TNC26 will be hosted by CSC, the Finnish NREN, from 8-12 June 2026 in Helsinki. The programme includes over 100 items, from plenaries to parallel sessions, Lightning Talks, BoFs, Community Hub meet ups and side meetings. We have dived deeper into what the programme looks like for the main conference days (Day One, Two and Three) but what about the side meetings happening on Monday 8 and Friday 12 June? They are the perfect platform to drill down on a topic, work through a problem with the right people, and to leave with something more than inspiration.
What’s on the agenda?
The Monday morning sessions at the Finlandia Hall will set the tone with a broad sweep of community priorities. The Global Science Network Forum will open up the conversation on one of the most pressing infrastructure challenges of our time: the impact of data storage on networks and scientific collaborations. Running in parallel, the 3rd Annual Workflow Orchestrator User Group brings together NRENs already using or moving towards Workflow Orchestrator (WFO) in production, combining feature updates with open discussion between current and future user. Roaming and mobility will also get their dedicated moment with Mobility Day, the annual gathering for anyone with an interest in eduroam, govroam, 4G/5G, WiFi 6(e), Internet of Things, Passpoint, and more. Also on Monday morning, GÉANT Community Programme’s Special Interest Groups will be meeting to discuss topics of strategic security management (SIG-ISM), crisis communications and strategic communications (SIG-Marcomms) and digital education trends and tools (SIG-EDU).
The afternoon shifts gear with a focus on operational practice and sustainability. The side meeting Best Practices for Streaming Telemetry in R&E Networks will bring together NRENs who have already deployed streaming telemetry to share use cases, lessons learned, with the aim of shaping shared community best practices. More Special Interest Groups will get together to explore topics on measuring sustainability impacts across networks, products and services (SIG-Sustainability), digital sovereignty and procurement as a service (SIG-Procurement) and, for something a little different, the Special Interest Group on Research Engagement Development (SIG-RED) is organising a visit to the VTT quantum computing lab in Espoo – one of Europe’s leading research organisations, which offers quantum computing services for research and companies, and develops quantum computing algorithms for various applications.
Friday morning picks up the thread with an equally interesting line-up. GÉANT Clouds will dig into the question of sovereignty in above-the-net services for research, opening with a deep dive into a proposal for a sovereign pan-European S3-compatible object storage infrastructure. For the first time, eduGAIN and REFEDS will join forces and combine the eduGAIN Town Hall with the milestone 50th REFEDS Meeting into a single event covering the full spectrum of federation, authentication and identity developments. The side meeting Running eduMEET as a Service will turn its attention to how to keep a community video conferencing tool distinctive and competitive in an increasingly saturated market. And finally, SIG-AI and SIG-RED will team up to address the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and research engagement.
The full list of Side Meetings is available on the TNC26 Programme page.
Not registered yet?
Regular Passes are available until 5 June 2026 (midnight CEST). Please note that to attend side meetings you need a separate ‘Side Meeting Pass’. If you’d like to bring a guest to one of the Social Events, you can purchase a pass for them.
Subscribe to the TNC mailing list and visit the TNC website at tnc26.geant.org for all conference updates.
