This page contains all the updates for SYCL 2026. To stay up-to-date, there is an RSS feed, or you can subscribe to email notifications.
Wait. Did you actually think we were done with blocks? You Fool!
With this last SYCL Talk announcement we have assembled our cast of speakers. Nathan Bourgeois takes us on the journey to run Minecraft on the PlayStation Portable and other platforms in “CrossCraft: Building a Blocky Bridge From Childhood Dream to Reality”.
Read more about it here.
For our next SYCL Talk, Alex Garnett of Bluesky will teach us how to build applications with the AT Protocol in “The AT Protocol: Building with Blocks”.
Read more about it here.
Is it a Death Metal album or a Systems Talk on property-based testing? You’re going to have to come experience it for yourself when Carl Sverre presents “Hermetically Sealed Box of Pain”!
Read more about it here.
Next up we have another SYCL talk: “Tickets Please!” by David Sugar. This one is going to be on the technical side of things, but it tackles an important yet dreaded aspect of creating software: Authentication.
Read more about it here.
It’s June 30th! It’s the last day for SYCL 2026 early-bird tickets, and I have five new speakers that I’ll be announcing throughout. The first is a SYCL talk by Martin Wickham: “Maintaining a Long-Term Fork”.
Read more about it here.
Learn the basics of SIMD and how to use it in non-trivial use cases like a language front-end! Niles Salter presents “Using AVX-512 to Optimally Parse Zig” on our Systems talks day.
Read more about it here.
Get ready to work on your separation anxiety! Johnny Marler presents “How to Make Software That Doesn’t Need You” on our Systems talks day.
Read more about it here.
Potential hot take alert!!! Tyler Calder presents “Developer Experience: Does it Matter?” on our SYCL talks day.
Read more about it here.
Loris has changed his keynote talk!
Read more about it here.
Read more about it here.
Our first systems talk update! Read more about it here.
Early-bird ticket sales have begun for SYCL 2026! The conference takes place October 3-6 in the Coquitlam and Port Moody areas of Metro Vancouver.
Tickets are sold as individual day passes which include lunch. Early bird pricing runs until July 1st and applies to all non-workshop tickets. You can select your days and purchase on the tickets page.
Saturday features two workshops running in parallel:
Sunday is Tables Day at Site B in Port Moody. This day features free-form collaboration, lightning talks, and a PCB Badge (more on that below).
Monday and Tuesday are talk days at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam. All venues are within a 10-minute walk of a SkyTrain station.
Attendees of Tables Day (Sunday) will receive a SYCL Badge V2.
It will look very similar to the Badge from 2024, but has significant hardware and software upgrades that were implemented as a UBC capstone project.
The Team:
The upgrades:
Submissions have been progressing well, however I could use more SYCL talk proposals. There is a certain essence I’m looking for here, and if I don’t get enough submissions that hit the mark, I will let the systems talks bleed into SYCL talks day.
I am open to having sponsors to help cover costs of the speakers’ dinner. The conference is financially self-sufficient through ticket sales. I like it that way so that we can responsibly discuss our industry. Many organizations align with those values, and if you’re part of one, feel free to email me.
Originally I had planned the conference for June 20-23, but after posting I learned that FIFA is in town. This will make things prohibitively expensive for out-of-towners, so I will be rescheduling with Emily Carr. I will be keeping the intended structure and days of the week for the conference as outlined in the Agenda. My intended target is August.
SYCL 2026 will be taking place once again at Emily Carr University of Art + Design on June 20-23! The keynotes, workshops, and their presenters can be found on the Agenda page.