Blender Conference 2026 Concludes in Amsterdam
The annual Blender Conference 2026 was held from September 23 to 25 at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, attracting over 700 attendees from more than 50 countries, with 126 speakers sharing over 100 hours of content across four tracks.
New CEO Francesco Siddi opened the event in a relaxed style, contrasting with his predecessor Ton Roosendaal, and introduced the Blender Lab, Blender Network, a systematic roadmap, and community engagement mechanisms launched in the past year.
In terms of business collaboration, Netflix Animation Studios officially joined the Blender Foundation as a corporate sponsor, focusing on software directions including online assets, VR/XR, Android porting, layered textures, video sequence editing, and 3D Gaussian Splatting.
The conference content focused on the expansion of geometry nodes into simulation and data processing, the evolution of rendering technology towards neural and real-time directions, industry applications in VFX and automotive design, as well as discussions on educational community meetings and plugin asset sales.
Siddi proposed the goal of "small teams, big projects," exploring how tools and community collaboration can enable small teams to produce feature-length animations, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of open-source films.
On the market side, the expansion of open-source tool applications is driving the creator economy and cross-software workflows, with resources flowing from professional CAD to visual iteration and real-time presentation, benefiting small teams and independent creators, while traditional large studio processes face pressure from diversified tool choices.
Supplementary information indicates that the conference content has been made public on the official YouTube and PeerTube, and discussions on the educational and certification system are beginning to take shape.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The Blender Foundation has been led by Ton Roosendaal for a long time, and Siddi, who joined in 2012, gradually took on roles as Studio General Manager and COO, officially becoming CEO in 2026. This historical path emphasizes the expansion from open film projects to organizational and commercial sponsorship.
Its capital path is reflected in maintaining open-source development through corporate sponsorship (like Netflix) and community mechanisms, while promoting support for platforms like Android and XR, with resources extending from core 3D tools to multi-industry workflows and educational systems.
Similar cases include other open-source creative software expanding industry penetration through conferences and sponsorships, as well as the process of geometric node-based procedural tools expanding from modeling to simulation and data applications. The current 3D tool ecosystem is in a transition phase from single software to cross-tool and real-time integration.
Essentially, this represents a reconstruction of the industry chain: open-source tools lower cross-software barriers through node systems and interoperability standards, enabling small teams to complete projects that traditionally required large resources, thereby changing the production paths in film, design, and scientific visualization.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Small teams can complete big projects, relying on open tools and collaborative mechanisms.
- Geometric nodes expand from modeling to simulation and data, with boundaries continuing to blur.
- Corporate sponsorship and community meetings jointly drive the penetration of open-source tools into the industry.