Munich Quantum Software Forum 2026

What MQSF is: software first, hardware second

Most quantum events in Europe are organised around qubit modalities and machine announcements. MQSF inverts that: the unit of interest is the software stack sitting on top of the machines, meaning compilers, SDKs, error-correction implementations, algorithm libraries and the tooling that connects them. That focus explains the format. A hardware conference needs keynotes and a show floor; a software forum needs a lot of short slots, because the work being presented is often a single library, a single compiler pass or a single benchmark. Hence roughly 50 pitches across two days, and posters that stay up through the coffee breaks rather than being confined to a scheduled session.

The three organisations behind MQSF

MQSF is one of the few events on the European quantum calendar with a genuinely tripartite organising structure: a company, a university chair and a publicly backed regional programme, each contributing a different part of the room.

The practical consequence is that the attendee mix is not dominated by any one constituency. Vendor-run events tend to fill with customers and prospects, university events with researchers. A forum co-signed by all three tends to hold the balance the description claims: academia, start-ups and established corporations in comparable numbers.

The 2026 edition: fourth run, same compact format

The 2026 edition keeps the two-day, single-city format that the first three editions established, on 14-15 October at the Backstage Kulturzentrum. The headline figure to carry into it is the 350-plus participants recorded at the 2025 edition, which is a meaningful size for a specialist software forum but small enough that the pitch-and-poster format still works as a way of meeting people rather than as a queue. Registration is around EUR 99 for both days, which is an order of magnitude below what the commercially run quantum conferences charge, and is the clearest signal of what the organisers are optimising for: attendance by working developers and researchers rather than by delegations with conference budgets.

Who speaks: the announced organisation mix

The speaker roster spans cloud providers, quantum hardware companies, software specialists, national laboratories and industrial users. Several of the hardware companies listed also ship the SDKs and compilers under discussion, so the hardware and software categories below overlap in practice.

Two things stand out in that list. The first is the presence of Oak Ridge National Laboratory alongside Forschungszentrum Jülich, which puts the two supercomputing centres most active in quantum-classical integration on the same programme. The second is Infineon: a semiconductor manufacturer rather than a quantum vendor, and a reminder that the forum aims at industrial software users, not only at the quantum industry talking to itself.

What MQSF covers

The declared themes are quantum software development, quantum SDKs and tools, quantum error correction, quantum algorithms, hardware-software co-design and quantum computing tooling more broadly. Error correction and co-design are the two that mark the forum out from generalist quantum conferences: both sit precisely at the boundary between the machine and the code, which is the boundary the Munich design-automation research community works on.

Where MQSF sits on the European quantum calendar

MQSF occupies a specific and fairly uncrowded slot: a low-cost, single-topic technical forum in mid-October, in a city that hosts one of Europe's larger publicly funded quantum programmes. Within the German circuit it is the software counterpart to AIDAQ in Berlin, and across Europe it reads as the software-side complement to hardware and photonics gatherings such as the Optica Quantum Industry Summit. Compared with the policy and funding assemblies on the same calendar, MQSF trades breadth for depth: no policy track, no ministerial keynotes, no exhibition floor, just two days of tools.

The venue: Backstage Kulturzentrum

MQSF is held at the Backstage Kulturzentrum in Munich, a music and cultural venue rather than a purpose-built conference centre. That choice suits the format: a large main room for invited talks and pitches, with circulation space where posters can stay up through the breaks. Exact room allocation, address details and transport directions are published on the event site ahead of each edition.

The organiser: Munich Quantum Software Company

The Munich Quantum Software Company (MQSC) is the lead organiser and hosts the forum under its own domain at mq.sc/mqsf. It runs the event in collaboration with the TU Munich Chair for Design Automation, which supplies the academic design-automation and tooling connection, and Munich Quantum Valley, the Bavarian initiative coordinating the region's public quantum research effort.

First time at MQSF? How to prepare

• Register early rather than late. At roughly EUR 99 the price is not the constraint, capacity is: a 350-plus event in a music venue has a hard ceiling, and the refund window closes 24 days out, so an early booking costs little to reverse.
• Read the pitch list before you arrive, not on the day. With around 50 rapid-fire pitches across two days, the difference between a useful trip and a blurred one is deciding in advance which five or six tools you want to follow up on.
• Treat the breaks as the main programme. Posters are shown during the breaks rather than in a separate slot, which means coffee time is when the detailed technical conversations happen. Arrive expecting to spend it standing at posters.
• Come with a concrete stack question. The room contains cloud providers, hardware vendors, tooling specialists and two national laboratories at once. That combination is most useful to someone who can describe the specific integration problem they are trying to solve.
• Dress and behave as you would at a technical workshop. This is a working software forum in a cultural venue, not a suited corporate summit; the norm is engineer-casual.
• Budget a Munich evening. The registration fee includes drinks, and a two-day forum of this size does most of its networking after the last session rather than in scheduled meetings.