A three-day participatory festival in Barcelona for technologists, researchers, educators and advocates: organised by Mozilla Foundation, drawing 3,000+ participants to Recinte Fabra i Coats on 28–30 October 2026 for community-led sessions on the open web, ethical AI, digital rights, and internet health.
Mozilla Festival (MozFest) is Mozilla Foundation's annual participatory gathering for people who care about the health of the internet. First held in London (from 2010 to 2022), MozFest relocated in subsequent years and the 2026 edition is confirmed at Recinte Fabra i Coats, a repurposed industrial complex in Barcelona's Sant Andreu district.
The event is not structured as a traditional conference. Sessions are proposed and delivered by the community through a competitive Call for Participation (the CFP for 2026 closed on 24 May 2026). The format sits between an unconference and a festival: workshops, discussions, hands-on builds, artistic installations and plenary moments run simultaneously across multiple tracks. Keynote speakers exist but are not the dominant format.
The 2026 edition is part of Open Tech Week in Barcelona. Attendance is described as 3,000+ by the organiser.
MozFest 2026 runs 28–30 October at Recinte Fabra i Coats, a former textile manufacturing complex managed today by the Barcelona City Council as a cultural and civic space. Registration is handled via the Accelevents platform (events.mozillafoundation.org). The website redirects to a JavaScript-dependent event page; ticket pricing is not confirmed in plain text as of verification.
The CFP for 2026 closed on 24 May 2026. Sessions forming the 2026 programme were selected from community submissions.
MozFest occupies a distinct position at the end of October, in the same window as Web Summit (Lisbon, early November) but with a fundamentally different character. It is not a startup investment event, a vendor showcase or an enterprise IT conference. Its audience overlaps with Internet Freedom Festival (Valencia), re:publica (Berlin) and RightsCon, not with events oriented toward B2B software procurement or enterprise technology adoption.
For attendees who work at the intersection of technology and civil society, digital policy, open source sustainability or AI ethics research, MozFest is among the few annual events operating at genuine scale (3,000+) with this specific orientation.
No independently verified breakdown by role or geography is published by the organiser.
The programme is community-determined, but the organiser's stated focus areas reflect Mozilla's ongoing mission priorities:
Open web and internet health: decentralised infrastructure, browser diversity, open standards
Ethical AI: fairness, accountability, bias auditing, participatory AI design
Digital rights: surveillance, privacy, data governance, end-to-end encryption
Open source: contributor economics, governance models, sustainability of FOSS projects
AI and society: EU AI Act implications, algorithmic decision-making in public services, generative AI and labour
Internet literacy: media literacy education, disinformation, digital inclusion
The organiser uses "festival" deliberately. The format is participatory: most sessions are proposed by attendees (not a programme committee), delivered interactively, and designed to produce something rather than broadcast information. Attendees are expected to be active participants, not passive audience members. In practice this produces a density of simultaneous workshops, discussions and hands-on sessions rather than a main-stage keynote schedule.
Mozilla Foundation is a US non-profit organisation founded in 2003 to support an open and accessible internet. It produces the Firefox browser (through its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation), publishes the Mozilla Manifesto, and runs public advocacy on digital rights, AI accountability and open source. MozFest is its annual public gathering. Mozilla relaunched its branding in 2024 under the "Reclaim the Internet" motto.
Yes. MozFest explicitly includes sessions on surveillance capitalism, algorithmic injustice, platform power and the policy dimensions of internet governance. Attendees who prefer events without political or advocacy dimensions will find parts of the programme uncomfortable. The organiser does not position MozFest as a neutral technology forum.
Recinte Fabra i Coats is a former 19th-century industrial textile complex in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood of Barcelona, now managed by the Barcelona City Council as a public cultural space (Centre de Creació Fabra i Coats). Its multiple buildings, courtyards and open spaces provide flexible configuration for a multi-track, participatory event.
By metro: Line L1 (red line), Sant Andreu station (exit Fabra i Coats). Journey from Passeig de Gràcia approximately 15 minutes.
By bus: Multiple bus lines serve Sant Andreu.
From airport: Barcelona El Prat Airport (BCN) connects to the city centre by Aerobus (approximately 35 minutes to Plaça Catalunya) or by RENFE Rodalies train (R2 Nord line, approximately 25 minutes to Barcelona Sants or Passeig de Gràcia, then metro).
Mozilla Foundation is a US-based non-profit that stewards the Firefox browser project and advocates for an open, privacy-respecting internet. MozFest is its annual flagship gathering; the Foundation also runs the Mozilla Technology Fund, Mozilla Ventures (a $35M venture fund investing in pro-internet startups) and the Common Voice open dataset project. The Foundation's 2024 rebrand introduced the "Reclaim the Internet" positioning.
Website: mozillafoundation.org. MozFest: mozillafestival.org/en/.
MozFest is one of the few events at 3,000-person scale where the civil society critique of AI carries equal weight to the engineering track: its community-session model makes it genuinely participatory rather than a keynote circuit with breakout rooms attached.
Registration is open via events.mozillafoundation.org (Accelevents platform). The website requires JavaScript to display ticket pricing. Specific ticket prices were not accessible in plain text at time of verification. Check mozillafestival.org/en/ for current pricing and access tier information.
No. The Call for Participation for 2026 closed on 24 May 2026. Sessions for the 2026 programme have been selected from submitted proposals.
English is the primary language. Sessions proposed by the community may be delivered in other languages, including Spanish and Catalan, particularly given the Barcelona location. The programme publishes session language information ahead of the event.
A virtual or hybrid attendance option is not confirmed on the website as of June 2026. Previous editions have offered online participation in some form; check mozillafestival.org/en/ closer to the event date.
| Official website | https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/ |
| Register | https://events.mozillafoundation.org/e/mozilla-festival-2026 |
| Programme | Not yet disclosed as of June 2026 |
| Mozilla Foundation | https://foundation.mozilla.org/ |