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Blender Conference (Bcon): Annual Event Guide | Blended BORIS | Digital Art IP

TL;DR: Blender Conference (Bcon) in one paragraph

The Blender Conference, known as Bcon, is the yearly meeting of the Blender community in Amsterdam, organised by the Blender Foundation and Blender Institute. The 2026 edition (BCON26) ran from 23 to 25 September at Felix Meritis, with four parallel tracks of talks, the Suzanne Awards film festival, an afterparty and a Blender HQ visit on the Saturday. Tickets go on sale in spring and the last two editions sold out, so plan early. If you cannot travel, the talks are recorded and shared free on Blender’s YouTube and PeerTube channels. Whether you attend as an artist, a freelancer or a small studio, treat the event as a place to show work, meet clients and hire, and protect the work you show before you show it.

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Blender Conference (Bcon): Annual Event Guide

Once a year, the people who build Blender and the people who use it for a living meet in one building in Amsterdam. Developers explain what is coming, studios show how they shipped films and games with an open source tool, and artists from all over the world compare notes over lunch. That event is the Blender Conference, and for anyone who works with Blender it is the most concentrated few days of the year.

This guide explains what Bcon is, how the yearly calendar works, what tickets include, how to submit a talk or a film, how to follow it from home, and how freelancers and small studios can use it for networking and hiring. It also covers a part most event guides skip: what to do about your files, rights and ideas when you show work to a room full of strangers.

“A conference is where your work meets the people who could buy it, hire you or copy it. Show it with confidence, and make sure you can prove it is yours before you walk in.”
Violetta Bonenkamp, co-founder, CADChain

Protect the work you bring to Bcon

BlendedBoris adds a blockchain timestamp to your Blender work from inside Blender, so every demo, reel and pitch you show has dated proof of authorship behind it.

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What the Blender Conference Is

The Blender Conference is the annual gathering of the Blender community, run by the team behind Blender itself. Blender’s own history pages list the first Blender Conference in October 2002, the same year Blender became open source, and the event has been held in Amsterdam ever since. For years it took place at De Balie near the Leidseplein; after a short spell at a larger theatre and a pause during the pandemic, it returned in 2022 at Felix Meritis, a historic cultural centre on the Keizersgracht that has hosted it since.

The program mixes three kinds of content: developer talks about Blender’s roadmap and internals, production talks from studios and freelancers, and community sessions such as lightning talks. Alongside the talks runs the Suzanne Awards festival for films made with Blender. Blender’s 2025 recap reported that more than 60% of survey respondents came as part of their job, which tells you what kind of room it is: working artists, technical directors, teachers, developers and studio owners.

If you want to understand how Blender is funded and why its roadmap is public, our guide to the Blender Development Fund is a good primer before you go.

BCON26 at a Glance: Dates, Venue and Format

Here is what the 2026 edition looked like, based on the official conference site. Use it as a template for planning the next one; the Blender team announces each year’s dates and details on its own.

Dates: Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 September 2026.
Venue: Felix Meritis, in the centre of Amsterdam, with four tracks of parallel events and space for informal meetings.
Daily rhythm: doors open at 9:00. The program started at 11:00 on Wednesday and at 10:00 on Thursday and Friday. Friday’s program ended at 18:00.
Food: the ticket price included coffee, tea and water all day, lunch buffets and evening dinner buffets with drinks, and half of the food was vegan.
Suzanne Awards: two festival screenings on the Wednesday, running until 22:00.
Social: an afterparty on Friday evening at De Balie, and a Blender HQ visit on Saturday 26 September from 12:00 to 16:00.
Meeting room: a 12-person room that attendees could reserve, with bookings opening two weeks before the event.

The Bcon Year: Tickets, Calls and Deadlines

Bcon is not only three days in September. The conference runs on a calendar that starts in spring, and the people who get the most out of it work to that calendar. For BCON26, ticket sales, the call for presentations and the call for Suzanne Awards films all opened on 20 April 2026.

20 April: ticket sale and both calls for content open. BlenderNation reported a €50 early-bird discount at launch.
16 June: deadline for presentation proposals.
30 June: speakers hear whether their talk was accepted.
27 July: the program is announced.
28 August: deadline for Suzanne Awards submissions.
1 to 8 September: community voting on the festival films.
7 September: final presentation materials due from speakers.
23 to 25 September: the conference itself.

