Hello folks, it's time for another board report! Another 6 months have passed (well, slightly less to align better with the elections), and the Board came together last week to go over the Committee reports and discuss urgent topics. You can find the details, and my conclusions, in the blog post, and of course we welcome feedback, questions, etc which you can direct to #governing-board-office:matrix.org
For those new to the Board's activities, you can find out more about our structure, Committees, and Working Groups on the Matrix website - and as always I'll take any chance to remind the community that new Working Group proposals are always welcome, just get in touch
Following a packed first half of the year, the Board came together last week
for it's first-half Board meeting. A lot has been going on - in the world, in
software, and in Matrix, and it's clear things are not slowing down. So what
have we been discussing?
A big strength of Matrix is its popularity among IT hobbyists. These people discover and adopt the chat ecosystem early and often advocate for its introduction at their university, workplace and in their groups of friends. In order to bring these innovators and tinkerers together, a group called Matrix Community Events has been founded by passionate individuals.
In-person events are an important part of the Matrix community in Europe. The annual conferences FOSDEM, FrOSCon and the Chaos Communication Congress are some events where many of our community members meet. These events allow us to exchange ideas across organisations, find new members on our quest to popularise Matrix and consolidate efforts on projects and spec proposals. To focus solely on Matrix, dedicated Matrix events take place, like meetups, workations (group trips combining work and vacation) and the annual Matrix Community Summit in Berlin.
Matrix Community Summit is a yearly meetup around pentecost by the community for the community, where Matrix hackers, developers, and visionaries meet on the c-base space station under Berlin for multiple days to collaborate on Matrix. This year it starts on Thursday 21st May and ends on Monday 25th May. If some of that is during your work hours, do not worry! It is the same for us, which is why co-working is part of the concept. For the first time, we will also have both a rooftop experience and a pan-galactic gargleblaster contest.
Heads-up that The Matrix Conference 2026 will be in Malmö, Sweden, on Tuesday, 20th to Thursday, 22nd October. It will be followed by a hackathon day on Friday, 23rd October!
We will start with a networking event on the 20th afternoon, followed by a welcoming party.
We will follow by two core days of conference on Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd October, including two talk tracks and two workshop rooms.
Finally, we will conclude with a post-conference hackathon on Friday 23rd October.
Our Call for Proposals is open until 14th June. We already received solid proposals, and we're looking forward to seeing what you will send us!
We are excited to announce that The Matrix Conference 2026 will be held in Malmö, Sweden from 20th to 22nd October, 2026, and a Post-Conf Hackathon on 23rd October. Save the date!
After successful editions in Berlin and Strasbourg, we are bringing The Matrix Conference back with the same spirit: over 300 private enthusiasts, hackers, community admins, public and private sector professionals, vendors, integrators, and political representatives gathering to exchange knowledge, share developments, and shape the future of Matrix together.
The programme spans four days:
October 20 (afternoon): A networking event to get everyone together before the main programme kicks off, with thematic tables and facilitators to get the conversation started
October 21 and 22: Two full days of talks, workshops, demos, and discussions
October 23: A hackathon for those who want to keep building together after the conference
As always, the talks will be streamed live and recordings will be available after the event, so you can follow along even if you cannot make it to Malmö in person.
🥁 The Matrix.org Foundation has published its first Public Annual Report! 📊
This report gathers useful information for a very wide group of users, starting with the current community but also others who may not know Matrix very well. Overall, the goal is to remind everyone what the Foundation is and why it exists, share the progress in the last financial year, explain how our funds have been used, give an overview of our finances and eventually provide a preview of our plan for 2026.
You can find the blog here and the report itself here. We hope you will find it a useful read! ☕️
Seven years after incorporation, we have eventually put together a proper Public Annual Report intended for the wider community and the rest of the world to read. It is not a mandatory artefact but one we've been keen to make available for transparency to our community. Obviously, as a Community of Interest Company incorporated in the UK, we have certain reporting obligations towards the government, which we have fulfilled appropriately since day 1. We have also been sharing progress, news and activities with the community through various blogs (like the seasonal Matrix Holiday Special), Matrix Lives, talks, etc, but so far there hadn't been a structured published report gathering detailed updates on the activities of the various teams in the Foundation, high level financials and the plan for the future.
So here we go, you now have in your hands the very first Public Annual Report of The Matrix.org Foundation for the financial year 2025! As a first edition the format may need some iteration, but we have written it with very specific goals in mind.
Today’s release of Matrix 1.18 brings a total of 16 MSCs to the protocol. Many of those proposals improve Trust & Safety in Matrix, introducing features like invite blocking, policy servers, account suspension & locking, and general quality of life improvements to the reporting APIs. This blog post covers those safety features in a bit more detail - read on to the full changelog at the bottom for full details of everything in Matrix 1.18.
