Flock to Fedora 2026

June 14--16, 2026 | Prague, Czech Republic

Flock to Fedora is the annual contributor conference for the Fedora Project. It brings together Fedora contributors, users, and upstream developers for talks, workshops, hackfests, and social activities focused on the project's future.

Flock 2026 will be held at the Vienna House by Wyndham Anděl's Prague in the Anděl neighborhood of Prague. The conference follows DevConf.CZ (June 18--20 in Brno), making it possible for attendees to participate in both events during a single trip.

📅 Schedule at a glance

Day	Date	Focus
Day 0	Sunday, June 14	Meetups, workshops, and hands-on contributor sessions
Day 1	Monday, June 15	Opening keynote, plenary sessions, breakout rooms, main social event
Day 2	Tuesday, June 16	Plenary sessions, breakout rooms, closing remarks, sponsor dinner

Saturday, June 13 is the travel and arrival day. The conference hotel room block covers June 13--17 and includes breakfast.

🎤 CfP themes

The Call for Proposals was organized around Fedora's four foundations:

• Freedom: The Open Frontier -- FOSS approaches to AI, open hardware (RISC-V), open standards, and data privacy
• Friends: Our Fedora Story -- Mentorship, team collaboration, onboarding, and partnerships with other FOSS communities
• Features: Engineering Fedora's Core -- Infrastructure, release engineering, quality assurance, packaging, and community tooling
• First: Blueprint for the Future: Fedora Linux 45 & 46 -- Near-term innovations for F45/F46, the foundation for RHEL 11 and EPEL 11

📦 About this repository

The Fedora Council and the Flock Organizing Team use this repository to plan and coordinate the Flock conference. It is hosted on the Fedora Project Forgejo instance.

What lives here

• Issue tracker -- The primary tool for tracking planning tasks across all workstreams (sponsorships, speaker management, venue logistics, design, marketing, registration, etc.)
• Scripts and tooling -- Automation to support the planning team's workflow (e.g., Forgejo API scripts for label/milestone management, issue triage)
• Documentation -- This README and supporting reference material for the planning team

What lives elsewhere

Resource	Location
CfP platform (Pretalx)	cfp.fedoraproject.org
Registration (Pretix)	rsvp.fedoraproject.org
Event website	fedoraproject.org/flock
Planning deck (slides)	Google Slides
Shared drive	Google Drive -- Flock 2026
Budget	Flock 2026 Expense Scratchpad
Design epic	Fedora Design Team GitLab epic
Sponsor prospectus	Google Slides

👥 Planning team

Flock is organized by volunteers and Red Hat community team staff working under the direction of the Fedora Council.

Role	Lead(s)
Overall coordination	Justin Wheeler (FCA)
CfP and schedule	Justin Wheeler, Lidija Balija
Sponsor management	Justin Wheeler, Shaun McCance
Speaker management	Justin Wheeler, Lidija Balija
Social events and venue logistics	Dorota "Dorka" Volavkova
Design	Emma Kidney, Madeline Peck
Marketing and comms	Justin Wheeler, Shaun McCance
Travel sponsorships	Justin Wheeler, Juliana Furlow
Website	Shaun McCance, Jason Brooks (backup), Jess Chitas (redesign)

Communication channels

• Flock Staff mailing list: flock-staff@fedoraproject.org
• Sponsor inquiries: sponsors@fedoraproject.org
• Planning calls: Bi-weekly (switching to weekly closer to the event)
• Chat: Flock Staff channel on Red Hat Slack; Fedora Matrix channels

🏷️ Issue tracker guide

Issues in this repository represent planning tasks for Flock. They are organized using labels and milestones.

Labels

Labels are split between the council org-level labels (shared across all Council repos) and repo-specific labels defined here.