Tickets: How to Get In

Tickets are sold through the conference website and only to registered attendees; printed tickets are not issued, and your digital registration is enough to get in. The most important fact for planning is simple: the event fills up. The 2025 edition’s full-conference and one-day tickets sold out, and by the time BCON26 started the ticket page stated that the conference was completely sold out, with no tickets at the registration desk.

The conference site also notes a discount for developers who have contributed code to Blender in the previous 12 months; they are asked to contact the organisers on chat.blender.org. Prices are published on the ticket page when sales open, so check there rather than relying on older figures. If you are a freelancer, remember that conference tickets, travel and accommodation are often a deductible business cost; our guide to building a Blender freelance career covers the business side.

Ways to Take Part in Bcon

You do not need a ticket to be part of the Blender Conference. The table compares the main ways to take part, from watching at home to standing on stage.

Way to take part	What it involves	Cost and effort	Best for
Attend in person	Three days of talks in four tracks, festival screenings, meals and social events at Felix Meritis	Ticket plus travel and accommodation in Amsterdam; buy early, recent editions sold out	Networking, hiring, meeting the developers
Watch the recordings	Talks are recorded and shared on Blender’s YouTube and PeerTube channels	Free, at your own pace	Learning, sampling Bcon before you travel
Give a talk	Submit a proposal in the call for presentations; accepted speakers present to a room of peers	Proposal by mid-June, final materials in early September	Building reputation, studio visibility, recruiting
Enter the Suzanne Awards	Submit a film made with Blender in Animation, Design or Short Film	Video hosted on a streaming site; deadline late August	Animators, filmmakers and portfolio builders
Join the community around it	Follow announcements, discuss talks and meet attendees online	Free	Anyone who cannot travel this year

Giving a Talk at the Blender Conference

Speaking at Bcon is one of the best ways for a freelancer or small studio to become known. The call for presentations opens in spring and closes in June, and the program is curated from the proposals. Good proposals are specific: a production problem you solved, a pipeline you built, a tool you wrote, or a project you shipped with Blender, with clear takeaways for the audience.

Pitch a story, not a portfolio. “How we rendered a 40-shot commercial on a two-person team” is more useful than a gallery of past work.
Show the process. Node trees, breakdowns and before-and-after shots are what people take notes on. Our guides to Geometry Nodes and Blender add-ons show the kind of technical depth that works.
Clear the rights first. If the work was for a client, get written permission to show it, including shots, assets and the client name.
Plan for the recording. Talks are recorded and published, so anything on your slides becomes public. Do not show unreleased client work or files you would not post online.

The Suzanne Awards Film Festival

The Suzanne Awards have run since 2003 and are the community’s best-known prize for work made with Blender. There are three categories: Animation, for expressive character animation; Design, for production design; and Short Film, for work with a clear director’s signature. The winners receive a Suzanne statue, and the Short Film winner is chosen by the audience.

The festival rules are worth reading closely. Graphics must be made or rendered in Blender (or another free and open source render engine), any 2D paint software is allowed, and other post-processing software must be disclosed. Entries are submitted as links to a streaming site, and long films may be cut to a five-minute excerpt that the submitter chooses. Past festival guidelines also asked entrants to allow the Blender Foundation to show and distribute the work through its own channels, including blender.org, during and after the conference, and to hold the rights to any music they use. That is a reasonable licence for a festival, but you should know you are granting it.

If you are working toward a festival entry, short weekly challenges are good practice; see our guide to beginner-friendly render contests.

Watching Bcon From Home

Most of the value of the talks is available for free. The Blender team records the presentations and publishes them on its YouTube and PeerTube channels, usually during or shortly after the event. Make a playlist of the talks that match your work, and start with the keynote, which gives a good overview of where the project stands.

To keep up between conferences, follow BlenderNation news and the official Blender documentation and learning resources. For conversation about the talks, our guides to Reddit Blender communities and Discord servers for Blender artists list the busiest places.

Networking, Hiring and Business at Bcon

Bcon is a working conference. With most attendees there for their jobs, it is one of the few places where you can meet studio leads, pipeline developers, freelancers and educators in one hallway. Freelancers, small studios and startups can use it for three things.

