The Best Software Developer Conferences to Attend in 2020

Conferences are a great way to build your network and broaden your technical horizon. This is particularly the case if you work remotely, as throwing yourself amid a busy conference can be a welcome pace of change when compared to what's often the relatively quiet lifestyle of a remote developer.

As such, so you can plan your travel and budget appropriately, here's a shortlist of the biggest, boldest, and best software developer conferences and events coming up in 2020.

January

CodeMash

• Date: Jan 7-10
• Location: Sandusky (OH)
• Ticket Price: $400 - $1,000

CodeMash is a four-day conference to provide technical professionals with an inexpensive way to increase their skills. Whether PHP, JavaScript, .NET, web development, machine learning, back-end development, this conference offers something for everybody.

CES

• Date: Jan 7-10
• Location: Las Vegas
• Ticket Price: $100 (early bird until 17 Dec) or $300

With over 175,000 attendees and more than 4,500 exhibiting companies, CES is the biggest conference in tech. It's the world's gathering place for all those who thrive on the business of consumer technologies and it has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years.

Cisco Live

• Date: Jan 27-31
• Location: Barcelona
• Ticket Price: €700 - €2,500

The first of four Cisco Live Conferences in 2020 (the other three are in Melbourne, Las Vegas, and Cancun later throughout the year) Cisco Live Barcelona is the perfect conference if you're a Cisco customer or partner. It presents visitors with a unique opportunity to acquire cutting-edge knowledge and skills on the Cisco technologies you already use and those you will rely on in the future.

February

FOSDEM

• Date: Feb 1-2
• Location: Brussels
• Ticket Price: free!

FOSDEM is a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use of free and open-source software. The goal is to get in touch with other developers and projects, be informed about the latest developments in the open-source software world, and to attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics.

Startup Grind Global

• Date: Feb 11-12
• Location: Silicon Valley
• Ticket Price: $355 - $650

Global 2020 is an important event for startups, tech leaders, and big brands at the forefront of innovation. 10,000 people from around the globe converge on Silicon Valley for two days of nonstop education, inspiration, and invaluable networking, spanning 10 stages, 100+ sessions, and lots of social events.

DeveloperWeek

• Date: Feb 12-16
• Location: San Francisco Bay Area
• Ticket Price: $645 - $1,595

DeveloperWeek 2020 is San Francisco’s largest developer conference & event series, with dozens of week-long events including the DeveloperWeek 2020 Conference & Expo, a 1,000+ attendee hackathon, a 1000+ attendee tech hiring expo, and a series of workshops, open houses, drink-ups, and city-wide events across San Francisco.

DevNexus

• Date: Feb 19-21
• Location: Atlanta (GA)
• Ticket Price: $395 - $695

DevNexus is the largest Java conference in the United States. It's run by developers for developers, and it attracts around 2,500+ developers for three days of workshops, presentations, demonstrations, and networking. A must-visit for Java developers in the US.

EmTech Asia

• Date: Feb 25-26
• Location: Singapore
• Ticket Price: S$1,795 - S$2,295

The Emerging Technology Conference & Convention Asia is organized by the MIT Technology Review and Koelnmesse. Since its inception in 1999, EmTech has grown into one of the world’s most influential conferences on emerging technologies that matter. It's become a global community that runs in the USA, Europe, South America, China, and Singapore.

ConFoo

• Date: Feb 26-28
• Location: Montreal
• Ticket Price: C$700 -  C$1,100

ConFoo is a multi-technology conference for developers. The conference will feature over 150 different talks covering 8 major topics: PHP, Java, Security, Quality, Performance, Javascript, DevOps, and AI.

March

QCon London

• Date: Mar 2-6
• Location: London
• Ticket Price: £595 - £2,625

QCon London is a conference for senior software engineers and architects on the patterns, practices, and use cases leveraged by the world's most innovative software shops. The conference allows you to uncover emerging trends and tools, learn from practitioners driving change in software, and validate your current software development roadmap. Watch this video to see what QCon London 2018 looked like.

SCaLE 18x

• Date: Mar 5-8
• Location: Pasadena (CA)
• Ticket Price: $20 - $75 (early bird through 12 Jan)

The Southern California Linux Expo is an annual Linux, open-source and free software conference. Despite having Linux in its name, SCaLE covers all open-source operating systems and software. The event is run by volunteers and it features an expo floor with both commercial and non-profit exhibitors, as well as 4 days of seminars on the topic of Linux and open-source software.

