Open-source Space Communities Workshop 2026
Same four letters. A wider scope.
Join us in Athens for a two-day workshop on applying the open-source approach across every part of a space mission and on the communities that make it possible.
Open source software and hardware is empowering and democratizing all areas of life, so why not apply it to space exploration? That question started this workshop back in 2017, and it has brought the same stubbornly open community back together ever since.
For its seventh edition, OSCW keeps its four letters and widens its remit: the Open Source CubeSat Workshop becomes the Open-source Space Communities Workshop. CubeSats were how many of us got in, a form factor small enough, affordable enough and open enough that a university lab, a hackerspace, a makerspace or a volunteer network could fly something real. But look at what this community builds today and the satellite is only one piece of it: PocketQubes, global ground station networks, mission analysis and simulation tools, propulsion, flight software, licensing frameworks, security research, and the education programmes bringing whole new regions into space. The constant was never the form factor. It was the communities.
So let’s keep removing the barrier of confidentiality and secrecy, and keep freely sharing knowledge about how space systems are designed, built, flown and operated. This workshop provides a forum for developers, operators, researchers, educators and organisers to meet and join forces on open-source projects, and to benefit from transparency, inclusivity, adaptability, collaboration and community.
The focus of this year’s workshop is the full breadth of open-source space work: the technology, and the communities that sustain it. Technical depth is as welcome as it has always been.
The target audience is academia, research institutes, companies, community groups, hackerspaces, makerspaces and individuals. Whether you fly spacecraft, run a ground station, maintain a library that others quietly depend on, or teach the next cohort — there is a place for you here.
The seventh edition takes place in TU Berlin, Berlin Germany, hosted by TU Berlin and Supported by Libre Space Foundation.