactically rather than linearly.

YH4F 2026 will keep us busy for the next two months until November 2026. Right now we are preparing the outstanding awards ceremony for this year's winners! During the ceremony we will announce the 2026 winners and give them the chance to present their projects in front of their families and peers. So keep your eyes and ears open for more news from Europe's next generation of Free Software contributors!

So far, we already have plenty of news for you from YH4F 2026! For this edition, we got 88 participants from 21 different countries. This also was the first time we got participants from Serbia. For the 2026 edition we also got a new sponsor. Currently, this initiative is possible thanks to the generous financial support of our donor, Reinhard Wiesemann and our sponsors, OpenSSF (since 2024), Proxmox (since 2025), SUSE OSCC (since 2025), and Nextcloud (since 2026).

If you are now curious to learn more about our sponsors for YH4F 2026 We also spoke with some of our sponsors at the end of 2025 aboutwhy they support this European programming competition.

Want to know more about Youth Hacking 4 Freedom? Besides our dedicated page to it, we also talked about it in our episode 43 of the Software Freedom Podcast.

Volunteer Engagement

Volunteer Engagement - people enjoy to contribute to FSFE and feel empowered and effective.

I ♥️ Free Software Day

Every year on 14 February, or in the surrounding days, our communities come together across Europe to express their appreciation for Free Software. Whether through local meet-ups, in person or online, talks, workshops, postcards, blog posts, social media messages, or simple words of gratitude, the message is clear: Free Software exists and thrives because of the people who build, maintain, document, translate, test, and support it.

For the 2026 celebration, and under the motto “Maintainers Matter”, our communities organised 22 events across 12 different European countries, reaching more than 300 people offline. From cosy café meet-ups to university gatherings and hacker spaces, people came together to say a heartfelt “Thank you” to Free Software maintainers, contributors, and developers.

With 22 events the “I Love Free Software Day” is growing bigger and bigger. For the first time, “I Love Free Software Day” reached Croatia and Norway. Plus the network of cities celebrating this dedicated day for Free Software contributors keeps on growing. This year we were joined by Bonn (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Tirana (Albania), which returned for this edition.

Hundreds of individuals and organisations also joined the celebration on the Fediverse, sharing appreciation posts and gratitude messages. The hashtag #ilovefs ranked among the most used hashtags on the day. For the first time, the celebration also reached the front page of Hacker News, thanks to a “thank you” blog post by Matthias Kirschner, the president of the FSFE, who shared his appreciation for Arch Linux and the extensive ArchWiki.

While we release a brand-new comic, explaining why appreciation and recognition for Free Software contributors matter so much as well as dedicated Software Freedom Podcast episode, In our 47th episode, “ILoveFS: Let’s meet our maintainers”, Bonnie Mehring met with maintainer Lorenz Kästle to discuss the rewards and challenges of maintaining Free Software projects in one’s spare time. Moreover, in the 20026 celebrations also saw remarkable volunteer-driven innovations:

• A new Fediwall system was developed to highlight and visualise online participation across the Fediverse.
• A Polish volunteer set up a BadgeFed instance, creating dedicated “I Love Free Software Day” badges for organisers, participants, and contributors. A creative new way to publicly recognise engagement!
• A long-standing wish for a dedicated event map became reality thanks to Tom, the project leader of mapforge, who made a customised “I Love Free Software Day” map possible, showcasing celebrations across Europe.

Besides, we also started a series of interviews with our volunteers about how they celebrate this day. We spoke with our local groups in Potteries (UK), Barcelona (Spain), and with two different volunteers in Poland, our Polish coordinator and the organiser of the "I love Free Software Day" in Poznan.

Conferences and events

Attending diverse conferences and events throughout Europe and beyond is an important part of the FSFE's activities. At these events, we interact with our community, spread the word about software freedom and our work and why it matters, and find opportunities to connect and network with stakeholders, policymakers, Free Software advocates, and newcomers. Some events and conferences also give us the chance to step outside our bubble and explain Free Software to members of society who might not yet be aware of it and its importance.

