Call For Proposals (CFP)

Join us for the 2026 annual HPSF Conference, where the brightest minds in high performance software come together. Hosted by the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF), this event is dedicated to advancing community-driven solutions for performance, portability, and productivity in a rapidly evolving High Performance Computing (HPC) landscape.

With the growth of AI, accelerated computing, and HPC, this is the moment to drive innovation. Together, we’ll explore how open source collaboration and a unified foundation for high performance software can unlock new possibilities for high performance computing systems. Learn more about what’s new with HPSF projects and meet with project communities. Join us to connect, learn, and lead the charge in transforming how we build and use software.

Please be aware that the Linux Foundation will now utilize Sessionize for CFP submissions. Sessionize is a cloud-based event content management software designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. If you need guidance, please review how to submit your session for an event to see step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots.

Dates to Remember

Reminder: This is a community conference — so no product and/or vendor sales pitches.

Suggested Topics/Tracks Include:

• Building and Sustaining Community
  • How to build effective open source and HPC communities
  • Lessons learned from other foundations and collaborations
  • How best to encourage collaboration across different HPC communities and organizations
  • Strategies for increasing diversity and inclusion within technical communities
  • Keeping early-career and underrepresented contributors engaged and supported
  • Stories from outside communities interested in partnering with or joining HPSF
• User Experiences
  • HPC user needs in research, academia, and industry
  • Challenges and lessons learned in setting up or scaling HPC environments
  • Successes and challenges in adopting HPSF-supported software in new or unexpected domains
  • Applying HPC tools in unconventional fields (e.g., humanities, social sciences, biomedical, epidemiology)
• Contributor Experiences
  • Contributor and maintainer stories
  • Strategies for attracting, onboarding, and supporting new contributors
  • What makes a welcoming and inclusive contributor experience
  • Factors that encouraged or discouraged you from contributing to a project
  • Contributing to an existing project vs. starting a new one
  • Collaborating with external contributors or new project teams
• Project and Ecosystem Growth
  • Updates or technical deep dives from projects
  • Case studies of adoption or impact in unusual or emerging domains
  • Successes and challenges in deploying and scaling HPSF-supported software
  • Projects or teams interested in joining HPSF – motivations, benefits, and lessons learned
• Productivity, Performance, and the HPC Pipeline
  • Build and deploy workflows in HPC environments
  • Improving software productivity and performance pipelines
  • DevOps for scientific software – tools, practices, and automation strategies
  • Managing testing, permissions, and access for external contributors
• Trust, Security, and Open Collaboration
  • Handling permissions, testing, and code contributions from external collaborators
  • Security and trust challenges in open source scientific software
  • Policies and tooling that enable safe and open collaboration
• Emerging Technologies and the Future of HPC
  • The evolving role of AI and ML at scale in HPC
  • How can the software of today evolve to handle the hardware of tomorrow?
  • How HPC software and infrastructure are adapting to AI-driven research
  • Exploring integration with other software ecosystems (Rust, Javascript, etc.)
  • Future directions for HPC – what’s next for high performance software?

• Session Presentation – 15 minutes
• Session Presentation – 25 minutes
• Panel Discussion – 45 minutes
• Poster Presentation

• All speakers are required to adhere to our Code of Conduct. We also highly recommend that speakers take our online Inclusive Speaker Orientation Course.
• Speakers are responsible for purchasing their own conference registration; complimentary speaker passes are not provided.
• Panel submissions (any submission with more than 2 speakers) must include the names of all participants in the initial submission to be considered. In addition, The Linux Foundation does not accept submissions with all-male panels in an effort to increase speaker diversity.
• Avoid sales or marketing pitches and discussing unlicensed or potentially closed-source technologies when preparing your proposal; these talks are almost always rejected due to the fact that they take away from the integrity of our events, and are rarely well-received by conference attendees.
• All accepted speakers are required to submit their slides before the event.

While it is not our intention to provide you with strict instructions on how to prepare your proposal, we hope you will take a moment to review the following guidelines that we have put together to help you prepare the best submission possible. To get started, here are three things that you should consider before submitting your proposal:

1. What are you hoping to get from your presentation?
2. What do you expect the audience to gain from your presentation?
3. How will your presentation help better the ecosystem?

There are plenty of ways to give a presentation about projects and technologies without focusing on company-specific efforts. Remember the things to consider that we mentioned above when writing your proposal and think of ways to make it interesting for attendees while still letting you share your experiences, educate the community about an issue, or generate interest in a project.

How to Give a Great Talk

We want to ensure submitters receive resources to help put together a great submission and, if accepted, give the best presentation possible. To help do this, we recommend viewing seasoned speaker Dawn Foster’s in-depth session titled Overcoming Imposter Syndrome to Become a Conference Speaker!

Have More Questions? First Time Submitting? Don’t Feel Intimidated

Linux Foundation events are an excellent way to get to know the community and share your ideas and the work you are doing, and we strongly encourage first-time speakers to submit talks for our events. If you aren’t sure about your abstract, reach out to us, and we will be more than happy to work with you on your proposal.

The Linux Foundation and its project communities are dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for participants at all of our events. We encourage all submitters to review our complete Code of Conduct.