From 26 to 30 October, Barcelona hosted the second edition of Open Tech Week. Five days of debate, research and organising dedicated to open technologies, digital rights and democratic innovation, convened by Barcelona City Council, Decidim, the Canòdrom technical office, Xnet, Accent Obert, the Mozilla Foundation and Barcelona Innova. A city that was the first in the world to endorse the United Nations Open Source Principles is a fitting host for a week asking who technology is built for, and on whose terms.
The Open Knowledge Foundation took part in two moments that bookended the week: the first Open Technology Research Symposium and MozFest 2026. Here is what we took away.
Research Meets Policy: the OTR Symposium 2026
On 26–27 October, the Open Technology Research Symposium took place at the Universitat de Barcelona under the theme Shaping the Open Transition — a global gathering of researchers and practitioners working on how the transition to open technologies actually happens. Thank you to all the attendees, speakers, content partners, programme committee members and sponsors, and to our hosting partner, the Universitat de Barcelona.
Across 22 sessions in six thematic blocks, the programme connected open technology research to the policy decisions that shape how public institutions use technology.
The symposium closed with the presentation of OpenForum Europe’s Basil Cousins Award, awarded to Yigakpoa S. (Yigakpoa L. Ikpae) for her paper “Digital Commons as Civic Infrastructure: Governance Frameworks for Open Source AI and Public Accountability”. Her research shows how open source software and digital assets can be governed as civic infrastructure that supports state accountability and sovereignty — a direct response to the symposium’s call to link open technology research with the policy decisions that shape how public institutions use technology.
Afterwards, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) hosted an AI Salon, building on its work on the Open Source AI Definition to examine the current evidence on openness in AI and how it can inform global policy.
Open Knowledge at MozFest
Towards the end of the week, part of our team joined MozFest 2026 at Fabra i Coats, where this year’s Wilding theme asked what it would take to rewild technology and build alternatives to its centralisation.
Our session, Free your data! Using an MCP to let people access your data in new ways, was led by Kannika Thaimai and Patricio Del Boca. It drew engaged participants, sharp questions and the kind of conversation that could easily have run another half hour.
It included a live showcase of a prototype developed in OKFN’s AI Learning Labs: a query against our Uruguay pilot, the National Energy Balance — the dataset behind the country’s world-renowned renewable energy transition — showing how a Model Context Protocol can bridge AI tools and trusted, open data sources. The chat MCP behind it uses the API from our partners at GreenPT. You can try the pilot yourself.
Beyond the sessions, the best part of MozFest is always the people. Catching up with familiar faces and meeting new ones is what keeps this community moving — including Susanna Ånäs from Open Knowledge Finland and James Shrestha from Open Knowledge Nepal.
The rest of the week
Open Tech Week was much bigger than the two events we took part in. Alongside the symposium, the week featured the first Open Technologies Policy Summit at Cibernàrium, on putting digital sovereignty into practice; Decidim Fest, on democracy and technology in a multipolar world; the 4D Conference on humour as a tool against power; and it closed on 30 October with the Popular Assembly for Open Technologies, the first step in a process running to Open Tech Week 2027.
We also attended the DPG gathering at Barcelona Open Tech Week — an informal side event for DPG product owners and open-source project developers. It gave us space to exchange with peers and hear what other projects are focusing on and where they are struggling. That makes a useful starting point for the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) Annual Meeting in Paris in November, where we can pick up the same conversations.
