The fourth Munich Quantum Software Forum (MQSF 2026) runs 14 to 15 October 2026 at the Backstage Kulturzentrum in Munich: 16 invited talks, almost 50 rapid software pitches shown again as posters, and, for the first time, a registration fee.
The Munich Quantum Software Forum (MQSF) is a two-day, in-person forum on quantum computing software. Its organiser describes it as bringing together the "who's who" in quantum computing software: researchers, developers and decision makers who present tools, exchange ideas and discuss where quantum software is heading. The 2026 edition is the fourth, after 2023, 2024 and 2025. The 2026 programme combines 16 invited talks with almost 50 short software pitches. Each pitched tool is presented in a rapid on-stage slot and then shown on a poster during the breaks. It takes place 14 to 15 October 2026 at the Backstage Kulturzentrum in Munich, Germany.
14 to 15 October 2026, Wednesday and Thursday. Backstage Kulturzentrum (the hall, "Halle"), Reitknechtstraße 6, 80639 Munich, Germany. On the published programme, registration and coffee open at 08:00 each day, the opening is at 09:00, and the day ends with networking, snacks and drinks from 18:00, open end. All times are Munich time (CEST, UTC+2). The Eventbrite listing gives the daily window as 9 AM to 6 PM.
Munich Quantum Software Company (MQSC), supported by the TU Munich Chair for Design Automation and Munich Quantum Valley. The event website states that MQSF 2026 "is organized by MQSC" and supported by the other two. The legal entity is Munich Quantum Software Company GmbH, Garching bei München, represented by Prof. Dr. Robert Wille, who opens both days. Munich Quantum Valley's own event page lists members of the TU Munich and MQSC as organisers. Lukas Burgholzer, CTO and co-founder of MQSC and a senior researcher at the TU Munich Chair for Design Automation, also speaks on day 1.
350 is the organiser's figure for the 2025 edition ("350+ participants"); no attendance figure for 2026 is published, and registrations are capped by venue capacity, which the organiser says it has increased again this year without giving a number. The 2023 and 2024 editions each drew more than 200 participants, according to the organiser's summaries. The 2025 summary describes the crowd as computer scientists, physicists, engineers and mathematicians, people from universities and research centres, start-ups and established companies, and students through to managers. The audience mix is the organiser's description; it is not audited.
Published roster on the official programme (14 October first, then 15 October), 16 talks:
Robert Wille gives the opening on both days. The software pitches (four 45-minute blocks) are listed on the programme as "Software Pitches" with a collapsed presentation list; the individual pitch titles were not readable in the page source, so no pitch list is given here. Several speakers' companies, such as Classiq, planqc, Xanadu, IQM, Quantinuum, QuEra, AWS and HPE, are also sponsors (see the sponsors entry).
Three changes are documented by the organiser. First, a fee: earlier editions were free of charge for participants, and 2026 introduces a registration fee of EUR 99, with sponsors now the largest funding source. Second, a larger event: the organiser says venue capacity was increased again, and the pitch count is almost 50 against 16 in 2023, 23 in 2024 and 42 in 2025. Third, the venue: the Backstage Kulturzentrum (hall) in Munich; the venues of earlier editions are not stated on the organiser pages read for this fiche, so whether it is a change of venue is not established. A Community Area with tables for meet-ups, demos and hands-on sessions is part of the 2026 programme.
The 2026 programme runs two days, each with registration and coffee from 08:00, an opening at 09:00, six or seven 35-minute talks, 45-minute blocks of software pitches in the morning and around midday, coffee breaks, a 90-minute lunch break (13:35 to 15:05) and open-end networking from 18:00.
The wider topics named for the forum are quantum software development, quantum SDKs and tools, quantum error correction, quantum algorithms, and hardware-software co-design. The title of Elie Gouzien's talk (Alice & Bob) is not shown on the page.