As usual, in this map it can be checked the different places, in some of them more than once, were we either organised an event or attended events:

To point out some of the biggest event we attended:

• SFSCON has become one of the main European Free Software and one of the conferences that our team tries to attend every year. There, staff members and volunteers give different talks, we meet with our Italian community and other Free Software advocates that do not want to miss this conference. For the last years, we are also giving, together with LUGBZ, the European award. In 2025 this recognition went to Jean Baptiste Kempf , VLC president and core developer. Our talks from that edition are available at media.fsfe.org and you can also listen to the podcast episode we dedicated to SFSCON 2025. We are currently preparing our participation in SFSCON 2026. Besides SFSCON we also continued to strengthen its presence within the Italian Free Software community through conferences, local events, and community gatherings. Italian volunteers participated in diverse Linux Days across Italy, including a particularly successful event in Pesaro, which featured a large Ada & Zangemann educational activity.

• 39C3: the Chaos Communication Congress at the end of the year is another of the dates marked in our calendar. From 27 until the 30 December, we joined the Bits & Bäume assembly in Hamburg for four days around more than 12.000 Free Software advocates.
• FOSDEM: On the first weekend of February the Free Software communities come together and travel from all over the world to attend one of its oldest and most well-known conferences: FOSDEM. And so does the FSFE. In 2026, for one more time, we co-organized the Legal and Policy DevRoom and participated iin other devrooms with several talks. This tme we were also involved in two more devrooms: Funding the Free Software Ecosystem, which debuted last year, and Free Software Mobile.

Our local groups are at the core of our work at conferences and events. Thanks to their efforts, we are present at many events. Beyond their regular meetings, they also attended conferences such as T-DOSE, Veganmania, various Linux Days, Tübix, VIScon, Poznan, and FrOSCon. In recent months, our volunteers have also run several Linux install workshops in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, alongside the translation and outreach work for Ada & Zangemann that we have already highlighted. We simply cannot capture all of their work here, so we want to say once again how grateful we are and how essential our local group's work truly is.

We have also started dedicating some of our podcast episodes to them. Episode 39 featured the Zurich group, while episode 52 turned the spotlight on our Dutch community, with more to come in the months ahead.

Spreading the word! Merchandise and info material

This year, at FOSDEM, we presented new merchandise: a new design of our red “I love Free Software” socks and a “Cool kids use Free Software” T-shirt. In just few hours, we sold out most of our cool kids stock! It was a success! We also restocked the “Public Money? Public Code! T-shirt.

Stay tuned as we have new merchandise coming int! Since many people asked for it, we are p going to have T-Shirts in kids sizes, some of our classic T-shirst in new colors and an FSFE beanie! We will present all of it at SFSCON 2026.

Another request that our community had since long time ago was also accomplished since last autumn: we have introduced the possibility to make payments for merchandise and donations by card at most of our booth.

During the last months, we also got new information material. At the end of the year, we added a “rotten apple glowing sticker” in our stock. This sticker is a great reminder for everyone willing to support our efforts to make big tech accountable under the DMA in a developer friendly way; a REUSE sticker for everyone using this tool; we created an Ada and Zangemann bookmark which works in every language; printed a Refund4Freedom postcard with the basic instructions for asking for your refund; got our stars as a keyboard sticker for sticking on those keys with some logos that you might not like on your keyboard; started sharing with you our new Christmas postcard!

Organisational Development

Our website is our main tool to reach everyone, informing about our work to the society in general but also our volunteers, supporters and donors. Since September 2025 to end of August 2026, we have published around 44 news items, 12 newsletters and 17 podcast episodes.

Thanks to our translators' work, we were also able to reach our community in other languages with some of our newsletter issues and some of our main website pages were being translated as well.

Since the end of 2025 we have been continuously improving our process for translations. We prioritised our pages so translators can easily help with the most important translations, we updated our license to CC-BY-SA 4.0, and are continuously working on getting fsfe.org on weblate. In 2026 we want to especially highlight the work done for translating our priority 1 and priority 2 pages into new languages, with Italian being the closest to achieving a translation of all priority 1 and 2 files.

As for 2025 we had in total 40 new German translations, 21 new Italian translations followed by 18 Dutch, 11 Spanish, 8 Hebrew and 6 French translations! This brings us to the most important part: We want to say a heartfelt 'Thank you!' to all our translators who help us to reach and inform people about software freedom across Europe in their native language! ♥️♥️♥️

This year we have also updated several pages, including a new booth preparation form, a above mentioned Ada & Zangemann page, and an updated DMA page. You might even have noticed changes to our homepage and our supporters page.