DataFest

• Date: Mar 9-20
• Location: Scotland
• Ticket Price: not yet available

DataFest is Scotland's two-week festival of data innovation. DataFest 2020 wants to showcase the real impacts that data and AI can have on people’s lives. The event will focus on what we are capable of with data and existing technologies today, and look at the value that data can bring to businesses in every industry sector, in cities and the world, in innovation and discoveries, and in our future.

April

Google Cloud Next

• Date: Apr 6-8
• Location: San Francisco
• Ticket Price: $1,699

Google Cloud Next brings together some of the brightest minds in tech for 3 days of networking, learning, and collaboration. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest Google Cloud innovations.

React Summit

• Date: Apr 17
• Location: Amsterdam
• Ticket Price: €450 - €850

A full-day, two-track conference on all things React, gathering Front-end and Full-stack engineers across the globe in the tech heart of Europe. 25+ speakers from all across Europe and over 1,500 attendees.

Dublin Tech Summit

• Date: Apr 22-23
• Location: Dublin
• Ticket Price: €259 (early bird) - €389

Dublin Tech Summit is a two-day global tech conference that sits at the heart of the Irish tech scene. In just three short years, DTS has emerged as Ireland’s largest tech event, as well as “Europe’s fastest-growing tech conference.” The event has 10,000 attendees from over 70 countries, 200+ speakers, and 300 global media representatives.

May

JSConf MX

• Date: May 4-5
• Location: Mexico City
• Ticket Price: not yet available

JSConf consists of a very loose federation of developers who share the same general idea about how a technical conference should be held. The developers are big advocates of locally run events driven by passionate individuals dedicated to the community. As such, there are dozens of JSConfs around the world, including in Mexico City.

Facebook F8

• Date: May 5-6
• Location: San Jose
• Ticket Price: not yet available, 2018 price was $595

Facebook's biggest developers conference spotlights its global community, the latest technology from Facebook's family of apps, and the direction that the company is heading in.

ReactEurope

• Date: May 14-15
• Location: Paris
• Ticket Price: €399 - €625

ReactEurope has historically been the conference where many new industry standards in the React community are revealed to the world, such as the first public demo of redux and time travel, the release of GraphQL, react native reanimated, mobx-state-tree and more. A must-visit for any React developer.

php[tek]

• Date: May 18-21
• Location: Nashville (TN)
• Ticket Price: $595 - $895

php[tek] is the longest-running web developer conference in the United States that has a focus on the PHP programming language. The conference is broken into three tracks on tech leadership, PHP development, and web technologies.

GlueCon

• Date: May 20-21
• Location: Broomfield (CO)
• Ticket Price: $795 - $1,495

GlueCon is a developer-oriented conference focused on providing the latest in-depth technical information. Topics include things like APIs, DevOps, Serverless, Edge Computing, Containers, Microservices, blockchain-driven applications, and the newest tools and platforms driving technology.

WeAreDevelopers

• Date: May 28-29
• Location: Berlin
• Ticket Price: €129 (early bird) - €379

With over 10,000 attendees, 250+ speakers, and 80+ workshops, WeAreDevelopers is one of the biggest tech conferences in the world. Previous speakers have been: Steve Wozniak, Garry Kasparov, Rasmus Lerdorf, and John Romero. Learn from industry leaders, enhance your technical skills, and network with like-minded developers.

Landing Festival

• Date: May 29-30
• Location: Lisbon
• Ticket Price: €7 - €125 (early bird until Jan 24)

With over 1,600 attendees and more than 50 speakers, Landing Festival is Europe's biggest tech careers event. Topics range from careers and development to data science or product management. A great way to find new companies that you'd be interested in working for or with.

June

Shift DEV

• Date: Jun 1-2
• Location: Split, Croatia
• Ticket Price: not yet available

The largest developer conference in Southeast Europe, Shift DEV brings together some of the most influential minds in the developer industry. Previous speakers include the creator of PHP, the creator of CSS, the Senior Director of Product at GitHub, and more!

Mendix World

• Date: Jun 2-4
• Location: Rotterdam
• Ticket Price: not yet available

The world’s largest low-code gathering for hands-on learning, education, and inspiration. In 2019, nearly 4,000 people, representing more than 30 countries and 1,100 companies, attended the Mendix World conference.