Four formats are published. Invited talks of 35 minutes each, 16 in total. Rapid on-stage software pitches in four 45-minute blocks, almost 50 pitches in all. A poster for every pitched tool, displayed during the breaks. A Community Area with three tables for informal discussion, demos, tutorials and hands-on sessions. The organiser lists the format as an in-person forum; no online track is announced.
The Community Area is the only side programme published. It offers three tables, with up to three meet-ups running at the same time; anyone can add a meet-up to the public timetable on the programme page, and the organiser reserves a table and a sign for it. Meet-up hours were still to be confirmed on the page. Questions go to the organiser contact given on the programme page, simon@mq.sc. Networking with snacks and drinks follows the talks from 18:00 on both days. No parallel conference, workshop day or ticketed side event is listed.
The two-day pass costs EUR 99. The organiser says it covers access to the event and the venue, drinks, lunches and refreshments during breaks. The organiser's registration deadline was 20 September 2026, "after which late registration fees may apply". The Eventbrite listing, opened on 10 October 2026, shows a price range from EUR 99 to EUR 199 and a sales window that started on 21 September 2026; which ticket carries the EUR 199 price is not labelled (unverifiable information). No student, academic or single-day rate is published. Tickets are first-come, first-served and a waiting list applies once the allocation is reached.
The 16 invited talks are by invitation, and the roster is published. Not publicly disclosed: how the almost 50 software pitches were selected for 2026. The 2025 organiser page carried a call for software pitches; no call or submission deadline appears on the 2026 pages read for this fiche. A route that is open: anyone can propose a meet-up in the Community Area by adding it to the timetable on the programme page. Pitch or speaker enquiries can go to the organiser at contact@mq.sc, the address given in the forum's privacy notice.
Sponsorship runs in four tiers (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze), and the organiser states that sponsors are now the largest source of funding. Not publicly disclosed: tier prices, benefits or a sponsorship prospectus. No exhibition floor or booth sales is announced; sponsors appear as logos on the event site, and pitched tools get posters. Sponsorship enquiries can go to contact@mq.sc (the organiser's general address, not a confirmed sponsorship contact).
Published sponsor list on the official site (logo list, 11 organisations):
Infineon, the only sponsor that is not a quantum or computing vendor, has no talk on the published programme.
This describes the speaker and sponsor mix, not the attendee list, which is not published by company. Quantum hardware makers dominate: Alice & Bob, IQM, Pasqal, planqc, PsiQuantum, Quandela, Quantinuum, QuEra and Xanadu appear as speaker companies or sponsors, and QUDORA as a sponsor. Cloud and large technology vendors follow (AWS, IBM, HPE), with quantum software specialists (Classiq, MQSC) and research bodies (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Forschungszentrum Jülich with RWTH Aachen University) next. Infineon is the one semiconductor sponsor. Many hardware companies also ship SDKs, so the categories overlap.
Not publicly disclosed. No press page, media registration form or press contact is published on the event site, the programme page or the Eventbrite listing. The organiser's general address is contact@mq.sc.
None found in the sourced material for 2026. The sources that mention the forum are the organiser's own site and post-event summaries for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (published on the TU Munich Chair for Design Automation site), the Munich Quantum Valley event page, the Eventbrite listing and calendar entries such as Nanowerk and QuRECA. No independent news article was found. No outlet is listed as a media partner.
There is no independent coverage to grade. Everything published about the forum falls in two tiers: claimed by the organiser without outside proof (attendance of 350+ in 2025, "almost 50" pitches, the audience mix) and neutral calendar listings that repeat the organiser's wording. No media partner is declared, and no journalist is booked as a speaker on the published roster.
Skip it if you want a hardware-only conference: the published programme is about software stacks, SDKs, compilers and error-correction tooling. Skip it if you need policy, funding or investor sessions, since none is listed. Skip it if you need an exhibition floor or private meeting rooms, which are not announced; only poster space and three Community Area tables are. Skip it if you cannot register in time or accept the no-refund rule: tickets are limited and the Eventbrite listing says no refunds. Skip it if you plan to follow remotely, as no stream is announced.
