The year 2026 will set a new course for open source. We collect the most important initiatives and legal acts to keep an eye on. Happy New Year!

After a turbulent 2025, the idea that open source can contribute to technological sovereignty, innovation, real security and competitiveness is gaining momentum.
But are we on the right track? The year 2026 could indeed set the course for anchoring open source more broadly, strategically and politically in Europe. It is important to provide the community and developers of open source content & digital commons with new arguments and legal foundations. Not just to serve the big tech companies with their “business as usual” at the expense of the open source community. It is important that we join forces and make voices visible. We provide an initial overview:

Two calls to participate have recently been published, in which civil society is also called upon to provide timely feedback on national and EU strategies:

Call 1: EU “Towards European open digital ecosystems”

An open source strategy is to be increasingly implemented in the EU. The feedback phase for the “Towards European open digital ecosystems” initiative has been running since 6th January 2026. It is still possible to comment on the strategy for technological sovereignty presented there until 3rd February.

Among others, the open source community is called upon. It should present the state of open source in the EU, its value for private and public organisations, and possible actions to strengthen the European open source ecosystem.

Although the title refers to open source software, hardware and other commons elements are part of the initiative. The goal is an ecosystem with internet technologies, software, hardware, cloud, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and industrial applications.

Recommended reading: The feedback page is exciting, as it frequently discusses the importance of open hardware and open infrastructure.

Call 2: “Deutschlandstack”

The second consultation round for the Germany Stack (“Deutschlandstack”), which aims to create a “national sovereign technology platform for digital projects in Germany”, will run from 16 January to 15 February 2026. There was a lot of feedback in the first round from 1 October to 30 November 2025, which has now been incorporated.

In this second round of participation, the focus is increasingly on pragmatic implementation conditions, prioritised technology fields, standards and technologies and how these fit in with the strategic objectives.
Feedback is collected via GitLab Issues.

We are also planning a submission here, with reference to Commons, in co-operation with the Open Hardware Alliance and other people who would like to join us.

In addition to the Calls, there are several initiatives and legal acts that are being worked on and which we believe should explicitly include open source:

Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (DC-EDIC)

The EU has established a new instrument, the Digital Commons “European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC)”. (Announcement)

„The task of DC-EDIC is to implement a Multi Country Project

concerning Digital Commons in the areas of European common data infrastructure and services and connected public administration.“ Source

Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)

The Cyber Resilience Act is intended to introduce standardised cyber security requirements for “products with digital elements” – from secure development to vulnerability management and updates. There are overarching links here to the Product Liability Directive (see below), which will be ratified this year. Of interest here is a clearer clarification of the roles of open source contributors.

EU Product Liability Directive

The EU Product Liability Directive, which will be revised at the end of 2024, extends strict liability to digital products, including software, updates and AI systems. The aim is to better protect consumers if faulty software causes damage. The directive must be transposed into national law by December 2026. It is therefore important to set the course for open source now.

For us, the main question here is whether maintainers or foundations could be considered “manufacturers” simply because they provide documentation, source code or binaries. From the perspective of the open source movement, it must be clear: Liability applies to those who place an entire product on the market under their name and exploit it commercially – not the community that provides building blocks as digital commons.

In our blog post “Why tech commons are dying”, we gave a more detailed insight into why a strengthening of the tech commons can only come about through free technology.

Other initiatives

Apart from this, various EU regulations for artificial intelligence and political measures are on the agenda in which open source is partially addressed, or at least affected. Nezpolitik, Digitalcourage, FSFE and others from our network report on this in detail.

It would also be interesting to keep an eye on the other publications on the circular economy strategy in which open source hardware has recently been discussed. We are in favour of this direction, but it remains exciting to see how much of this will be put into practice.

Is something still missing? Then let us know on Mastodon: @OSEGermany@mastodontech.de

The new EU strategies aim to utilise open source specifically for digital sovereignty and industrial competitiveness.

This is a long overdue commitment:

Open source is commercially relevant, not just a hobby.

If you read the texts on open source, for example in the Product Liability Directive, there is a risk that open source will be reduced to “non-commercial” projects – exactly contrary to the definition of open source. It is crucial for the community that funding programmes, procurement rules and policy formats strengthen commercially viable open source models and can therefore support sustainable business models. Maintainers must be structurally supported and open source must not just be seen as a cheap supplier for large industrial groups.

A more detailed analysis of this can be found in this publication from our network.

The new year is already characterised by open source as a pioneer for more sovereignty and more participation.

Let’s work together to ensure that it doesn’t become a dead end. Thank you to all the people who are helping to shape this path.

With this in mind, we wish you a successful Open Source year 2026.

Image/Meme Credits:
Tom Dietel, CC-BY-4.0 “Proprietary tech blindfolds freedom”
(Edit digital green version: Martin Schott)