Unicode Technology Workshop 2026 – Unicode in the World

Event program for the Unicode Technology Workshop 2026, Oct. 20-23, hosted at Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT)

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce Unicode Technology Workshop 2026 (UTW 2026) will take place from October 20-23, 2026 in historical and vibrant Nancy, France.

Building on the success of UTW 2023–2025 in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, UTW 2026 brings that same spirit of openness, innovation, and in-person collaboration to the heart of Europe’s design and research ecosystem. UTW 2026 – Unicode in the World – marks the Consortium’s return to Europe. Just 90 minutes from Paris, Nancy’s rich design and cultural heritage offers an ideal setting for a gathering focused on the technologies that enable global communication and collaboration.

For four days, UTW 2026 will convene global experts across engineering, localization, type design, academia, user-experience design, and cultural preservation for an immersive program of cutting-edge tutorials, talks, and community building.

A Special Collaboration

UTW 2026 is co-hosted by the Unicode Consortium alongside partners in the Missing Scripts Program, a collaboration among:

• University of California, Berkeley’s Script Encoding Initiative (SEI)
• Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT)
• Institut Designlabor Gutenberg (IDG)

Together, this partnership brings a uniquely rich blend of technical rigor, design practice, and script research, expanding UTW’s internationalization reach and deepening its connections to the communities who rely on Unicode everyday.

Theme: Unicode in the World

The theme reflects two complementary ideas:

1. Unicode as global public infrastructure

   Time zone localization, alphabetical sorting, metric vs. imperial, bidirectional text, non-Gregorian calendars, and much more – all happen because of Unicode. What began in 1988 as a standard for character encoding has grown into a powerful portfolio of open source tools, libraries, and products that ensure global language support, interoperability, scaleability, and resiliency across billions of devices. Unicode is a global public utility and foundational for nearly everything we can do online.

2. Opening doors to new audiences

   This UTW will engage more intentionally with designers, educators, typographers, linguists, digital humanities researchers, and others who use Unicode in practice but rarely have direct channels to the internationalization community who build it.

   This year’s expanded program invites these communities into conversation to share perspectives, surface their priorities and needs, and help shape Unicode’s evolution.

What to Expect at UTW 2026

Join us for four days of deep learning, collaboration, and creativity, including:

• Advanced Tutorials on Unicode technologies, CLDR, ICU/ICU4X, internationalization patterns, locale data, text rendering, input methods, script shaping, and global-ready engineering.
• Talks & Panels featuring leading researchers, engineers, designers, and implementers of multilingual digital systems.
• Exhibitions showcasing works in type design, script digitization, multilingual UX, writing-system innovation, and language-technology projects from around the world.
• Networking & Community Gatherings with speed networking, hallway conversations, evening meet-ups, and opportunities to connect with practitioners shaping global text and language technology.

Who Should Attend

UTW is designed for a wide range of practitioners and thinkers, including:

• Software engineers, architects, and standards developers
• Localization, globalization, and content-platform teams
• Type designers, typographers, and font engineers
• Linguists, digital humanities scholars, and script researchers
• Students, emerging technologists, and educators
• Tool-makers, vendors, and open-source contributors in i18n and language tech

Whether you build global products, research writing systems, create typefaces, or teach multilingual computing, UTW 2026 is a space for you.

Partnership & Sponsorship Opportunities

Organizations wishing to demonstrate leadership in global software, multilingual UX, internationalization, or cultural preservation are invited to participate as sponsors.

Benefits include:

• Complimentary registrations
• Brand visibility across event materials
• Engagement with a highly specialized global audience

Contact [email protected] for the 2026 sponsorship prospectus.

Stay Informed

Registration, calls for speakers, travel information, and the full program will be released in the coming months.

We look forward to welcoming you to Nancy to build the future of internationalization and multilingual digital communication.

For the latest updates about UTW 2026 and Unicode more generally, follow Unicode on LinkedIn and sign up for our mailing list.