We have also released a video to mark the anniversary.

Moreover, we participated in external podcasts, several papers and were interviewed for different media, about a wide range of our topics (DMA, Apple litigation, Ada & Zangemann…) being one topic that got a lot of attention our news about the payment provider Nexi terminating our contract without prior notice and how that was affecting us. Currently, we still have 62 supporters who unfortunately did not renew their donations by switching to our new payment provider and 133 supporters whom we need to get active until the end of the year to switch to our new provider. While we hope to resolve this hardship within the next couple of months, we want to thank everyone who has increased their support or became a new FSFE supporter to support us in this challenge.

Our presence in the Fediverse is also growing, with currently more than 27,100 followers in Mastodon and around 1,860 on our Peertube channel, where we currently are hosting 441 videos. Besides, since some months ago, we are using the tool fedisuite to help us manage our fediverse channels as well as to get some data about how our posts are performing, as this tool allows us to schedule posts but also get some analytics about the engagement and outreach of our posts.

At the end of 2025, we closed our Twitter (currently called X) account. What kept us so long on Twitter (X)? This was a way to reach journalists and policymakers. While the platform never aligned with our values it now also no longer serves as a space for our communication. Instead we decided to be more active in Bluesky - but always keeping a “first on Mastodon approach”. As for now, we have 3759 followers in Bluesky a number that is steadily growing while we are glad that a large amount of our community is following us in the fediverse.

Core Infrastructure

Our daily work would not be possible without the System Hackers who make sure that the FSFE engines are running. In the last months, our main core infrastructure work involved the LDAP setup of the organisation, the Matrix server, the website and debugging network settings in the data-centres.

Join the movement

Become a supporter: Your support and contribution for the promotion of Free Software are important for securing our continuous work, ensuring our independence, strengthening our democratic society, promoting and implementing concrete steps towards software freedom, and making it easier to use and develop Free Software.

Advocating for freedom costs money, and we depend on people like you to support us. Thanks also to all our supporters and our donors for their generous financial contributions. For 2025 and 2026 we want to especially thank our donors who contributed 18,000 € or more per year (in the order of amount): Vodafone, Internet Archive Europe, and Reinhard Wiesemann. Google, Proton Pass, Qualtom, and Linuxhotel. We also warmly thank those who donated 3,600 € or more per year, such as (alphabetically): AVM, AWS, Bosch, Ericsson, Fastbill, Github, Heinlein, HTTP Toolkit, Intevation, Kraken Technologies, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Nils Schneider, Open Education and Software Association e.V, Open Project, Promox Red Hat, Siemens, Sysmocom, The Linux Foundation, Thomas Etter, and Y Combinator.

Beside those whom we thank by name, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to every FSFE Supporter. While we welcome every support, 500 people donating 20€ a month will always be more valuable for our independence than one entity donating 10.000€ per month.

We guarantee that all support is used to foster software freedom in Europe a little more each day, step by step, bit by bit, byte by byte, for the next decades.

With your help we can keep on defending software freedom. Thank you for your trust, your support, and your ideas to continue bringing Free Software to our society!

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SFP#55: Policy and EU: Meet our Danish local group from Aarhus!

The Software Freedom Podcast for September is out! In this episode Bonnie Mehring meets with Carsten Agger, the FSFE’s Danish Coordinator. Together, they talk about the Free Software community in Denmark, digital sovereignty, and the growing interest in Free Software within the public sector.

Carsten shares his journey about how he became an active FSFE volunteer. Take a break and join us to learn about the founding of our Danish local group,about its current activities and their future plans. Bonnie and Carsten discuss Denmark’s increasing interest in digital independence, the role of Free Software in public infrastructure, and their upcoming plans with the FSFE’s "Public Money? Public Code!" initiative.

Listen to our 55th episode to learn more about the FSFE's local groups and its activities!

The work of the FSFE and its local groups is an important part of building a future where people can control the technology they use. You can support our work by donating today!

