It’s a wrap! Yet another edition of the main Blender event of the year happened in the heart of Amsterdam, catching the very latest warm days of September. As is now tradition, BCON26 brought together artists, developers and contributors from the worldwide Blender community.

Over three days, 700+ attendees from more than 50 countries gathered at the iconic Felix Meritis venue to share their passion for creating with Blender, connect and learn from each other. A total of 126 speakers presented across the four stages of BCON26. This year, the knowledge-packed marathon ran for more than 100 hours!

Overall, feedback was positive. Satisfaction with the program remains “extremely high,” and it rose slightly compared to last year. Attendees appreciated the variety, quality and educational level of the talks. Some found the schedule dense, which made it hard to catch every session they wanted to see live. We hope the quick uploads of recordings to the BCON26 playlists on PeerTube and YouTube helped fill the gaps.

Nowadays, over 60% of respondents are coming to Blender Conference as part of their job. Overall, 79% of respondents plan to come back next year!

As this year Blender celebrates two decades of open filmmaking, we organized a number of events to put all seventeen titles into the spotlight. First, the Blender HQ team handcrafted an art installation that showed each Open Movie as a massive pillar holding the entire film, frame by frame, from the opening shot to the end credits.

In the spirit of sharing and openness, visitors could take a frame home with them. If you got one, scan its QR code to jump to that exact second of the film.

The celebration continued with 20 Years of Open Movies screening at de Balie, with some of the film directors and artists working on the titles present in the audience.

The event was made possible thanks to the contribution of many people and made memorable thanks to all attendees and speakers. See BCON26 credits page for the names of everyone who made this edition an incredible experience.

See you next year!
Francesco

SIGGRAPH (the premier conference & exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques) will take place in Los Angeles, California at the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC), from Sunday, July 19 until Thursday, July 23.

The Blender team will be present at the event as usual, with several appearances planned on the agenda:

If you are at SIGGRAPH and want to connect, feel free to reach out directly via mail (francesco at blender org) or on social media!

It’s been almost a week since the International Animation Film Festival and Market of Annecy wrapped up. Like last year, the Blender delegation was small: Fiona and Francesco representing Blender at various events, plus a couple of Blender Studio team members immersing themselves in the world of animated filmmaking.

The number of Blender-powered short and feature film projects keeps growing, as does the appreciation for Blender as a tool that truly belongs to creative teams.

While not as prominently as at other events, the topic of AI came up a few times, mostly in the context of “assistive” tools. Several conversations took place as part of MIFA AI, a new initiative established by the festival organizers to foster discourse around AI adoption. The initiative gathered people from very diverse backgrounds, and was mostly the start of something that will further develop in the coming years.

Once again, Blender hosted a well-attended community gathering (almost 200 people) at the MIFA campus, where attendees could network and learn about the latest Blender project activities.

Annecy Festival is always a highlight in Blender’s calendar. We will be back!

The world of animation will soon gather in Annecy, and Blender is coming along. Just like in previous years, a small part of the Blender team will attend the Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 21–27, 2026) to host a community meet-up.

Blender Breakfast

View the event in the festival program

Following the success of the past three editions, Blender is once again organizing a Blender Breakfast. This Birds-of-a-Feather-style session is focused on connecting producers, developers, TDs, and artists working in Blender pipelines.

What to expect

• A snapshot of ongoing Blender development
• Pipeline insights from the Blender Studio 
• An environment for teams who want to share how they use Blender in production
• Coffee and croissants

Save your seat at Blender Breakfast

Blender Breakfast 2026 takes place on Tuesday, June 23 at 9:00 a.m. at Le Campus MIFA, Salle 1. Seating is limited: please register in advance to secure your spot. Confirmations will be sent closer to the event.

See you by the lake!

Official 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival poster by Randall Finnerty

Welcome to the FOSDEM 2026 Media Creation Tools Devroom Call For Participation. The contributor communities of Blender, Godot, Krita, and other popular media creation tools are gathering at the largest open source software event of the year to discuss roadmaps, ongoing and upcoming projects, challenges. If you are running an open source project in the media creation space: connect, join, and share your story!

• Submission deadline: Dec. 1, 2025
• Announcement of selected talks: Dec 15, 2025
• Conference dates: Jan 31 and Feb 1, 2026
• Media Creation Tools devroom date: TBC

The default duration for talks is from 15 to 30 minutes, including discussion. If your proposal is selected, you will receive an email confirmation with further instructions.

