FDF 2026 – Bulletin 1: Agenda, Venue & Practical Information

Dear FDF participants,

We’re looking forward to welcoming you to the 3rd FPGA Developers’ Forum, held at CERN from 27th to 29th May 2026. This bulletin provides a detailed guide to the meeting, its scientific and social programmes and is intended to help you organise your visit to CERN. More details are available on the meeting web page directly at https://cern.ch/fdf26.

Registration

First, please take a moment to register if you haven’t done it yet, confirm or update your registration details if needed, or cancel it if you can no longer participate, at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1549296/registrations/ . This helps immensely with the organisation.

Timetable

The preliminary agenda for FDF26 is now available at this link. 

Our two keynote speakers for this year are:

  • Adam Taylor from Adiuvo Engineering & Training Ltd, who will share his perspective on the impact of AI on FPGA engineering and discuss future trends shaping the industry. A must-see talk for anyone interested in how artificial intelligence is transforming FPGA design.
  • Thomas Gmeinder from AMD, who will illustrate the features and capabilities of the latest release of Vitis-AI software, the official AMD tool for inferring AI models on AMD devices.

We would like to thank everybody who submitted an abstract this year. Due to the large number of abstracts received, we could not accommodate the majority of them, but we recognise the quality of the submissions, and we encourage everyone who was not selected to submit again next year.

Venue

The venue for the meeting is theCERN Main Auditorium, in building 500. You can find its location on the CERN campus by looking at the CERN map. 

Building 500 is within a 5-minute walk from the CERN main entrance and on-campus hostels (buildings 38, 39, and 41).

Accessing CERN campus

If you are not a CERN user, you need to request access to the CERN campus. This should have been done in the registration form. If you have forgotten to request it, please contact us at fdf@cern.ch. 

Navigating around CERN campus

To orient yourself inside the CERN campus, please download the official CERN map app: https://sce-dep.web.cern.ch/mobile-applications, or visit https://maps.cern.ch.

Travel and Transport to CERN

CERN is well-connected to the public transport system, both to Geneva and to the French town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly. For more information, visit https://www.tpg.ch/.

Lunch

In the main campus of CERN, there are two canteens and several cafeterias. The canteen closest to the meeting venue is Restaurant 1 (R1) in building 501 (map). 

Sponsor Exhibition 

We would like to thank all our sponsors for supporting us. Without their contribution, the event could not have taken place. The sponsor exhibition will take place during the coffee breaks over the three days of the conference. Do not miss the chance to talk with their experts.

Poster Session

The Poster session will take place on Wednesday 27th May, during the welcome reception in the exhibition area. Details about the poster size and printing option will be shared directly with the presenters.

Social Activities

  • CERN Guided Tours – Wed 27th morning: Sign up directly on the registration form!   Further instructions to attend the visit will be shared later on. Please note that, due to CERN’s safety policy, you are requested to confirm your attendance for the tours one week in advance.
  • FDF Welcome Evening Reception and Poster session: Wed 27th evening. After the last talk, in the sponsor exhibition area.
  • FDF Social Dinner – Thu 28th: Sign up directly on the registration form! The dinner will take place at the Seazan Restaurant in Thoiry. Bus transportation will be provided for all participants.

Tutorials – NEW this year!

We organised three tutorials that will take place in parallel on Friday 29th May, in the afternoon (14:00 to 17:00). Details on how to register for the tutorials will be shared later.

  • Better VHDL Test Reporting with OSVVM by Patrick Lehmann (PLC2)
  • HLS4ML: Machine learning inference in FPGAs by Georgios Flengas (CERN)
  • Colibri: Open Source, Vendor Independent VHDL Common Library by Mitja Vodnik (CERN)

Contacts

For any questions, feel free to contact us at fdf@cern.ch 

We look forward to seeing you at CERN!