The Matrix Conference 2026: Our biggest edition yet

More than 340 attendees, exciting next-generation features ready to ship, Matrix powering more and more government communications, practical updates from the community, and the occasional shark: dispatches from Malmö 2026!

"Matrix has gone from being an interesting experiment to an existential requirement," said Matthew at the opening to the 2026 edition of The Matrix Conference, a sentiment that could be felt throughout this year's edition.

Civil servants from 15 different nations and intergovernmental organizations shared their decisions and experiences migrating to Matrix in response to an urgent need for digital sovereignty; we also heard from regulated industries like healthcare who cannot compromise on privacy or security and are increasingly looking to Matrix as a solution. Matrix is growing in response to this need: representatives from Matrix's rapidly expanding ecosystem came to present the varied projects built on Matrix specification, and members of both the Spec Core Team and the ecosystem came to demonstrate the expanding features that will make up Matrix 2.0.

A demo of Matrix real-time communication (MatrixRTC), was one of the highlights, as Matthew created a group call with himself using three different applications: Visio, Tammy and Element Call.

This year we introduced the community attendance sponsorship package, which allowed us to fund travel for the maintainers of one of the community-created Matrix homeservers called Continuwuity; their talks and workshop were among the most popular of the event. Thanks to Famedly for supporting this initiative via the community attendance sponsorship option.

Of course, we took advantage of being in the home of IKEA to adopt some Blåhajar:

A lot more happened, so read on for more highlights from The Matrix Conference 2026.

🔗Civil servants in Europe and beyond look to Matrix for their digital sovereignty needs

"Digital sovereignty is no longer a buzzword, but procurement policy," noted Jens-Uwe Thieme in a talk on Germany's Matrix-based TI-Messenger. And this is true: in June, the European Commission unveiled a European Tech Sovereignty Package, in response to both financial and strategic risks from proprietary software solutions. The EU identified some €264 billion is being spent every year on services. It had earlier recognised the strategic risk of governments not being able to control communications, in 2025 recommending EU governments consider Matrix for their real-time communication. Just before the start of The Matrix Conference, the Starlink satellite internet service throttled Ukrainian access to the internet to try and halt its strikes against Russia, underlining the profound risk governments take by trusting key communications components to private companies.

So, it was not surprising that governments and intergovernmental agencies were out in force at this year's Matrix Conference to talk about Matrix deployments at various stages of development. Representatives from the German Federal IT Cooperation (FITKO), the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan), the French Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM), and the government of Luxembourg came to talk about why governments are increasingly choosing Matrix. The United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) offered insights from their journey to serve 100 UN entities with sovereign, federated communications, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) discussed the challenges of scaling up adoption of Matrix-based NI2CE messenger as an alternative to WhatsApp and Signal. We also had the opportunity to learn from the German experience deploying Matrix in healthcare and security, and to hear about new Matrix deployments in development in Brazil and the Netherlands.

Regulated industries – such as health insurers, financial institutions or legal enterprises – that have strict rules about handling personally identifiable information and a need to comply with privacy and data sovereignty laws, are also a natural match for Matrix-based solutions. At this year's conference we heard in particular from the health sector, including moving Germany's health insurer to TI-Messenger, the adoption of TI-Messenger in Austria, and the challenge of getting time-limited healthcare workers to adopt new messaging applications, even where required.

🔗Sovereign does not mean alone

"Every organisation that adopts the Matrix federation makes the protocol more valuable," says Renato Becker of Rocket.Chat. But the real value of the interoperability that a federated protocol like Matrix brings is that new users do not need to agree on a platform, or a server, or a client. This year, we heard from the Swedish government's pilot programme using a federated communications solution between two national agencies, which has then grown into a broader government-wide solution.

We saw a live demo of Matrix deployments in Sweden, France, the European Commission, and NATO chatting: different countries/organisations, different homeservers, and different clients but using the same Matrix protocol they are able to communicate: sovereign, but connected.