JSNation

• Date: Jun 3-5
• Location: Amsterdam
• Ticket Price: €290 - €397

Enjoy a summer conference that gathers 1,000+ JS and Node.js developers, core contributors, OSS authors and code artists. Brought to you by one of the oldest (10 years and counting) JS communities in Europe.

WordCamp Europe

• Date: Jun 4-6
• Location: Porto
• Ticket Price: not yet available

WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc... WordCamp EU travels to a new European host city each year, with Porto as its 2020 location.

London Tech Week

• Date: Jun 8-12
• Location: London
• Ticket Price: not yet available

In June 2019, London became the backdrop for a week-long festival of tech and innovation.  Tech Week 2019 brought together 58,000 attendees from over 95+ countries and over 1,000 speakers. It's a conference that unites tech and talent in a world-class hub of innovation.

Craft Conference

• Date: Jun 9-12
• Location: Budapest
• Ticket Price: early bird tickets available on Jan 7

Craft is an inclusive and professional conference about the software delivery craft, presenting which mindset, tools, methods, and practices should be part of the toolbox of a modern developer and company.

AgileAus

• Date: Jun 15-16
• Location: Melbourne
• Ticket Price: $880 (early bird until Dec 31) - $1,200 (early bird until Mar 31)

AgileAus is a conference dedicated to, you guessed it, the Agile methodology. Founded in 2009, the conference now hosts more than 1,200 attendees each year and features speakers from all over the world.

COLLISION

• Date: Jun 22-25
• Location: Toronto
• Ticket Price: C$790 if you buy 2 tickets

COLLISION has been called "North America's fastest-growing tech conference" and "the anti-CES." 2019 speakers included the CEO of Medium, the founder of HootSuite, the CEO of Shopify, and Timbaland. Great for lead generation, market research, professional development, and networking.

Tech Open Air

• Date: Jun 23-26
• Location: Berlin
• Ticket Price: €99 - €1,490

TOA is Europe’s leading technology festival. Its mission is to help people future-proof their businesses and their lives. TOA believes that technology is transforming the way we work, live and relate: only if you understand technology can you take advantage of the opportunities it creates.

July

Mobile World Congress

• Date: Jun 30 - Jul 2
• Location: Shanghai
• Ticket Price: not yet available

MWC is the largest mobile event in the world, assembling the latest innovations and leading-edge technology alongside today's most influential visionaries. There are many different MWC events around the world each year. In 2019, MWC Shanghai had 75,000+ attendees (incl 1,320 CEOs) and 500+ exhibitors (of which almost 50% were from outside China).

Future Festival

• Date: Jul 13
• Location: New York
• Ticket Price: not yet available

The Future Festival has conferences all around the Americas and Europe in 2020, including in New York on the 13th of July. The Festivals are organized by Trend Hunter, a community of trend seekers and the #1 trend site worldwide.

OSCon

• Date: Jul 13-16
• Location: Portland (OR)
• Ticket Price: $1,395 (includes 30-day O'Reilly online learning membership)

The Open Source Software Conference covers everything shaping software development today—from AI and cloud technology to distributed computing. Software developers, engineering managers, and tech leads reunite at OSCON every year to discover new best practices and opportunities.

August

BrazilJS

• Date: TBD
• Location: Porto Alegre
• Ticket Price: not yet available

BrazilJS is one of the biggest JavaScript conferences south of the equator. Well-loved by X-Teamers, the conference has over 2,000 attendees and speakers from all over the world giving talks on the latest and greatest in JavaScript.

UX and Digital Design Week

• Date: Aug 10-14
• Location: London
• Ticket Price: £2,200

The UX and Digital Design Week immerses you into London's tech and creative industry, exploring the hottest trends and latest inventions. You will have a chance to meet the teams behind the most ground-breaking products and learn how they approach design and UX strategy, work with clients, and improve their services.

DevOps Talks

• Date: Aug 17-19
• Location: Singapore
• Ticket Price: not yet available (early bird starts Jun 1)

DevOps Talks Conference (DOTC) brings together DevOps leaders, engineers, and architects who are implementing DevOps principles and practices in start-ups and leading enterprise companies.

September

Future Port Prague

• Date: TBD
• Location: Prague
• Ticket Price: not yet available

Future Port Prague Future brings together future-focused visionaries from startups to global giants, from academia to government, to explore how to leverage exponential technology to create a human-centric future of abundance. It's the largest open-air futuristic festival in the heart of Europe

ProductCon

• Date: TBD
• Location: New York
• Ticket Price: free!

