Following the established tradition, a Scientific Track running over the days of the FOSS4G Europe (FOSS4GE) is organised. The Scientific Committee of FOSS4GE 2026 invites original research contributions addressing any topic or domain connected to free and open source geospatial software, including (but not limited to):

• open hardware
• open source software development
• open geospatial science
• open geospatial data
• (geo)spatial data sharing systems, data spaces and big data analysis
• GIS for real-time applications, disaster response and recovery
• geospatial health informatics
• open (geospatial) cloud computing and cybersecurity
• open (geo)education
• participatory mapping and crowdsourcing
• Digital Twins, urban analytics, sustainable urban planning and development
• Species distribution and environmental modelling
• GeoAI and geospatial Machine Learning
• Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models
• Remote Sensing for water resources management, biodiversity and ecosystem services

Given the European focus of the conference, authors are encouraged to develop applications and use cases with a European scope and/or driven by European policy initiatives and/or using datasets from prominent European initiatives such as INSPIRE and Copernicus.

All types of papers are welcome, including results achieved, case studies, work in progress, reviews and demos. However, mere presentations of technology or applications using open source software without properly justifying originality against the scientific state of the art and without particular novelty are outside the scope of the Scientific Track and will be rejected. In addition, the use of open source geospatial software and its impact on the work should be properly highlighted. Contributions from PhD students and early-stage researchers are particularly encouraged.

In the evaluation of proposals, the Scientific Committee will pay particular attention to the reproducibility of the research (where this is applicable). Reproducibility is ensured when the research makes all artefacts (input data, computational steps, methods and code) openly available to obtain consistent results. When available, the code shall be publicly released under an open source license. Finally, we discourage authors from extensively using AI to write the paper.

How to Submit a Paper

The submission procedure is divided into two steps. Note that both steps are mandatory in order for authors to be able to present their work at the FOSS4GE conference.

Step 1

Deadline 15 April 2026

As a first step, authors are invited to submit abstracts written in English, comprising between 800 and 1000 words and containing sufficient details for evaluation (including the approach, results, concepts, reasons why it should be considered and why it would be interesting for the FOSS4GE Scientific Track audience).

The submitted proposals are not publicly visible until the FOSS4G Europe 2026 Scientific Committee has accepted them after a review period. Until then the authors can share their proposal for feedback/proof-reading with colleagues or friends via a link that is automatically created during submission.

The contributions are evaluated in the abstract review process. Submitted abstracts will be refereed by the members of the Scientific Committee for originality/scientific novelty, relevance for the FOSS4G community, presentation/clarity and overall scientific value.

As in all the fields of science, reproducibility will be considered among the evaluation criteria (see above). Authors will receive feedback and (for accepted abstracts) suggestions for improvement to be used for preparing their extended abstracts, to be submitted in Step 2.

Step 2

Deadline 1 June 2026

If the abstract is accepted, authors are invited to submit an extended abstract to be included in the conference proceedings.

We can accept up to 2 extended abstracts per registered person. If you choose this option and the two extended abstracts (for which only one author is registered to the conference) are both accepted, one will be presented through a standard oral presentation and the other through a poster or a 5-minute lightning talk (this will be decided at a later stage). Alternatively, based on the reviews, both can be presented through posters or lightning talks. Regardless of the situation (1 oral presentation and 1 poster/lightning talk, or 2 posters/lightning talks), authors must write two extended abstracts for Step 2.

Extended abstracts will be checked to make sure:
* authors have satisfactorily addressed reviewer comments;
* the extended abstract aligns with the template (to be made available later).

Extended abstracts will be rejected if either check fails. In addition, the Scientific Committee may perform a plagiarism check of the extended abstract content, with plagiarism causing the extended abstract (and the presentation) to be rejected. Similarly, the Scientific Committee may reject extended abstracts extensively written by AI.

Only the work of authors who submitted the extended abstract (conformant to the template) will be included (as talks or posters/lightning talks) in the Scientific Track program. In other words, no presentation at FOSS4G Europe 2026 Scientific Track is possible without submitting the extended abstract.

The extended abstracts will be included in the FOSS4G Europe 2026 Proceedings, each with a distinct Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in Zenodo, an open-access online repository.

In addition, the Scientific Committee is organising a Special Issue in a prominent peer-reviewed journal in the field of GIScience, explicitly dedicated to the work presented at the FOSS4G Europe 2026 Scientific Track. Submission of a full paper to this Special Issue is not compulsory. Publication in the journal remains subject to acceptance based on the journal review process (which, however, members of the Scientific Committee may facilitate).

Please note that accepted extended abstract will be published only after checking that at least one author is registered to the conference, with a limit of a maximum of two extended abstracts per author (as explained above).

All extended abstract should be formatted according to a template that will be made available shortly.