FOSDEM 2025: A PostgreSQL Community Tradition

Created in February 07, 2025

2025   ·   community   fosdem   events   postgresql   personal

Introduction

FOSDEM has long been a key event for the PostgreSQL community, and 2025 was no exception. Every year, PostgreSQL developers, contributors, and users worldwide gather in Brussels for a week packed with talks, meetings, and discussions. Our community has a strong tradition at FOSDEM, with a dedicated developer room, a booth, and numerous side events

One of the most recognizable FOSDEM traditions is FOSDEM Weather — a perfect mix of rain, cold, and clouds that always greets us in Brussels. Over the years, we even started selling PostgreSQL-branded umbrellas at our booth, and you could track the weather by watching the sales spike! But this year, for the first time in a while, the weather was sunny and perfect — so we joked that the weather was trying to lower our sales. 😄

A Busy Week for PostgreSQL

FOSDEM week is always busy for the PostgreSQL community, with multiple events happening alongside the main conference:

P2D2 Conference

Held earlier in the week, the Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day (P2D2) is a major PostgreSQL event that gathers experts for in-depth discussions. For a detailed experience of the event, check out Ants Aasma’s blog post.

PostgreSQL Developer Meeting

On Thursday, January 30th, PostgreSQL core developers and contributors held a private developer meeting to discuss ongoing projects, significant challenges, and future PostgreSQL development. More details can be found on the official event page.

FOSDEM PGDay

On Friday, January 31st, we had FOSDEM PGDay, a full-day PostgreSQL conference. The schedule featured talks on a wide range of PostgreSQL topics, from performance tuning to backups and new features. The complete schedule is available here.

PostgreSQL Devroom at FOSDEM

The PostgreSQL Devroom took place on Sunday, February 2nd, featuring sessions on database performance, replication, analytics, AI/ML, and more. This year, we had great discussions about PostgreSQL internals, best practices, and real-world use cases. You can find the complete session list here. The talk records will be available shortly.

Community & Networking

FOSDEM is not just about talks—it’s about meeting people, sharing ideas, and strengthening the community. As usual, there were plenty of social events and informal gatherings.

One of the highlights for me was attending the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) event on Saturday evening, where I had the chance to meet new and long-time friends. GSoC continues to be an essential program for PostgreSQL, and it was great to see the enthusiasm for mentoring and open-source contributions. Right now, PostgreSQL org is gathering project ideas and mentors. If you want to be a mentor, you still have time until February 10th!

Contributions & Recognition

This year’s central topic of discussion was contributions: what counts as a contribution, how we measure it, and how we recognize non-code contributions. Our community relies on the work of many people beyond just developers: event organizers, documentation writers, speakers, translators, and advocates all play a massive role in making PostgreSQL what it is today.

To help highlight and recognize these contributions, we put a lot of effort into building our new website: postgres-contrib.org. This platform helps track contributions and provides a way to nominate and recognize those who support the community.

Closing Thoughts

The spirit of the PostgreSQL community is what makes FOSDEM so special every year. I want to extend my huge thanks to all the volunteers, organizers, and contributors who made this event possible.

Special thanks to:

  • The Call for Papers team (which I was part of) for reviewing and selecting the talks.
  • All speakers who shared their knowledge.
  • The attendees who made the devroom lively and interactive.

A special shoutout to volunteers, both scheduled and spontaneous. While we had a volunteer schedule for the booth, many community members stepped up to help when needed. For example, Bruce Momjian spent hours assisting visitors at the booth, helping find PostgreSQL T-shirts and hoodies in the correct sizes. And Ants Aasma helped a team of bouncers (well, pg bouncers, if you know what I mean ;) ). Many others did the same, proving once again that our community is built on collaboration and generosity.

We had a fantastic time at FOSDEM 2025, and I can’t wait to do it all again next year!

Until then, keep contributing and keep the PostgreSQL spirit alive! 🚀