FOSDEM 2027 brings back its Emulator Development room, and talk proposals close on 23 November

The room returns for FOSDEM in Brussels on 30 and 31 January 2027. It wants 30 to 50 minute deep dives and five-minute lightning talks, with speakers told on 1 December.

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If you write or maintain an emulator and fancy a trip to Brussels, the Emulator Development room at FOSDEM 2027 wants your talk proposal by Monday 23 November. The organisers say they have decided to revive the room "due to popular demand". It is on FOSDEM's own list of accepted developer rooms, published on 21 October, one of 77 rooms picked from 128 proposals, and the room's call for participation went up the same day.

FOSDEM itself runs on 30 and 31 January 2027, a Saturday and Sunday, at the Université libre de Bruxelles' Solbosch campus. It is free to attend and there is no registration.

What the room wants

The call asks for talks that go deep. Rather than lots of short slots, the room plans fewer, longer sessions so speakers have time for technical detail, demos and discussion. There are two formats:

The suggested topics are broad: console and computer emulators, CPU emulation with binary translation, JIT and dynarec, graphics, audio and timing accuracy, test ROMs and conformance suites, reverse engineering undocumented hardware, debugging and tracing tools, FPGA emulation, OS emulation and virtual machines, preservation and emulation history, and the business of running an open-source emulator project, down to forks, handovers and legal pressure. Talks that overlap with the Retrocomputing or Virtualization rooms may get a note from the organisers, but the speaker decides where the talk goes. Hobbyists and first-time speakers are invited alongside experienced ones.

How to submit

Proposals go through FOSDEM's pretalx system under the Emulator Development track. The call asks for your name, a short bio, contact details, a title, the format, an abstract covering what you will talk about and what the audience will learn, how technical it gets, and whether there will be a live demo.

The organisers call the 23 November deadline firm, because FOSDEM needs the full schedule early in December. Selected speakers hear back on 1 December and the room's schedule is due on 7 December. The page also points to FOSDEM's volunteer sign-up for anyone who would rather help run the weekend than speak at it.

Sources

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