London will host the next Ubuntu Summit, Canonical’s revived party-come-conference celebrating the Ubuntu and wider open-source community.
This year sees several major changes to the structure of the event, along with a notable change to the numbering used in the event name, which aligns to the latest Ubuntu version at the time it’s held.
Hence, this year’s event is Ubuntu Summit 25.10 since the event will be held a few weeks after the stable release of Ubuntu 25.10.
Future events will be similarly named (i.e., Ubuntu Summit 26.04, and so on) because—surprise—the Ubuntu Summit will now be held twice a year.
—Old school UDS vibes, ahoy!
Why is Canonical holding the Ubuntu Summit more often?
The world of open source is so fast-paced that one event a year doesn’t cut it. Having two summits ensures that we can keep up the momentum throughout the year and bring the innovation on a more regular basis.
Mauro Gaspari, Canonical
Frequency is not the biggest change, though.
Ubuntu Summit Moving Online
Ubuntu Summit is ‘shifting to an online experience’, a move Gaspari says is “more reflective of the community as a whole: distributed and decentralized (sic)”.
Since its revival in 2023, the Ubuntu Summit has been physical event held in a physical location, with attendees flying in from around the world to get together in person.
Demos and talks continue be held at Canonical’s “hub in London”, but the “community magic will be wherever you are”, he adds.
A big element of the remote participation side is a new Ubuntu Summit Extended component.
Ubuntu Locos are encouraged to hold in-person release parties in their area, post photos to social media, and Canonical will pull this into an Ubuntu Summit “social wall”.
Finally—and stop me if you’ve heard this one before—the entire event will be shorter, taking place over just 2 days.
Deja vUDS
This news isn’t new in the sense we’ve been here before.
Canonical used to hold a twice-yearly Ubuntu Developer Summit in locations around the world, with developers, open-source projects, and users flocking to them. Those unable to attend could join IRC channels and listen to audio streams to take part in discussions.
In 2013, the Ubuntu Developer Summit moved online, becoming an entirely remote participation event taking place over 2 days, rather than 5. I don’t think those who attended a UDS would disagree when I say that the “community magic” got lost in vUDS.
—I mean, did anyone even notice, much less care, when they stopped being held at all?!
So when Gaspari talks of “community magic”, his choice of the word “magic” is the right one.
When people get together in real life, most meeting for the first time, the energy generated is palpable and contagious. Nerve-tinged introductions, preconceptions upended, mixing with people from different walks of life, hearing new ideas, expressed in new ways…
You share meals. You laugh. You relax. You connect. You create magic.
The Ubuntu community is as distributed as ever it was, though the tools which let us come together and engage more humanely better than ever. If done right, an ‘expanded’ online component may bring more of us together by lowering the barrier to entry.
Having the focal point of the event at their London hub, paired with a less-passive online component, strikes a good balance — the austere vUDS years struggled because it lacked a nucleus; it was like eavesdropping on an early-morning Slack call.
Anyway, that’s the news.
Ubuntu Summit 25.10 is being held between October 23 & 24, if you fancy popping the date in your diary. Details on the talks, speaker lineup, and events to be held during the Ubuntu Summit 25.10 will be firmed up in the coming months.