The two-day event focused on the open-source relational database system PostgreSQL took place on January 27–28, 2026, at the Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague (FIT CTU). The 18th annual Prague PostgreSQL Developers Day (P2D2) conference featured workshops and expert talks delivered by leading professionals in the field, including members of the PostgreSQL core team. As in previous years, interest was high, and workshop capacity was filled shortly after registration opened.
More than 90 participants attended the Tuesday workshop sessions. The workshops covered topics such as query optimization, running PostgreSQL in Kubernetes, Postgres hacking, and tools for connection pooling and monitoring. This year, the main conference day was expanded to include three parallel tracks, allowing the event to attract more than 300 registered participants—an increase compared to the previous year. The additional parallel sessions helped distribute attendees according to their areas of interest while also enabling a broader range of topics.
Most of this year’s talks and workshops were held in English, making the conference more accessible to an international audience. The number of international participants was significantly higher than in previous years.
A notable new feature of this year’s conference was the Lightning talks session, consisting of short presentations delivered by conference participants. The session was hosted by Pavlo Golub, a senior developer, PostgreSQL contributor, PostgreSQL expert at CYBERTEC, and co-founder of the PostgreSQL Ukraine community. Each volunteer participant had the opportunity to share an idea, experience, tip, or interesting PostgreSQL-related project during a five-minute presentation block.
Participants from FIT CTU particularly appreciated the high technical quality of the program. “I especially liked the talks focused on database testing and performance optimization—these are topics that will always be relevant in practice, and it’s best to learn about them from people who understand PostgreSQL internals. In this spirit, I also appreciated the presentations explaining how Postgres works internally,” said Jakub Jabůrek, Ph.D., a doctoral student and lecturer at FIT CTU.
“The Lightning talks were a new experience for me and, in a short time, introduced a number of projects as well as lesser-known PostgreSQL features. The program also included more advanced topics, such as advanced constraints and the use of vacuum in large-scale databases. The entire event took place in a very welcoming atmosphere,” added Jan Matějka, a student at FIT CTU.
“As in previous years, this conference had its own unique spirit, which I consider a very positive thing. Each edition is different and offers a slightly different perspective. I was particularly impressed by the Lightning talks, which perfectly captured the essence of open source—it doesn’t matter whether someone works with it professionally or as a hobby. It showed just how many possibilities it offers. The selection of talks was once again excellent, and the availability of recordings was also appreciated,” said Matěj Formánek, a student at FIT CTU.
“Interest in the conference was strong, as in previous years. This year, I was especially pleased to see increased participation from our students and staff,” concluded Michal Valenta, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Software Engineering at FIT CTU and co-organizer of the conference.
Those who missed any of the selected talks can look forward to their gradual release on the P2D2 YouTube channel. Recordings from last year’s conference are already available there.