Finding clients and collaborators. Prepare a short reel on your phone and a one-line description of what you do. Our guide to networking strategies for the 3D industry covers how to follow up without being pushy.
Hiring. Speakers and festival entrants have already shown their work publicly, which makes them easy to evaluate. If you are comparing hiring routes, see our guide to studio employment versus freelancing and our guide to hiring Blender artists on Upwork and Fiverr.
Pipeline decisions. Developer talks and hallway conversations are the fastest way to learn what is changing in Blender before you build a workflow on it. Our guides to the Blender to Unity pipeline and the Asset Browser are useful background.

Bring a portfolio that loads offline, and think about personal branding before you go: people will look you up the same evening.

Protecting Your Work When You Show It at Bcon

Conferences are about sharing, and that is what makes them valuable. They are also the moment when your work is seen by the largest number of strangers in the shortest time, often on recorded slides. A few habits keep that sharing on your terms.

Start with the basics of ownership. The Blender license page states that what you create with Blender is your sole property; the GPL covers the software, not your renders, models or films. Copyright in your work generally arises automatically when you create it, as our guide to whether 3D models automatically have copyright explains. The practical problem is proof: showing that a particular model, shot or idea is yours, and when you made it.

Before you go: timestamp the work you will show, build a reel of renders instead of carrying source files, check the licences of every asset in your demos, and prepare a short NDA if you plan to pitch unreleased work.
At the conference: show work, but do not hand over .blend files on USB sticks; agree important terms in writing with a short email after each meeting; and ask before filming someone else’s slides.
After the event: send files only under a clear licence or contract, watermark preview renders, keep dated project records, and register your key pieces. Our guides to registering copyright and protecting Blender models from theft go deeper.

If you share files with collaborators you met at the event, agree on the licence first. Our guide to Creative Commons versus copyright for Blender assets helps you choose, and copyright basics for 3D artists covers what your rights are by default.

Timestamp your work before your next talk or pitch

With BlendedBoris you can register your Blender files on the blockchain in a few clicks, so the reels, demos and films you show at conferences carry dated evidence of authorship.

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Common Mistakes When Planning for Bcon

Waiting to buy a ticket. Recent editions sold out. Decide in spring.
Missing the June deadline. The call for presentations closes months before the event. If you want to speak, plan your proposal in May.
Showing client work without permission. Talks are recorded and published. Get written approval for anything that is not yours alone.
Handing out source files. A reel shows your skill; a .blend file gives away your work. Share files later, under agreed terms.
Ignoring the festival rules. Suzanne Awards entries have rules on software, music rights and distribution. Read them before you submit.
Not following up. Most conference contacts go cold within a week. Send a short message with your reel and a concrete next step.
Skipping the recordings. Even if you attend, you will miss three of the four tracks at any moment. Watch the recordings afterwards.

Conclusion

The Blender Conference is the one place each year where Blender’s developers, studios and artists share a room, and it rewards people who plan for it. Follow the calendar: tickets and calls in April, talk proposals by June, films by late August, the conference in late September. If you cannot travel, the recorded talks give you most of the content for free. If you do go, bring a reel rather than your source files, agree terms in writing, and make sure you can prove that the work you show is yours. Then use the three days for what Bcon does best: meeting the people you will work with for the rest of the year.

FAQ on the Blender Conference

Do Blender Conference tickets sell out?

Yes, recently they have. The 2025 full-conference and one-day tickets sold out, and BCON26 was completely sold out with no tickets at the desk, so buy when sales open in spring.

What does a Bcon ticket include?

For BCON26 the ticket included drinks all day, lunch buffets and evening dinner buffets with drinks, along with access to the talks and festival screenings.

Is the Blender Conference useful for freelancers and small studios?

Yes. Most attendees come for work, so it is a good place to meet clients, collaborators and future hires, and to learn about changes in Blender before you build a pipeline on them.

Who owns a film I submit to the Suzanne Awards?

You keep ownership of your film. Past festival guidelines asked entrants to allow the Blender Foundation to show and distribute the work on its own channels, so read the current rules before submitting.

Should I share my .blend files with people I meet at Bcon?

Show renders and reels at the event, and share source files later under an agreed licence or contract. Keep dated records of your work in case you ever need to prove authorship.

How can BlendedBoris help at a conference?

BlendedBoris lets you add a blockchain timestamp to your Blender work from inside Blender, so the pieces you present or pitch have dated proof of authorship before they are shown publicly.

Violetta Bonenkamp, CADChain co-founder

2026-03-20 08:53 Guides

Blender Conference (Bcon): Annual Event Guide | Blended BORIS | Digital Art IP