Meeting Research Software Engineers in Germany
Published on April 20, 2026.
The 6th Conference for Research Software Engineering in Germany (deRSE26) took place in Stuttgart between 3 and 5 March 2026. It is the largest RSE event in Germany and attracted around 250 attendees. Surprisingly, the majority of the programme was in English making it a friendly event for attendees like me that speaks very little German. In this blog post, I share a couple of highlights of the deRSE26.
Day 0
A satellite event (1st Stuttgart Research Software Day) to highlight the RSE activity at the host institution of deRSE26 took place the day before deRSE26 started. I didn’t participate in the satellite event but I think that similar initiatives are a great way to build momentum locally and catalyse the formation of a local chapter.
Day 1
A few workshops took place during the morning of the 1st day before the official start. Among these workshops, I attended “Trainer, Tutor, Consultant, Developer: Investing in the Full and Sustainable RSE Spectrum” organised by Nicholas Del Grosso. The group discussion was great but my biggest take away was the “lean coffee” format used by Nicholas Del Grosso to guide the group discussion.
The open keynote by Wolfgang Bangerth covering his journey with the deal.II finite element library was also interesting and it highlighted the importance of user interactions for the success of the project.
But my biggest surprise on the 1st day was the incredibly large number of attendees that completely filled the room for the workshop about tests presented by Sebastian Müller with the title “Beyond Unit Tests - Advancing Testing Strategies for Research Software!” Sebastian Müller explained metamorphic testing and property-based testing that were new to me. I recommend checking the public available slides of “Beyond Unit Tests”.
Day 2
The second day started with the keynote from Morane Gruenpeter covering some of the work done by Software Heritage. It was a very dynamic presentation with the participation of the audience thanks to Mentimeter. The biggest learning for me was that Software Heritage persistent identifiers have support for context allowing us to share or reference a specific section of the code.
I attended two workshops focused on the role, career and perspectives of RSE in Germany. The workshops were well prepared but, as often, my feeling at the end of the workshop was that it is a big ship to change its course and I’m powerless.
Fortunately, the last workshop ("Exploring diverse community building for Research Software") that I attended on the 2nd day was more inspiring. I was presented with the “fish bowl” format and it helped many of the attendees to contribute to the discussion.
Day 3
At this point, I was already exhausted. The deRSE26 was the first conference that I attended since Collaborations Workshop 2024 and I was out of shape for the marathon that is attending a conference. I visited the room housing the discussion about “reproducibility and best practices” but my brain was out of caffeine.
After some refreshments and plenty of black coffee, I joined the discussion about “forges”. “Forges” is the agnostic name used for websites that aggregates version control, artifact storage, issue tracker and project management. Popular examples of “forges” are GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg. Chung-hong Chan gave a great speech advocating for the exodus from GitHub and large adoption of spaces that don’t profit from free labour. And Philipp Sebastian Sommer explored some ideas about reducing code debit with the use of templates.
My participation at the deRSE26 ended with a guided visit to the Computer Museum at the Department of Computer Science that has many fully functional machines when computers were something that we could not transport in our pockets. The explanations about the machines were great and the demos were breathtaking. Definitely a strong competitor against the guided visit to “Baby” during the 1st UK RSE conference in 2016.
Final Thought
The deRSE was a great opportunity to prepare myself for Collaborations Workshop 2026. During deRSE, I had the pleasure to interact with SSI Fellows Peter Schmit and Salma Thalji and SSI staff Giacomo Peru. I recommend the deRSE to all RSE colleagues, specially the ones in Germany.
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