🔗Sovereignty requires sustainability - and that means supporting the Foundation

An open standard needs a neutral steward. The Matrix Foundation exists to safeguard the independence of the protocol. But while "Matrix is free to use," says Amandine, acting Managing Director of the Foundation, "it is not free to maintain." A lot of available funding aims to support new features, but the particular urgent need is to finance the less noticeable but every-bit-as-essential work that keeps Matrix running: protect and evolve the protocol itself (i.e. the spec work), ensure the whole ecosystem is heard (community management), grow the adoption of Matrix (advocacy and promotion) and keep the network safe (trust and safety).

Sovereignty, notes Amandine, "is only real if it is sustainable." In several talks, the Foundation presented ideas it is exploring to finance its future, and the future of sovereign communications.

Perhaps the most important revenue stream is membership. Matrix Foundation members provide an annual contribution to the Foundation and are the backbone of keeping Matrix open, neutral, and free. Among other membership benefits, Members get a free ticket to the annual Matrix Conference, where they have the opportunity to network with the talented and committed Matrix community.

If just 80% of the public sector organisations using Matrix to run their communications, or companies building on Matrix, became Silver tier (the lowest tier) members of the Foundation, it would guarantee the Foundation's independence.

The Foundation is also exploring other potential revenue streams, including certification of Matrix developers or Matrix-backed software, offering training for these certifications, technical consulting, and trust & safety blocklists.

🔗What the community is building on and for Matrix

Some of the most exciting talks at this year's conference focused on new features of the Matrix spec and its growing ecosystem. We got to learn about improving custom profiles to enable users to temporarily communicate "in a meeting" or "on vacation"; ideas about updating the way Matrix handles timelines; improvements to the protocol's security, and much more.

We also got to hear about the interesting tools being built around Matrix, such as: Matrix Wrench, a multipurpose tool for community managers; Continuwuity, a homeserver that after just 18 months in existence is already running 1.5K Matrix servers; and Gua, which attempts to mimic the simplicity and ease of use of WhatsApp without sacrificing federation. We also learned more about how incorporating the software language Rust is speeding Element Web, and what's new in Rust Software Development Kits (SDK) to enable more Matrix features.

🔗Where we are and where we are going next

Overall this year we had more than 340 attendees and 70 talks - our largest Matrix Conference to date. It ended with a hackathon and fully live edition of Matrix Live, where we streamed the ideas and projects that grew out of the creativity that can be unleashed when a hundred of us sit in the same room. Many thanks to our friends in Copenhagen for hosting our hackathon!

Thanks are due to so many people who helped make this event possible. In particular, our sponsors who supported the conference this year: Element, Famedly, Connect2x, Rocket.Chat, ERCOM, DINUM, Nordeck, CGM, Aalborg University, and Futurewei. We also couldn't have done it without the 52 volunteers who helped throughout the event, the Events Working Group themselves for organising it all, and the Website & Content Working Group for making sure everything was up-to-date and online. The conference was streamed through the efforts and support of the CCC Video Operation Center. Thanks to Nadine Minagawa for the design concept for our "Föderation" graphic!

You can revisit the whole conference (over 25 hours of talks) on our watch page. We will also be sharing photos from the event soon, but we're still combing through to ensure that we follow event etiquette. We'd love to hear your feedback about the conference, if you were able to join us in Malmö or watched our streams.

So what's next? Firstly, we are pleased to announce that we will be at FOSDEM 2027, in Brussels 30-31 January, co-hosting a Decentralised Messaging devroom with the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) and DeltaChat communities. We're also excited that the next Matrix Conference will be in the Netherlands, with venue details and dates to be shared in the near future. If you have tips for us or are interested in helping the Events Working Group organise it, contact us via our Matrix room.

You'll also continue to hear from us across our socials (Fediverse, LinkedIn, Bluesky), you can join our Matrix room, and of course you can stay in the loop here on the blog: https://matrix.org/category/this-week-in-matrix/.