Selection Process | DjangoCon Europe 2026

Selection process

Reviewing the talks submitted to a conference is no walk in the park. There's a lot to consider and there are usually far more great submissions than available slots in the schedule.

That's why we believe that our review process and guidelines should be transparent to everyone involved. This will ensure that you have a rough idea of what to expect during the conference as an attendee and help you understand our decisions regarding your submissions as a submitter.

Composition

Just a disclaimer: all of the following numbers are approximate and may change.

DjangoCon Europe has three conference days reserved for talks (followed by two days of sprints with tutorials on the side). Based on previous years’ experience, more than 10 talks per day (plus room for lightning talks) is a bit much, so we're looking for about 27 talk slots that we can distribute among submissions. Of these 27:

3 keynote speakers selected by us. We're very much open to suggestions, so contact us if there is anybody you'd like to see or hear as a keynote speaker!
4 project presentations. These talks show ways and areas in which Django may be used.
3 community talks. These are meant to show the struggles we face as a community and as individuals. They may include talks on personal growth or demonstrate problems that still need to be resolved.
15 talks about Django and working with Django:
- 6 talks accessible to beginners, focusing on concepts, introductions, guides, and other material most useful to those having used Django for about a year or less. Includes common workflows (like debugging and testing) and introductions to tools integrated with Django.
- 6 more advanced talks, explaining concepts or implementation details in depth for people who have used Django for more than a year. This includes uncommon workflows and improvements in testing and debugging workflows.
- 3 talks at a very advanced level on implementation details and planned features. We also hope to offer some of the Django Under The Hood spirit here.
2 talks focusing on languages or frameworks that are not Django.

If your talk idea does not match any of these categories (or matches more than one), no need to worry! This is not a strict list that every submission needs to follow. We just use it s as guide for attendees, submitters and reviewers alike.

Reviewing

Reviewers will be asked to review a set of submissions and submit a review (both a few words and a rough rating). After the review period is over, we will go through the talks by category and select the talks based on the accumulated reviews.

If we can't decide between two or three talks, we'll check back with the reviewers and ask them for their opinions.

Of course, we'll let you know regardless of the outcome of the review. We'll probably send out some of the acceptance emails before the rejection emails to allow accepted speakers to step back in case they cannot attend after all. Regardless of our decision, feel free to ping us for feedback, and we'll give you an overview of reviewer opinions! We don't do ghosting here.

We value your feedback. If you have any questions or concerns or wish to volunteer for the review team, please contact [email protected].