BOSC 2026, the 27th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, will take place July 13-14 in Washington, DC, as part of ISMB 2026. We will again join forces with Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR) for one day. We hope you will join us in person or online!
Since 2000, BOSC has covered all aspects of open source bioinformatics and open science. BOSC 2025 took place July 21-22, 2025 in Liverpool, UK (as part of ISMB/ECCB 2025). Read our BOSC 2025 report on F1000Research! BOSC 2025 included two days of keynote talks, talks from submitted abstracts, a panel discussion on data sustainability, and posters. It also featured a joint session with the Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR), which opened with a joint keynote by Chris Mungall followed by talks on some of our favorite topics, including open data and reusable and reproducible science. The full lineup of BOSC 2025 talks and posters, including links to talk videos, is available on our Schedule page.
BOSC 2026 Key Dates
- April 1: OBF Event Award application deadline
- April 9: Abstract submission deadline (talks and posters)
- May 5: Talk/poster acceptance notifications
- May 7: Late poster submission deadline
- July 12-16: ISMB 2026 (Washington, DC and online)
- July 13-14: BOSC 2026 (part of ISMB 2026)
Topics
- Open Science and Reproducible Research
- Open Biomedical Data
- Citizen/Participatory Science
- Standards and Interoperability
- Data Science
- Workflows
- Data Access and Visualization
- Translational Bioinformatics
- Developer Tools and Libraries
- Outreach and Training
- Open AI/ML
- Sustainable Data
- …and more!
Registration and Financial Assistance
To participate in BOSC 2026 or the ISMB CollaborationFest, you will need to register for ISMB 2026. Those who submit abstracts to BOSC can request a fee waiver on the submission form. You can also apply for an OBF Event Award; the deadline is April 1.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships from companies and non-profit organizations help to defray some of our costs and support our outreach efforts. Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to grant free registration to 12 BOSC 2025 participants and cover travel expenses of some keynote speakers and panelists.
Interested in sponsoring BOSC 2026? Please see our sponsors page!
2025 Platinum Sponsor:
2025 Gold Sponsor:
2025 Silver Sponsor:
BOSC 2025 Organizing Committee
Chair: Nomi L. Harris (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
- Karsten Hokamp (Trinity College Dublin)
- Deepak Unni (SIB, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics)
- Jessica Maia (BD)
- Tazro Ohta (Chiba University)
- Jason Williams (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
- Monica Munoz-Torres (Univ. of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus)
- Hervé Ménager (Institut Pasteur)
BOSC 2025 Review Committee
Aziz Khan*, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras*, Bhavesh Patel, Christopher Fields*, Damien Goutte-Gattat*, Daniel Korn, Deepak Unni, Fortune Ogo-Ndah Awala, Gayathri Jonnalagadda, J. Harry Caufield*, Karsten Hokamp, Kartik Khosa, Konstantin Okonechnikov, Luis Pedro Coelho, Monica C Munoz-Torres, Naouel Karam, Nomi Harris, Olawumi Olasunkanmi, Peter Cock, Rafael Gonçalves, Sayali Talware, Sepideh Mazrouee*, Tanya Berardini, Tazro Ohta*, Tyrone Chen, Van Truong, Yuvanesh Vedaraju
- indicates reviewers who did extra reviews
Interested in reviewing abstracts for BOSC 2026? Contact us on Slack
About BOSC
The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) has been held annually since 2000. BOSC is organized by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of open source software development and open science within the biological research community.
Since its inception, BOSC has provided a forum for developers and users to interact and share research results and ideas in open source bioinformatics. BOSC’s broad spectrum of topics includes practical techniques for solving bioinformatics problems; software development practices; standards and ontologies; approaches that promote open science and sharing of data, results and software; and ways to grow and sustain open source communities.
BOSC is usually preceded or followed by CollaborationFest (CoFest for short), a two-day collaborative work session. This is an opportunity for anyone interested in open science, biology or programming to meet, talk and work collaboratively. In 2025, CollaborationFest was part of ISMB/ECCB.
Code of Conduct
As part of ISMB 206, BOSC 2026 is covered by the ISCB Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.