ProductCon is a product management conference hosted in London (Feb), San Francisco (Apr), Seattle (Jun), New York (Sep), and LA (Nov). You’ll learn best practices behind the most successful products, and new trends in AI, VR, IoT, and blockchain.

Slush Shanghai

• Date: TBD
• Location: Shanghai
• Ticket Price: not yet available

Slush entered China in 2015 with its debut event in Beijing. In 2016, the Slush China team brought this world-class event to Shanghai and it has been in Shanghai ever since. Forbes magazine ranked Slush Shanghai as a top international startup and technology event in China.

Ai4

• Date: Sep 1-2
• Location: Las Vegas
• Ticket Price: $495 (early bird until Jan 9)

In 2019, Ai4 convened 1,500+ business leaders and data practitioners across four New York City-located events: Ai4 Finance, Ai4 Healthcare, Ai4 Cybersecurity, and Ai4 Retail. In 2020, Ai4 is combining these four events into one Ai4 ecosystem and moving the show to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Strange Loop

• Date: Sep 12-14
• Location: St. Louis (MO)
• Ticket Price: not yet available

Strange Loop is a multi-disciplinary conference that brings together the developers and thinkers building tomorrow's technology in fields such as emerging languages, alternative databases, concurrency, distributed systems, security, and the web. Strange Loop was created in 2009 by software developer Alex Miller and is now run by a team of St. Louis-based friends and developers.

October

php[world]

• Date: TBD
• Location: Washington DC
• Ticket Price: $195

The php[world] conference has been running since 2014, creating an environment where Drupal, WordPress, Laravel, Magento, Symfony, and Zend Framework developers come together to collaborate and build a stronger community.

GOTO

• Date: TBD
• Location: Berlin
• Ticket Price: not yet available

The organizers of the GOTO conference believe that learning is a lifelong process; that's why they create this conference for developers by developers. It's what drives them to produce the best meeting place for innovators and thought leaders. Topics include: coding UIs, developer productivity, ethics & security, and smart things.

SC London

• Date: TBD
• Location: London
• Ticket Price: not yet available

SC London is where software craftspeople - both global experts and the passionate community - gather for two immersive days of sharing skills, tips, and insights; latest technologies; agile ways of working, and the tools needed to create and grow not just your mindset but also that of your company.

VOICE Summit

• Date: Oct 5-8
• Location: Washington DC
• Ticket Price: not yet available

VOICE Summit is an annual conference that brings together 5,000 of the voice tech industry’s top creators, developers, designers, marketers, and executives from around the world for three exciting days of learning, networking, thought-leadership, and community-building.

SaaStock

• Date: Oct 12-14
• Location: Dublin
• Ticket Price: not yet available

SaaStock is a global community of software as a service (SaaS) founders, executives, and investors. They bring together the leaders of SaaS at their annual conferences in Europe (their flagship conference), North America, Latin America, Asia, and Australasia.

.NET DeveloperDays

• Date: Oct 20-21
• Location: Warsaw
• Ticket Price: not yet available

.NET DeveloperDays is the biggest event in Central and Eastern Europe, dedicated exclusively to application development on the .NET platform. It is designed for architects, developers, testers and project managers using .NET in their work and to those who want to improve their knowledge and skills in this field.

November

Build Stuff

• Date: TBD
• Location: Vilnius
• Ticket Price: not yet available - 2019 tickets were €549

Build Stuff is a software development conference created for developers, academics, team leaders, software architects, and technical project managers. It is one of the largest software development events in the Baltics. Topics include AI, web, cloud, architecture, DevOps, tech leadership, geek stuff, and other programming stuff.

Caribbean Developers Conference

• Date: Nov 11-14
• Location: Punta Cana
• Ticket Price: $255.50 - $2,198

CDC is one of the premier tech events in the Caribbean. It is designed to bring together software professionals and entrepreneurs across languages, platforms, and industries.

December

DevTernity

• Date: TBD
• Location: Riga
• Ticket Price: not yet available

DevTernity is a European software development conference that focuses on the core skills paramount to the success of a developer: coding, architecture, and leadership. It wants to turn developers into architects and engineering leaders.

Which conferences are you attending next year? Let us know in the comments 👇.