MQSF is an annual October event: the 2023 and 2024 editions were held in October, the third on 20 to 21 October 2025 and the fourth on 14 to 15 October 2026. It is a software-only forum, which sets it apart from hardware-led quantum events, and it sits at the Munich end of the German quantum scene, next to Munich Quantum Valley. Not documented: a sourced comparison with other quantum events in the same weeks, so none is made here.
None found. All four editions (2023 to 2026) are Munich events; the organiser pages read for 2025 and 2026 place the forum in Munich, Germany. No MQSF-branded event in another city was found on the official site or in search.
The event website, the programme, the talk abstracts and the ticket page are all in English. Not publicly disclosed: an explicit statement of the language of the talks. Munich and Garching are the organiser's home base, but all published material is in English.
No livestream or online ticket is announced for 2026; the event is listed as in person. Recordings for earlier editions exist: the organiser's 2023, 2024 and 2025 summary pages link recordings of the talks and, for 2025, the pitches, with slides. Whether the 2026 sessions will be recorded is not stated (not publicly disclosed).
No refunds. This is the policy shown on the Eventbrite ticket page for MQSF 2026, opened on 10 October 2026. The listing's underlying data carries a figure of 24 days, but the same data sets refunds as not allowed, so no 24-day refund window applies. Not publicly disclosed: whether the organiser accepts name transfers.
Not publicly disclosed. The event site, the programme and the Eventbrite listing carry no accessibility statement, no step-free access information and no contact for access needs. Attendees with access needs can write to contact@mq.sc before booking.
The venue is the Backstage Kulturzentrum (hall), Reitknechtstraße 6, 80639 Munich. From Munich Central Station, take any westbound S-Bahn (S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6 or S8) to Hirschgarten; the venue is a short walk away. From Munich Airport (MUC), take the S1 or S8 towards the city centre to Hirschgarten, again within walking distance. The organiser lists three hotels near the venue: Rent-a-Room Munich (budget), Holiday Inn Express Munich City West (mid-range) and Munich Marriott Hotel City West (upscale).
The talk list is built around code, not machines: compilers, SDKs, a programming language (Guppy), a hybrid compilation framework, open interfaces and a vendor-neutral quantum-HPC initiative. Even the hardware companies on the roster, among them QuEra, Quandela, Xanadu and IQM, present their software stacks. Almost 50 pitches shown again as posters mean the unit of attention is a single tool, which a software community can compare directly. A reader who wants qubit roadmaps will find fewer of them here than in a hardware-led event.
The organiser says the free model, funded by research projects and its own investment, was not sustainable, and that sponsors now provide the largest share, with 11 organisations listed. The EUR 99 fee is presented as a modest contribution that also cuts no-shows. The effect is a forum with a defined price and a firm no-refund rule, in a field where hardware vendors with sponsor budgets sit alongside academic attendees. A reader should weigh the low fee against the sponsor mix when judging how neutral the programme is.
Every number comes from the organiser. The 350 attendance is for 2025, not 2026, and is a "350+" claim without an audit. "Almost 50" pitches fit into four 45-minute blocks, which is under four minutes per pitch if all are given on stage, and the list of pitches was not readable on the page. The price is EUR 99 on the organiser's text while the ticket platform shows up to EUR 199. The 24-day figure that appears in the ticket data is not a refund window.
Official site: https://munich-quantum-software.github.io/mqsf/ (it redirects to the event pages at https://munich-quantum-software.github.io/mqsf/2026/). Full programme: https://munich-quantum-software.github.io/mqsf/2026/program/. Tickets: https://mqsf-2026.eventbrite.com. Organiser: https://mq.sc. General contact: contact@mq.sc, and the executive named in the legal notice is Prof. Dr. Robert Wille, robert@mq.sc.