Show notes

• Support our work for Free Software
• Stay up-to-date and join our Newsletter
• Join the Danish FSFE Matrix chat
• Keep Android Open
• Carsten Agger, FSFE's Denmark Coordinator
• Øjvind Fritjof Arnfred, FSFE's Deputy Denmark Coordinator and editor of the Software Freedom Podcast
• "Public Money? Public Code!"
• Local Aarhus FSFE group (online group)
• Aarhus local group mailing list
• LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Conference 2015
• Dyne:Bloic (GNU+Linux Distribution or GNU/Linux Distribution)

We are happy to receive your feedback on the Software Freedom Podcast and especially on the transcript of the episode. Please, email us to: podcast@fsfe.org. If you liked this episode and want to support our continuous work for software freedom, please help us with a donation.

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YH4F: Italian pupils are now earning school credits for Free Software projects!

For all Italian students, we are coming with an exciting project for you! Italian pupils can gain credit points for their extra curriculum while developing Free Software projects and competing in Youth Hacking 4 Freedom. As the FSFE’s programming competition is, from now on, integrated in the Italian extra school credit points system.

Starting in 2026, the Free Software Foundation Europe’s programming competition, Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) is part of the Educational Pathways for Transversal Skills and Students Orientation (PCTO) in Italy. The PCTO is an Italian educational programme designed to help secondary school students gain practical experience through real-world projects and professional activities. The initiative combines technical learning with transversal skills such as project management, teamwork, communication, and problem solving.

Achieving their PCTO points is now possible thanks to the Italian FSFE volunteer and school teacher, Giacomo Alessandroni. At the beginning of YH4F 2026, Giacomo proposed to join the PCTO and helped throughout the entire process.

As a teacher, I have the privilege of meeting parents who approach me with a smile: «You have turned my daughter into a 'monster': her room has become a real open-air laboratory». Free Software and free hardware are the new, authentic form of resistance, and the 'Youth Hacking 4 Freedom' competition is the perfect embodiment of this".

– Giacomo, FSFE volunteer and Italian school teacher

Who can participate?

Any Italian school can add YH4F in their PCTO activities curricula. The school just needs to contact the FSFE and will receive all the information about the competition and the proposed extra credit points for this activity. On the students side, once the Italian pupil submits the project to YH4F, they receive a confirmation letter of participation. Along side this document and their own documentation of their process the students can then claim their extra credit points.

“YH4F demonstrates how Free Software projects can meet formal educational requirements while encouraging creativity and teamwork,” says Bonnie Mehring, FSFE Senior Project Manager, Coordinator YH4F.

The integration of YH4F as an extra activity for Italian school students does not interfere with the core principles of this European-wide programming competition. Students can develop applications, tools, games, or other Free Software projects, the ideas for those are not limited and the only condition for the contest is that it must be Free Software in the end. After sixth month of developing their ideas those projects are submitted to an expert jury, who evaluate the projects and select the six winners.

The fifth edition of YH4F is currently ending its programming period, which means that 2026 participants will have until 30 June 2027 to submit their projects. During the summer months, the YH4F expert jury will evaluate them and the winners will be invited to the awards ceremony weekend in Brussels in October.

Interested in joining YH4F 2027? Register now!

If your school or education system offers a similar extracurricular activity designed to enhance a deeper understanding of Free Software and software development, please get in touch so that we can integrate YH4F into your country’s education system.

About YH4F

• Participants: 14–18 years old
• Dates: Yearly. Programming phase from 1 Jan 2027 – 30 Jun 2027 (6 months) + evaluation period. Awards ceremony in Brussels in October 2027.
• Format: Online. 6 month programming to develop a Free Software project, individually or in teams.
• Registration: Required, free of charge. For registration click here
• Prizes: €4,096, €2,048, €1,024 for top three; three special prizes of €1,024

Do you want to give more students the oportunitty to develop their own Free Software projects and network with their peers? Youth Hacking 4 Freedom is possible thanks to its sponsors such as Proxmox, Nextcloud, Collabora and SUSE Open Source Network. If you want to contribute to make this European competition possible, reach out to contact@fsfe.org. Sponsorship is available at a very reasonable price.

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Keep Android Open & Android distribution alternatives

Our phones outrank our laptops as our daily tool, yet we barely control them with Google and Apple keeping stalling EU interoperability. Our latest SFP episode covers Google's developer verification policy squeezing sideloading, and "Keep Android Open” while this month we start a series on each Android distribution alternative.