Repo labels: area (what workstream -- non-exclusive, multiple can apply)

Label	Description
area/CfP & Schedule	Call for Proposals, schedule building, session management
area/Design & Swag	Branding, t-shirts, stickers, badges, signage
area/Marketing & Comms	Blog posts, social media, website, announcements
area/Registration	Pretix platform, attendee management, check-in
area/Social Events	Evening activities, sponsor dinner, walking tours
area/Speakers	Speaker communications, onboarding, confirmations
area/Sponsors	Sponsor outreach, contracts, invoicing, fulfillment
area/Travel & Financial Aid	Travel sponsorships, BEAR approvals, reimbursements
area/Venue & Logistics	Room setup, AV, catering, hotel, accessibility
area/Volunteers	Recruitment, orientation, on-site coordination

Repo labels: priority (how urgent -- exclusive, one per issue)

Label	Description
priority/critical	Blocking the event; resolve immediately
priority/high	Important for the current milestone
priority/medium	Should be done this milestone if possible
priority/low	Nice to have; can slip

Org labels (inherited from council)

These labels are managed at the organization level and available across all Council repositories. They cover roles (role/fca, role/fpl, role/foa, role/engineering, role/mindshare, role/initiative lead), triage states (?/needs triage, ?/needs changes, ?/needs reporter feedback, ?/needs vote), scope (scope/new, scope/improvement, scope/bug), workflow state (state/approved, state/blocked, state/duplicate, state/invalid, state/wontfix), and community tags (good first issue, help wanted).

Milestones

Milestones map to phases of the planning timeline:

Milestone	Due	Purpose
April 2026: Schedule & Speakers	Apr 30	Publish schedule, fill final slots, speaker checklist
May 2026: Pre-Event Prep	May 31	Venue/AV finalization, swag, sponsor fulfillment, volunteers
June 1--13: Final Sprint	Jun 13	Shipments, comms, volunteer orientation, last venue check-ins
June 14--16: Event	Jun 16	On-site execution
Post-Event	Jul 31	Survey, recordings, retrospective, reimbursements, sponsor follow-up

🗓️ Timeline

Key dates

Date	Milestone
Nov 4, 2025	Announce date, location, and timeline
Oct--Dec 2025	Contact sponsors
Dec 8, 2025	Open CfP and registration
Feb 2, 2026	Soft close CfP
Feb 8, 2026	Hard close CfP
Feb 9--28, 2026	CfP review
Mar 2--6, 2026	Speaker confirmations
Mar 8, 2026	Deadline for financial aid form
Mar 23--27, 2026	Publish initial schedule
Apr--Jun 2026	Final logistics, swag orders, venue confirmation
Jun 14--16, 2026	Flock to Fedora 2026
Jun 18--20, 2026	DevConf.CZ (Brno, CZ)

Planning phases

The event checklist is organized into phases that correspond to milestones in the issue tracker:

1. September--November -- Venue, budget, sponsor prospectus, public announcement, design kickoff, registration and CfP platform setup
2. December--February -- CfP promotion, CfP review, sponsor outreach, travel sponsorship form, website updates, design assets
3. March--April -- Speaker notifications, schedule building, sponsor contract finalization, social event planning, swag orders, travel coordination
4. April--June -- Venue confirmation (A/V, catering, rooms), speaker updates, registration push, volunteer recruitment, swag shipping, final comms
5. Event week -- Opening remarks deck, venue check-in, volunteer orientation, shipment tracking
6. Follow-up -- Post-event survey, photo/recording publication, retrospective, reimbursements, budget reconciliation, sponsor thank-you notes

💰 Sponsorship

Flock is made possible by the support of Red Hat and external sponsors. Sponsorship tiers are Bronze, Silver, and Gold, with optional add-ons. Red Hat is listed as a Gold sponsor.

For sponsorship inquiries, contact sponsors@fedoraproject.org.

The Sponsor Prospectus contains full details on tier benefits and pricing.

🤝 Contributing

Flock planning is a community effort. If you would like to help, here are some ways to get involved:

1. Browse issues labeled help wanted or good first issue for tasks where the team needs assistance.
2. Join the conversation on the Fedora Matrix channels or mailing lists.
3. Volunteer on-site -- closer to the event, we recruit volunteers for registration desk, A/V support, and attendee assistance.

📜 Code of Conduct

Flock to Fedora follows the Fedora Code of Conduct. All participants, including speakers, sponsors, and volunteers, are expected to abide by it.

⚖️ License

Content in this repository is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.