Blender Conference 2026: BCON26 highlights from Amsterdam

Blender Conference 2026 kicked off on 23 September at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam with Francesco Siddi's first keynote as Blender CEO and a Wacom presentation that tied together Japanese craftsmanship, Blender on Android tablets and verifiable authorship for 3D meshes. The DeuSens team is there in person. This recap covers the first day and will be updated with days 2 and 3.

Blender Conference 2026: dates, venue and format

BCON26 is taking place from 23 to 25 September 2026 at Felix Meritis (Keizersgracht 324), a historic building on the Amsterdam canals with room for around 700 people. This edition has sold out. The official programme runs across four parallel rooms —Theater, Studio, Classroom and Attic— plus SIG sessions for special interest groups and language communities. Every talk is recorded and published online during the event itself.

The programme covers a wide spectrum: animation production pipelines, geometry nodes, scientific visualisation, rendering, 3D printing, automotive and XR workflows. It is the gathering where the Blender Foundation sets the software's technical direction for the year ahead.

The opening keynote: Francesco Siddi's first year as CEO

The 11:00 keynote in the Theater was Francesco Siddi's first as Blender CEO, following Ton Roosendaal stepping down from the role on 1 January 2026. Siddi opened with a light-hearted comparison between the two of them and then moved on to the structure of the organisation: the Stichting Blender Foundation as parent entity, with Blender Institute BV and Blender Studio BV beneath it.

One of the metrics shown was issue tracker resolution time: the volume of issues closed in under 24 hours grew steadily between 2023 and 2025. There was also room for VR location scouting, which lets users walk through a Blender scene with a headset and controllers to decide framing and camera positions at real scale. The session closed with a look back at the Blender Studio open movies, from Elephants Dream to Sprite Fright and Charge.

Wacom at BCON26: the “Dougu-ya” philosophy

Nobu Ide, President & CEO of Wacom, presented the brand's vision through the Japanese concept of “Dougu-ya”: the craftsman who makes tools in the belief that an instrument is only as good as the hand it serves. Ide linked that idea to “Tanagokoro”, the hand with a heart, and to the physiology of touch: Meissner corpuscles, Merkel cells, Ruffini endings and Pacinian corpuscles, which pick up everything from a light touch to vibration and fine pressure. The thesis: drawing is a two-way conversation between hand and brain, and a digital pen should never interrupt it.

Blender on Android tablets: an interface designed for pen and touch

Wacom showed a Blender UX/UI proposal for Android tablets optimised for pen and touch. The start panel grouped the classic workspaces (Layout, Modeling, Sculpting, Animation) alongside “Tablet Workflows”, preset flows for previs, 3D drawing with Grease Pencil, sculpting and scene review. In sculpt mode, the Shift and Ctrl modifiers, the pie menu and undo became on-screen buttons, freeing the canvas from the keyboard.

Wacom has been funding this work since August 2025 as a Corporate Patron of the Blender Development Fund. The proposal is open to community feedback, and on Friday 25 the talk “Porting Blender to Android” by Blender developer Jonas Holzman will go into the technical details of the port.

Wacom Yuify goes 3D: verifiable authorship for Blender meshes

Wacom Yuify, Wacom's service that embeds an invisible micromark in a piece of work to link it to its author, made the jump from 2D to 3D. The demo, featuring the Yui Bunny character, showed how a mesh exported from Blender can carry a verifiable authorship record. Until now, Yuify worked with images from tools such as Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop and ibisPaint.

At a time when 3D assets move between studios, clients and platforms, and generative AI blurs the origin of content, being able to prove who created a mesh becomes a matter of licensing and trust.

Intuos Pro and Pro Pen 3: less travel, more control

The new Intuos Pro, the first refresh of the range since 2017, was presented as Wacom's flagship for 3D creators. According to the figures shown, the Pro Pen 3 nib sinks 0.4 mm under a 600 g load, compared with 0.63 mm on the Pro Pen 2: strokes respond sooner and the feel is more direct. At around 4 mm thick at its thinnest point, Wacom said the wrist angle drops from 20° to 10°, easing posture during long sessions. The brand also highlighted consistent pressure and linearity across pens, the result of algorithms, firmware and factory calibration.

“Life-long Ink”: commitment to the Blender community

Wacom closed with its “Life-long Ink” vision and its support for the community: events such as Tokyo Anim Unite in Tokyo and Connected Ink, and tools developed together with creators themselves.

What it means for immersive experience production

For a studio like DeuSens, the first day sent three clear signals. First: Blender on a tablet opens the door to reviewing scenes and adjusting assets on site, while setting up an interactive installation or in a client meeting, without depending on a workstation. Second: verifiable mesh authorship matters in projects where the 3D models of a virtual reality experience or a digital twin are licensed or reused. Third: VR location scouting reinforces something we apply in immersive production, which is validating space and scale inside the headset before building.

What to expect on days 2 and 3 of BCON26

The 24 and 25 September sessions include the technical talk on porting Blender to Android, the Suzanne Awards animation festival and Friday's afterparty at De Balie. On Saturday 26, Blender HQ opens its doors. We will update this recap with news from our team in Amsterdam.

Blender Conference 2026 FAQ

When and where is Blender Conference 2026 held?

From 23 to 25 September 2026 at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam (the Netherlands).

Who gave the BCON26 keynote?

Francesco Siddi, Blender CEO since January 2026, in his first keynote in the role.

Will Blender run on Android tablets?

Blender is working on an official Android port with Wacom's support. At BCON26, an interface proposal for pen and touch was shown, still open to feedback.

What is Wacom Yuify 3D?

The 3D extension of Wacom's authorship service: it lets a Blender mesh carry a verifiable record of who created it.