The Future of Postgres on the agenda: EDB’s PGConf.dev Preview

PGConf.dev is heading to Vancouver, Canada, from May 19–22, bringing together the users, developers, and community organizers driving the future of PostgreSQL. EDB is proud to be a Gold-level sponsor this year, with our own Robert Haas serving as an organizer and Jacob Champion contributing to the Program Committee. 

Following a successful Call for Papers, we’ve put together this preview of the EDB-led sessions you won't want to miss.

Community Discussion Sessions

As usual, the 2026 event will feature two full days of talks on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday will once again be an unconference day, with the sessions chosen on the day of the event by the attendees. 

Tuesday, however, will be organized differently in 2026, moving away from a schedule with a series of closed, invitation-only, half-day meetings into a more inclusive and flexible experience. To make the day engaging for the entire community, not just core developers, the organizers decided toward shorter, topic-focused "community discussion sessions," workshops, and panels that are open to all registered attendees (keeping only a handful of closed meetings).

Evolving technical and social infrastructure

• What's Missing in Postgres? (talk): While Postgres evolves rapidly, several "holy grail" features remain elusive. Bruce Momjian explores why major capabilities like optimizer hints, sharding, TDE, and multi-master replication haven't been implemented yet and what it will take to get there. 
• Beyond the Source: The Human Architecture of PostgreSQL (panel): Technology is only half the battle. This roundtable discussion focuses on the "human" side of the project, addressing contributor burnout, the hurdles facing new volunteers, and strategies to ensure the community remains healthy and sustainable. Floor Drees will moderate this panel, chatting with Jimmy Angelakos (pgEdge, Edinburgh PostgreSQL Meetup), Hari Kiran (pgEdge, PostgreSQL Community Code of Conduct Committee, PostgreSQL US volunteer, PGConf India organizer), Valeria Kaplan (DataEgret, several organizing committees, funds group, London PUG), and Miaolai Zhou (AWS, new PostgreSQL US volunteer). 
• Unexpected successes & epic failures by PostgreSQL committers (panel): Álvaro Herrera and Peter Eisentraut will join a roundtable with Postgres committers Daniel Gustafsson, and Thomas Munro, with the intention to “share epic failures and unexpected successes” from their work on Postgres: what they were trying to do, what actually happened, and what they’d do differently next time. “Like group therapy, but for PostgreSQL hackers”, moderated by Claire Giordano and Greg Burd. 
• Decentralizing Safety (Community Discussion Session): A critical discussion on evolving the Community Code of Conduct, led by Floor Drees & Stacey Haysler. This session proposes a shift toward local, on-site response teams at events to ensure faster resolutions and safer environments for all attendees. 
• Onboarding New Community Members to PostgreSQL (Community Discussion Session): Robert Haas is joining a discussion group aiming to answer questions people new to the project may have. Where do I start? How do I connect? How can I contribute? 

Interactive Working Groups 

• Translators and Translation Tooling: This session, led by Peter Eisentraut, focuses on the infrastructure of internationalization (NLS). Attendees will discuss how to improve translation tools, streamline workflows, and recruit the next generation of global contributors. 
• Real-Time Patch Idea Evaluation: Robert Haas will be asking three PostgreSQL committers -- Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, and Tom Lane -- to react in real time to PostgreSQL patch ideas that haven't been disclosed to them in advance. 
• OAuth Working Group: Jacob Champion but a conversation on the state of OAuth client authentication in Postgres, and possible future directions, on the agenda. 

Community Governance & Developer Meetings 

• PGCA Annual General Meeting: The PostgreSQL Community Association, which protects the project’s global brand and trademarks, will hold its AGM and board meeting. This session is open to the public and concludes with an informal Q&A. 
• Committers Meeting: A focused, closed-door session for PostgreSQL committers to discuss the technical roadmap and internal development challenges facing the project, facilitated by Peter.