The devroom focuses on media creation software and tools. From well-established to new, up-and-coming projects, everyone is welcome. The talks can cover the following subjects:

• Product design discussions
• Development and engineering of media-focused application
• User stories
• Roadmaps
• Community discussion or presentations

Submit your presentation idea via the FOSDEM 2026 Pretalx system, from November the 15th, 2025.

Your submission must include the following information :

• The title and subtitle of your talk (please be descriptive, as titles will be listed with ~500 from other projects)
• Select “Media Creation Tools” as the track
• Select “Talk” event type
• A short abstract of one paragraph
• A longer description if you wish to do so
• Links to related websites / blogs / …

If you have any question about participating to the media creation tools track, please get in touch with Francesco Siddi: francesco at blender.org.

FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.

• FOSDEM is free to attend. There is no registration.
• FOSDEM website

Blender Conference 2025 wrapped up a few days ago! Yet another great event bringing together artists, developers and contributors from the Blender community worldwide.

As usual, you can enjoy all the recorded presentations on Blender’s YouTube channel, and on PeerTube.

Overall, feedback was positive. Compared to previous years, food and venue rating slightly declined, while overall satisfaction with the event remains very positive. When it comes to the program, satisfaction is back to “extremely high” from last year’s “high”. The variety, depth and quality of many session was appreciated!

Nowadays, over 60% of respondents are coming to Blender Conference as part of their job. Overall, 79% of respondents plan to come back next year!

The top ten favorite presentations, in no particular order:

• Lightning Talks & Suzanne Awards
• A glimpse into “Flow”
• Blue Prince : Beyond The Doors
• Funny Legs: a 2D show by a 3D animator
• II Baracchino – Donuts don’t die in vain
• I’m a Complete Hack – But This is how simple techniques still make a big impact
• Making of DOGWALK
• The Illusion Engine: The Secrets to Realism
• Keynote
• VFX workflows for Sonic the Hedgehog 3

The event was made possible thanks to the contribution of many people and made memorable thanks to all attendees and speakers. Special thanks to Amerpodia and the Felix Meritis staff, to Creative Technologies audiovisuals and especially to the Blender HQ and remote teams for making this an amazing experience.

See you next year!
Francesco

SIGGRAPH (the premier conference & exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques) will take place in Vancouver (CA) at the Vancouver Convention Center, from Sunday 10th August until Thursday 14th August. Additionally, Blender will be featured at DigiPro (with a Keynote on the technology behind the Flow movie, by Martins Upitis and Konstantins Visnevskis), and at the Open Source Days, also with a Keynote by Martins and Konstantins, plus a presentation by Francesco Siddi on open source development.

This year, the team will be back with a delegation and a booth, similar to the conference in LA 2023. At the booth you can expect demos, and a Blender showreel playing on a giant LED wall. Besides that, several events are planned.

SIGGRAPH is always a great opportunity to connect with the industry and the community, and we look forward to attending.

If you are at SIGGRAPH and want to connect feel free to reach out directly via mail (francesco at blender org) or on social media!

A small delegation of the Blender team (Dalai Felinto and Francesco Siddi) is going to attend the Game Developers Conference – GDC in San Francisco on 17-21 March, with the main goal to connect with individuals and teams using Blender to create interactive content.

This year we are also organizing a Blender Meetup event (Birds of a Feather-style), focused on connecting producers, developers, TDs and artists working in studios where Blender is part of the pipeline. The goal is to share ongoing Blender development, Blender Studio pipeline insights, and give visibility to teams who wish to share their experience using Blender in production.

This time we go for an informal setting on Tuesday, 18 March at 10:00AM at the Yerba Buena Gardens (in front of the Moscone conference center). Look for the Blender flag, bring your own coffee and see you there!

If you want to connect besides the event, reach out to francesco at blender.org.

SIGGRAPH (the premier conference & exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques) will take place in Denver (CO) at the Denver Convention Center, from Sunday 28th July until Thursday 1st August.

Besides the unusual location, there are a few highlights for this trip. The Blender team delegation is minimal, yet at the same time Blender will be visible everywhere:

Next to that, there will be a screening of Wing It! at the Electronic Theatre as part of the computer animation festival, and Blender will be visible at a demo pod the Dell booth in the trade show. If you are at SIGGRAPH and want to connect feel free to reach out directly via mail (francesco at blender org) or on social media!