Two eventful days lie behind us: on 24 and 25 November, the second Open Source Hardware Conference took place in the cultural capital of Chemnitz - with over 100 participants from Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. Together with many partners, the OSHOP team put together a programme that shows just how lively and international the OSH community has become.

With its industrial ambience, the first day at the Chemnitz Industrial Museum provided the ideal setting for keynote speeches and technical presentations. Prof Dr Dirk Reichelt from HTW Dresden, the project coordinator of the OSHOP transfer room, and Prof Dr Steffen Ihlenfeldt, Director of the Fraunhofer IWU, opened the conference. With their impulses, they outlined the future development of OSH. The keynote speeches that followed were particularly influential. Radu Schwarz (Fraunhofer IISB) presented the open source battery management system foxBMS and Martin Duchene from Mekanika showed how a successful company in the machine tool sector can be built on the basis of open source. 

The international audience also enriched the programme. Christopher Lozinski from Poland (OS Image Processing Pipelines), Michael Weinberg from New York (Lessons from OSHWA Certification Program) and Erfan Korrani, who joined live from Iran (Colour Detection Board for Soil and Mineral Classification), shared perspectives from their projects and regions. The diversity of the contributions demonstrated the extent to which the OSHOP community is now globally networked.

A new addition to the programme was the KONSTRUKTIV open source hardware competition, which we held for the first time this year. Nine teams presented their open hardware projects in pitches and in the show-and-tell exhibition. In addition to the jury, the audience was also able to vote on who should win the competition. First place went to Oskar Lidtke with his "orcuScooter", a sustainable open source scooter and an exciting vision for the future of Fab Labs. Second place went to Rainer Wieland and his forest fire early warning system. Third place went to Tom Dietel with "Libre Water", a system for decentralised drinking water treatment. A big thank you to all our teams, it was great to see so much commitment and enthusiasm and we are already looking forward to the next round of Konstruktiv! 
An overview of all submitted projects will soon be published on the OSHOP project website (www.oshop-network.de)!

The second day continued at Fraunhofer IWU. In addition to various presentations, Javier Serrano (Head of CERN's Open Hardware Initiative) gave a live keynote on "The OSHW Journey at CERN". Afterwards, participants were able to take part in various workshop formats. They could build an OSH bicycle light, solder an OSH photometer or discuss business models around open source hardware: The sessions offered many opportunities to exchange ideas and try things out. A World Café at the end collected ideas and wishes for the 2026 conference.

It was two inspiring days full of new ideas, open discussions and community moments. We would like to thank all participants, speakers and supporters and are already looking forward to the Open Source Hardware Conference 2026!