Extensions Ecosystem

Floor Drees is a co-organizer for the full day program of extensions sessions during the Community Discussion Sessions day, together with David Wheeler (ClickHouse), Alaistar Turner (Percona), and Yurii Rashkovskii (Omnigres). These sessions move beyond traditional talks into interactive working groups and open discussions: 

• Immutability and Container Challenges: As Kubernetes and immutable images (like those in Postgres.app) become the standard, extension packaging must evolve. This group will discuss recent progress, such as the extension_control_path GUC, and what still needs to be done. 
• Extending Authorization and Authentication: A "fishbowl" style session tackling the complexities of OAuth and OIDC. Experts will discuss how extensions can bridge the gap between varying enterprise provider implementations and standard Postgres protocols. 
• Extensions and Upgrades: This session explores the pain points of maintaining data compatibility across versions and proposes changes to make the upgrade path smoother for extension users. 
• Hooks and APIs—What to Expose in Core: An open discussion with the goal to define a clearer process for how new APIs are introduced and supported for the extension developer community. 
• To Extend, to Contribute, or to Petition to Core?: A strategic session on the best way to add new functionality. Should you build a new extension, join an existing one, or propose a change to the Postgres core? This discussion explores why collaboration on existing extensions is rare and how to encourage it. 
• Extension Summit Readout & Open Q&A: For those who couldn't attend every session, this wrap-up provides summaries of the day’s discussions on immutability, upgrades, and core APIs, followed by an open floor for questions.

The main conference

Retrospectives & Future Visions

• 30 Years of PostgreSQL: In a panel setting, Bruce Momjian, Jan Wieck (pgEdge), and Melanie Plageman (Microsoft) will revisit the "academic experiment" roots of Postgres, sharing behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the early mailing lists and reflecting on how 30 years of decisions shaped the database we use today. 
• PostgreSQL Commitfest Metrics: Andreas Scherbaum, with Jimmy Angelakos (pgEdge) will present a data-driven "health check" of the project’s social infrastructure. This session analyzes why 44% of contributors never return after their first patch and looks to other communities (like Rust and Linux) for models to improve contributor empathy and retention. 

Technical Innovations 

• Plan Stability with pg_plan_advice: Addressing one of the most persistent challenges in Postgres, Robert Haas discusses his work on a module that gives users more control over the planner. This tool aims to prevent sudden "plan regressions" and allow for manual overrides when the planner’s estimates go astray. 
• On-Demand WAL Replay: Could we eliminate long crash-recovery wait times? Srinath Reddy explores an experimental architecture that allows the server to accept connections immediately after a crash, lazily recovering individual pages only when they are requested. 
• Concurrent Table Repacking: Álvaro Herrera shares a look at the highly anticipated "REPACK CONCURRENTLY" feature targeted for Postgres 19. This aims to eliminate the need for external bloat-removal tools by providing a native, non-blocking alternative to VACUUM FULL. 
• Semi-Joins Internals: Richard Guo leads a deep dive into how Postgres optimizes EXISTS and IN clauses, comparing native semi-join execution against right-hand-side "unique-ification" and its impact on performance. 

Education & Community Growth 

• "Developer U" Lessons: Andrew Dunstan shares EDBs blueprint for transforming internal engineers into global Postgres contributors. This talk covers the curriculum, the challenges of mentoring across time zones, and how organizations can cultivate their own "homegrown" development talent. 
• CREATE TABLE topics ();: A low-pressure, high-energy session designed to break the ice for aspiring speakers, led by Floor Drees and Alastair Turner (Percona). Participants are invited to give one-to-two-minute "impromptu" talks on random Postgres topics, a perfect way to practice public speaking in a supportive environment. 
• How to Read and Write the SQL Standard: Peter Eisentraut will lead a hands-on workshop designed to demystify the SQL standard. Participants will learn how to interpret complex specifications and draft change proposals, empowering them to become informed contributors to Postgres development. 

And then of course there’s the hallway track, where contributors and committers find each other to discuss patches and get their stuff over the finishing line. 

We have many more colleagues joining us at the event without speaking slots of their own, and look forward to connecting with the community. We invite you to join us in Vancouver to celebrate 30 years of history and, more importantly, to help us build the next 30 years of the world’s most advanced open-source database. See you in Canada!