DevFest 2026 in Kansai
Overview
The 2026 edition of DevFest hosted by GDG Greater Kwansai. Sessions on AI and machine learning, security, hardware and IoT are combined with a generative-AI hands-on workshop and a panel discussion, free of charge for 500 attendees in Umeda, Osaka. Following Osaka in 2024 and Kobe in 2025, this third edition mixes students with working engineers in one venue.
Foundation
- Founded
- 2024
- Founder
- Started in 2024 by GDG Greater Kwansai organizers including Naoki Ishihara
The Greater Kwansai edition of DevFest, the annual conference GDG runs worldwide. It started in December 2024 at Grand Green Osaka with Alpha+ Project and the Kyoto, Nara and Kobe GDG chapters, moved to Kobe Denshi Sonic Hall in 2025, and comes to Umeda, Osaka in 2026, growing from a 100-seat to a 500-seat scale. Strong ties to student GDG on Campus chapters and an unusually broad range of speaker backgrounds characterize the series.
Transition
- 2024 First edition, DevFest - Kwansai Developers Day, held December 21 at Grand Green Osaka. About 150 people registered against 100 in-person and 100 online seats
- 2025 Held October 18 at Kobe Denshi Senmon Gakko Kitano Hall Sonic Hall. 250 in-person seats, with opening remarks by former Hyogo Governor Toshizo Ido
- 2025 DevFest Okayama 2025 held December 17, extending the Greater Kwansai framework to Okayama
- 2026 Held October 18 at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka, Umeda Campus. Capacity 500, co-hosted by GDGoC IPUT, GDG Kobe and Alpha+Project
Voices
The hall was built like a theater and gave a real sense of standing on stage; seeing student attendees listen intently pushed the speaker to raise his own game (from a 2025 speaker's report at YOUTRUST, in Japanese)
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