Google’s announcement that, for “security reasons”, apps installed on certified Android devices would need to be registered by verified developers has been widely discussed within the Free Software movement. In the 54 episode of the Software Freedom Podcast, we discuss and explain the initiative “Keep Android Open”, in which the FSFE participates. For everyone who is looking for Android distribution alternatives but have no time to check for the best one for their needs, our technical advisor did the work for you: starting this month, we are posting a series of reports about each of the different alternatives.

Legal Corner: if code is generated by an LLM, is that code copyrightable?

If the Android alternatives are about giving users a say over the software running on their phones, our Legal Corner this month looks at what rights, if any, developers hold over software that an AI helped write. If code is generated by an LLM, is that code copyrightable? And if so, who owns the copyright to that generated code?

If you have a legal or licensing question related to Free Software that is not covered here or in any of our other resources, you can consider asking our License Questions team by sending them an email at licence-questions@fsfe.org.

Podcast on civil society’s role in making the Digital Markets Act work in practice

In a new episode of the SCiDA Podcast, the FSFE Project Manager Jithendra Palepu joins Dr. Maria Luisa Stasi from ARTICLE 19 to discuss how civil society is contributing to the enforcement of the DMA. The conversation covers the FSFE’s research into Apple’s interoperability process, its court intervention in Apple v Commission, developments around Google and Android, as well as civil society complaints, coalition building and the role of private enforcement. The episode is already available on major podcast platforms and will soon be listed on the SCiDA Podcast website, together with further information about the discussion.

From the stages… and the back door

After the summer most of us are coming back to our routines and a lot of event are back. Check out Check out events.fsfe.org: September is starting with several gatherings!. In Berlin, we will take part in the Fediday 2026, an event that has grown into a full weekend with more than 60 talks. We will be also in the LibreOffice conference 2026 in Italy and at Veganmania in Vienna and at Plone Conference in Maastricht.

In August our System Hackers, the group of volunteers who are the backbone behind our IT infrastructure, had their yearly meeting. We cannot thank them enough their hard work keeping our motors working! Want to learn more? Read the post about it from our colleague Tobias!

Your support helps us move our work forward

We may be behind the wheel, but you’re the ones keeping us moving forward. You can support us, contribute to our work, and join our community. Are you using social media? If so, do not forget to follow us there! You can also follow the FSFE news in your RSS Reader.

Your editor, Ana

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Free Your Android: Let's test Free Software android distributions

Free Software on phones has been of major importance over the past decades. Android is a big cornerstone in that area, but which distribution suits your use case? Which one respects your freedom and supports your daily life? In this series, we will try to answer those questions.

As part of an update to our Free Your Android campaign, the FSFE took a closer look at several of them, installing and using each one to see how well it respects your freedom and how it works in practice. Starting today, we will publish our findings one distribution at a time.

You should be in charge of your phone just like with any other computer

Smartphones are the computers we carry with us everywhere. They have information on us such as our location, who we talk to, and what we read. Yet most of the phones you can buy run software that their users can use, but not study, share, or improve. They also usually come with deep ties to a single company's services. With our Free Your Android campaign, we have long encouraged users to regain control over their mobile devices.

Since the beginning of this campaign, the ecosystem around Android has changed considerably. Questions about privacy, device support, and ease of installation are what users need to know ahead of time to make informed decisions about what to run.

Developers of Free Software Android distributions do important and increasingly difficult work for software freedom on phones. And users have a real choice between different distributions thanks to those extensive efforts. For this update, we examined several of those distributions in detail. We looked at usability, privacy aspects, and of course, software freedom. We will release the results one distribution at a time as part of a larger update to Free Your Android. This way, each distribution gets the attention it deserves and you can follow along, perhaps try things out, and share your experience with us and the Fediverse.

Today, we release our report about LineageOS; further articles will follow. Keep an eye on our Free Your Android page and our Mastodon account.

Free your device today

Have you already liberated your own phone? Did you run into problems or did everything go smoothly? Then please help the developers of those distributions by sharing this information in a structured manner, by expanding their community wikis or by filing a well-written bug report. Do you have experience with a distribution we should cover? Then let us know!

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