Submit your talk.
The earlier, the better.
code.talks 2026 happens November 4 & 5 in Hamburg. 100+ talks across 14 tracks, curated by 25+ practitioners. This year we're reviewing submissions in three waves. Submit in wave 1 and you'll have your answer by June.
Apply now
● Next deadline: Wave 1 closes Sun, May 31
currently open
WAVE 1
Submit by May 31
📆
Submit Deadline
May 31
🎯
Decision Made
June 19
👍
You get a Yes or No
June 22
WAVE 2
Submit by June 12
📆
Submit Deadline
June 12
🎯
Decision Made
August 28
👍
You get a Yes or No
August 31
WAVE 3
Submit by Sept. 6
📆
Submit Deadline
September 6
🎯
Decision Made
September 18
👍
You get a Yes or No
September 21
Why submit in wave 1.
Here's a thing we hear every year: speakers wait until November to submit because they want to keep their topic flexible. AI moves faster than any conference timeline. What you know about agentic workflows today might be old news in six months. So you sit on your submission.
We changed that rule for 2026. Lock your topic now, refine your content later. Once we accept your talk, your topic stays as submitted. Your abstract and slides keep evolving right up to the day you walk on stage.
Apply now
● Next deadline: Wave 1 closes Sun, May 31
BENEFIT 1
More curator attention
Wave 1 submissions land on empty curator desks. By wave 3, most slots are filled and the bar is higher.
BENEFIT 2
A decision in June, not September
Wave 1 speakers know if they're in by June 19. That's five months of runway to prepare your talk and your team.
BENEFIT 3
Topic locked, content flexible
Your topic is fixed once accepted. Your angle is yours to evolve as the field moves.
How it works.
From submission to stage in four steps.
STEP 1
Submit
Send us your talk through our submission form. Title, abstract, format, short bio. Takes about 15 minutes.
STEP 2
Review
Your submission lands in front of the 25 curators on the team. They vote and shortlist within your wave.
STEP 3
Decision
You get an email with the outcome by the wave's decision date. Accepted talks include feedback. Declined talks get feedback too.
STEP 4
Refine
Accepted? Your topic stays as submitted. Your abstract keeps evolving. Update content as the field moves. Final slides due closer to November.
Who decides what makes it on stage.
25+ practitioners read every submission. Most of them have spoken at code.talks themselves. Some go deep on AI. Some challenge it. They don't agree on everything, and that's by design.
The program is organized around 14 tracks. Each track has a lead curator who owns the shortlist for that area. Around them, smaller curator teams cover the depth. And on top of that, we added a Community Curator layer this year, so the people who attend code.talks also have a voice in what gets on stage.
Programm Chair
Benedikt Stemmildt
See all Curators
What we're looking for.
14 tracks. One question per submission: will this talk make developers better at their job?
🤖 GenAI & LLMs
Lead: Matthias Lau
LLMs, AI tooling, context engineering, prompt engineering, AI integration
☁️ Cloud
Lead: Dennis Kieselhorst
Kubernetes, DevOps, IaC, observability, CI/CD, cloud sovereignty.
🏗️ Architecture
Lead: Uwe Friedrichsen
System design, DDD, event-driven, microservices, legacy modernization.
🔐 Security
Lead: Vlad Cherednychenko
DevSecOps, chaos engineering, threat modeling, incident response, resilience.
🖥️ Frontend
Lead: Ramona Schwering
Frameworks, mobile, browser tech, design systems, accessibility.
📦 Product
Lead: Zamina Ahmad
Product management, UX, prototyping, user research, design and dev convergence.
📊 Data
Lead: Florian Krause
Data engineering, streaming, ML pipelines, knowledge graphs, distributed computing.
👥 Culture
Lead: Ole Michaelis
Leadership, team dynamics, org design, change management, career paths, mentoring.
✏️ Craft
Lead: Thomas Much
TDD, clean code, pair programming, software teaming, testing, quality.
🛠️ DevEx
Lead: Sebastian Korfmann
Agentic Engineering, Developer tooling, IDEs, inner dev loop, build systems, productivity, DX as discipline, Platform engineering, agentic coding
🔬 Science
Lead: Michael Sperber
CS research, theoretical foundations, applied research.
🌍 Impact
Lead: Lovis Möller
Green coding, ethics, policy, economics of tech, societal consequences.
🎮 Geek-Out
Lead: Martin Westphal
Passion projects, hardware hacks, wild experiments, comedy, music, performance.
Apply now
● Next deadline: Wave 1 closes Sun, May 31
