From Hosting to Co-Creating Europe’s Digital Future
13–18 June 2026 | Paphos, Limassol, Nicosia
Short version of this press release here.
NICOSIA, CYPRUS – June 9, 2026 – As the Republic of Cyprus is consolidating all the work put into the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, a critical coalition of technologists,open source advocates, digital rights activists, researchers, and civic society is coming together to engage in European-level conversations on digital policy; the Cyprus Free/Libre and Open Source Software Association (ELLAK) is delighted to announce the Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week. This initiative aims to ensure that local through EU-level conversations on digital policy are not merely hosted by Cyprus, but actively co-created by its citizens and relevant local ecosystems in Cyprus.
The Open Digital Futures Week (ODFW) creates a parallel, civic-minded, and community-driven processes that enable us to ask the questions that matter most. Who gets to shape our technological future? How do we build public digital infrastructure that serves democracy, education, culture, autonomy, the right to repair, and the common good? And how can Cyprus move from simply hosting policy conversations on and solutions for our digital future to actively co-creating the most ambitious-yet-responsible innovations that benefit all? The ODFW connects EU-level discussion with the local ecosystem, where digital transformation actually becomes public life, for example in school and when it comes to procurement decisions, and where digital life is expressed through cultural tools, public platforms, communication habits, civil society and everyday forms of power.
While the official EU agenda prioritizes high-level themes of AI, sovereignty, and investment, the Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week addresses the urgent “implementation gap” where digital transformation meets public life. The week focuses on the civic layer often missing from top-down policy, for example when it comes to transparent procurement, school platforms that protect children’s rights, interoperable public infrastructure and code, and the integration of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as a foundation for democratic resilience.
“Technology can begin to sound like something developed for states and markets, rather than something that is already organising childhood, education, culture, and everyday life,” said Chrystalleni Loizidou, organizer of the event and representative of ELLAK Cyprus. “These conversations are too important to leave entirely to politicians and big tech vendors. We need to connect the scattered technical capacity that exists locally and ask what digital transformation would look like if guided by public value and the common good.”
A Week of Inspiration, Discussions, Co-Creation & Collaboration
The ODFW event series serves as a bridge between the local Cypriot ecosystem and the over-arching European digital, AI-specific, and open source policy landscape, featuring a unique blend of high-level policy dialogue that is enriched by broad societal engagement, culminating in the Cyprus EU Presidency benefiting from direct civic society representation and contributions at its two-day conference, Shaping the Next Digital Frontier, organised by the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, on 17–18 June. It is the strong conviction of ELLAK and its associates that digital policy cannot belong only to politicians, civil servants, and a highly limited set of vendors, consultants and experts who are exclusively, or at least mostly talking to one another. Technology already organises many aspects of life, from early childhood on through education, culture, public spending, democratic participation, and much more. Cyprus now has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to bring its scattered but real civic, artistic, technical and institutional capacity into the room, and the Open Digital Futures Week is aimed at achieving exactly that.
Programme
On Saturday 13 June, the week kicks off in excellent fashion, at a good distance from conference halls, and focuses on sharing food, trust and hospitality, as we will host the traditional ELLAK Cyprus BBQ at the Pykni picnic site in Peyia, Paphos (starting between 11:00-13:00), with souvla as well as food made in a solar oven by Fornelia, a Cyprus-based solar oven initiative bringing ecological, low-dependency and inventive local technology into the spirit of the day. For more details, please visit https://ellak.org.cy/el/2026/06/08/odfkickoff/.
On Sunday 14 June, the ODFW continues seeks to connect with the Limassol art & tech underground for Libre Arts @ NeMe, an informal evening dedicated to libre arts, creative autonomy and cultural imagination beyond platform capitalism, surveillance culture and locked-down creative tools. Hosted in the critical cultural setting of the NeMe Arts Centre, the event invites participants to bring sounds, visuals, code, zines, posters, strange tools, unfinished experiments, hacked devices, performances, glitches and impossible ideas into a temporary autonomous atmosphere of shared experimentation. For more information, please refer to https://ellak.org.cy/el/2026/06/03/libreartneme/.
Kicking off our collective work weeks after the mostly community-driven events over the weekend, on June 15: The 101.CY Unconference will be hosted by the CYENS Centre of Excellence in the historical city center of Nicosia. This event allows participants to set the agenda and run sessions together. It creates space for “awkward, local, and practical questions” regarding digital sovereignty, public digital procurement, cybersecurity misconceptions, and the protection of children’s rights without compromising their autonomy. Visit https://101.cy/actions/unconf_eu.html for more information, including a registration link on the official website.
On Tuesday 16 June, the ODF Week connects directly with the European open source policy arena through Capital Series Cyprus: Open Source and the European Union, taking place at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, with its Innovation & Development Directorate serving as host and partner, and led by OpenForum Europe (OFE), where Thibaut Kleiner (Director of Future Networks, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology – DG Connect, European Commission) will offer a first-hand Commission perspective in delivering the keynote address. As event co-hosts, ELLAK Cyprus continues to play a vital local role in strategically connecting the Brussels -level, policy-focused discussions with Cyprus’ research, civic technology, open source and general public-interest communities. The programme also features speakers including His Excellency Christoph Burgener, the Swiss Ambassador in the Republic of Cyprus, Laszlo Igneczi, Executive Director and Chair of the Management Board of OpenForum Europe, and Prof. Stavros Malas, and is supported by an exceptional network of sponsors and partners, including Linux Foundation Europe, SUSE, Red Hat, GitHub, Eclipse Foundation, University of Cyprus (KIOS), and Collabora, APELL, Brno University of Technology, ELLAK Cyprus, Institute of Information Cyprus / 101.CY, GFOSS – Open Technologies Alliance, ISOC Switzerland Chapter and Next Generation Internet Zero (NGI0) representatives. Together, these organisations facilitate conversations across EU, international and local levels around open source policy, cybersecurity, digital public infrastructure, standards, innovation and competitiveness, the digital commons, and more. The official event page can be found at https://openforumeurope.org/events/open-source-and-the-european-union-cyprus-ofe-capital-series/.
Finally, on June 17-18, the week culminates in civic representatives, e.g. ELLAK members, directly carrying over the insights and inputs gathered during the ODF Week, up to that point, straight into the official “Shaping the Next Digital Frontier“ event as organized by the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, so as to ensure grassroots perspectives optimally complement the discussions at the highest and most formal levels. Most notably, it aims to help the Republic of Cyprus shape the most responsible and pragmatic possible policy conversations on topics like Digital Sovereignty and Open Digital Ecosystems, both in general and as part of its EU Presidency, but also to optimally round out related discourse in & around Brussels, as constructively as possible.
From a community BBQ in Paphos to a libre arts gathering in Limassol, through a participant-led Unconference at CYENS right upto a high-level European policy forum at The Cyprus Institute and straight into Cyprus’ EU Presidency and the highest (EU) policy levels, the Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week serves as an open invitation to developers, educators, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, public servants, journalists, digital rights advocates and active citizens in Cyprus to be part of some of the most important conversations of our time.
Background reflection
From Hosting to Co-Creating Tech Policy: https://allonan.com/2026/06/08/from-hosting-to-co-creating-tech-policy/
Suggested hashtags
#OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #CyprusOpenDigitalFutures #ELLAKCyprus #EUPolicy #DigitalCommons #Cybersecurity #PublicMoneyPublicCode
Press Contact
René Krikke
engage at mrprobot dot com
97622699
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