Open vSwitch and OVN 2026 Fall Conference

The Open vSwitch project, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project, will host its twelveth annual conference focused on Open vSwitch and OVN on November 3 - 4, 2026. The conference will be hybrid. Talks will be presented live during the conference. We are planning to use an online system that allows for text-based discussion, and live Q&A while the talk is happening for virtual attendees. Each talk will have time reserved following the presentation for further discussion via both text, over video and audio, and live with the presenters. Each talk will be given once.

The in-person location for the conference this year will be at the Bildungscampus in Heilbronn, Germany.

How to propose a Talk

We are seeking long and short ("lightning") talks on topics related to Open vSwitch and OVN. We expect long talks to last 25 minutes with an additional 5 minutes for questions, and short talks to last 10 minutes.

We will also accept proposals for panel discussions and workshops. Please submit them as full talks and make it clear in the description that you are proposing a panel or workshop.

Please submit proposals to ovscon@openvswitch.org by September 28th, 2026. Proposals should include:

Title and abstract.
Names, email address, and affiliation for each speaker.
Whether you are proposing a full talk or a lightning talk or either one at the committee's discretion.

Speakers will be notified of acceptance by October 11th, 2026.

Given the short timeline, if you think you may need more time to prepare a submission, please send that asap.

Speakers should plan to attend the event in person. Travel and accommodations are the responsibility of attendees. The paper review committee may make exceptions for virtual talks, but the preference is for talks to be presented in-person.

Topics that may be considered, among others, include:

The future of Open vSwitch (e.g., AF_XDP, P4, eBPF).
NAT, DPI, and stateful processing with Open vSwitch.
Deploying and using OVN, including cloud management system (CMS) challenges, such as ovn-kubernetes.
Testing and scaling OVN.
NIC acceleration of Open vSwitch.
Using Open vSwitch and OVN to realize NFV and service chaining.
Porting Open vSwitch to new operating systems, hypervisors, or container systems.
Integrating Open vSwitch and OVN into larger systems.
Troubleshooting and debugging Open vSwitch and OVN installations.
Open vSwitch and OVN development and testing practices.
Performance measurements or approaches to improving performance.
End-user or service provider experiences with Open vSwitch and OVN.
Increasing the size and diversity of the Open vSwitch and OVN user and developer base.
Tutorials and walkthroughs of use cases.
Demos.
Integrating Artificial Intelligence into the Open vSwitch, and OVN ecosystem (development, CI, and deployment).

How to attend

The event will be hybrid with a fee for both in-person and virtual attendees. We offer complementary registration to speakers, students, academics, and anyone for whom the registration fee is burdensome. Please contact us if you need any help obtaining a complementary registration.

Stay tuned for the ticketing, hotel details, and city information.

More information

To reach the organizers, email ovscon@openvswitch.org. For general discussion of the conference, please use the ovs-discuss mailing list.