# 🗣️ How become a speaker or to organize a stand FOSDEM has a main track which is usually curated by organisers, but the 30-plus focussed developer rooms (devrooms)  each year are organised on a more bottom up basis.  In October, potential organisers apply to run a devroom, and then once the final roster of devrooms is announced, they manage their own call for proposals, which are usually finalised and published in mid December. **What the schedule looks like:** The dates below are taken from [__the published call for participation for FOSDEM 2026__](https://fosdem.org/2026/news/2025-09-21-call-for-participation/): * **12 October:** deadline for developer room proposals * **26 October:** accepted developer rooms announced * **==30 October (or earlier):==** developer rooms issue Calls for Participation * Devrooms start accepting applications around these dates. * **16 November:** Deadline to submit main-track proposal * **==1 December:==** Deadline to submit non-main-track proposal * **15 December** (or earlier): developer rooms publish complete schedules **What this means if you want to speak** Broadly speaking, if you want to present to a room, if you are not applying to present a keynote or speak on the main track for a conference, you have the month of November to:  1. review all the [announced devrooms](https://fosdem.org/2026/news/2025-10-31-devrooms-announced) 2. decide which one(s) are the best fit for any talk you want to give 1. The most relevant devrooms for CATs community are [Energy](https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/energy/) and [Performance](https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/software-performance/) 2. The individual developer room organisers will issue their calls for participation in the ==next few days==. 3. Energy and Performance devrooms already published their call for participants: 1. 2. 3. make a submission via [form](https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp) You typically hear back in the second week of December, and most of the time, the organisers are responsive if you’re not sure your idea is a good fit for the room. **If you don’t want to present** FOSDEM also allows groups to run a stand at the conference for one or both days of the event, and to run BOF’s (Birds of a Feather meetings, for informal discussions on a predefined topic, or for a specific community). **Helping with a stand** If you want to run a stand for an open source project, you have til **==Nov 9th==** to apply. You can apply to run a stand for multiple open source projects, so if inside CAT there are multiple projects people work on, it’s possible to apply on behalf of CAT. [__Read more about applying for a stand__](https://fosdem.org/2026/news/2025-10-03-call-for-stands/). --- **Documents** - [How become a speaker or to organize a stand](https://climate-tech.getoutline.com/s/fosdem-2026/doc/how-become-a-speaker-or-to-organize-a-stand-Mr6EuNkNDi) - [Making the most of FOSDEM](https://climate-tech.getoutline.com/s/fosdem-2026/doc/making-the-most-of-fosdem-DDQr8e4etR)