Our community gathering 2025
Another September, another inspiring weekend with the community! The 2025 edition of the Open Food Facts Days brought us back to the beautiful Académie du Climat in Paris, generously hosted once again by the City of Paris.
This year’s edition gathered participants from across Europe and beyond to co-construct our citizen project around food transparency !
Saturday 13 September – Day 1
OFF we go !
It was wonderful to finally gather again in person around breakfast and catch up with various members of the community, friends of the project and new, curious folks !
The programme opened with a presentation of Open Food Facts, reminding everyone why the project exists and what keeps us moving forward, followed by a moving debate on our values and ways of working together as a community.
An icebreaker in teams set the tone for the weekend: everyone was invited to share why they joined the project and what it means to them. Each team’s testimony was written on colorful post-its and displayed on the “wall of post-its,” a vibrant visual reminder of our collective motivations.
Lightning Talks from the community
The morning continued with a round of Lightning Talks, where community members and friends of the project shared their work and ideas:
- Estelle (FAIRe NGO): on international commerce
- John: the Recipe Estimator tool in Open Food Facts
- Caraldine: Creating NutraVerse (reusing Open Food Facts data)
- Peter: OpenDenmark initiative
- Marion: from Envol Vert NGO on the Forest Footprint designed with Open Food Facts
- Eyad & Mitali: Open Food Facts Explorer
- Valda : Access to Nutrition initiative NGO : Current work in Kenya
- Alex B: Open Prices
- Julia: who conducted a UX Design study within Open Food Facts
Workshops
In the afternoon, we embarked onto workshops, giving participants the chance to brainstorm improvements for the project and to collaborate on practical solutions.
This year, workshops were organised by two tracks:
- A Beginner Track, with hands-on learning for those new to the project.
Example: “How do scores and ingredients analysis work?”, “Data quality daily emails” “Hunger Games”, “How to present Open Food Facts in different contexts”
- An Open Everything Track, tackling broader cross-project questions and strategy.
Example: “Reusers: identify and convince them to contribute data back”, “Open Prices”, “Open Food Facts in your country”
Celebrating the contributors
The community also gathered for the Contributors’ Trophies ceremony, a moment of recognition and celebration of committed contributors around the world. This year, trophies were awarded in person to:
- April: for being a dedicated ambassador and bringing Open Food Facts closer to the scientific & student community
- Alex B: for building and contributing to Open Prices, paving the way for price transparency
- Freso: for improving taxonomy and contributing to the codebase
- Eyad (VaiTon): for his key contributions to the mobile app, uptime monitoring, and Open Food Facts Explorer
We also celebrated some contributors who could not make it in person:
- Louis B: promoting Open Food Facts in Canada, involving students in various projects involving the database
- krishanti (Radhakrishna and Prasanti duo): using Open Food Facts data to write insightful articles on indiafoodstats.blogspot.com
- naruyoko: a top product contributor from Japan (editor of over 98k products)
- Macrofactor app: a new category this year – a collective trophy to the team of Macrofactor – that adds thousands new products, while also improving data quality !
Thank you to every single contributor who is part of this collective mission to improve food transparency around the world !
To finish the day with some fun: we tested our knowledge of food & Open Food Facts through a live quiz, with some prizes at hand. Participants teamed up in pairs, and after a lively battle, the top 3 winners were:
🥇 Les Oufs
🥈 Johanna
🥉 Ludank
A lighthearted moment that brought everyone together and added to the friendly atmosphere at the end of the day.
And of course, no Open Food Facts Days would be complete without a Scan Party, apéro-style 🫒🥖🧀🍅 !
The evening continued for some with an informal visit of the Open Food Facts little office in the “third space” called the Citizen Arcs (Les Arches Citoyennes) & a drink at the local bar.
Youssef Guessous (France/Morocco)
“Although I came to the event to showcase Qera, the new app I’ve been working on, my main goal was to connect with the OFF community and explore ways to make food facts more accessible. I had some great conversations, and the energy of the OFF community was so inspiring that I even applied to become an ambassador! I’m truly glad to be part of this community and I hope the event will help it grow even further.”
Sunday 14 September – Day 2
After a good night’s rest (hopefully), it was time to reconvene for the second day of our community weekend. We started slowly with coffee and croissants, before opening the stage up to a new round of lightning talks from our contributors :
- April: Gamifying data contribution – Treasure hunt
- Edouard & Pierre: what’s new in the Open Food Facts mobile app
- Yasemin: whose app barri reuses Open Food Facts data
- Keyvan and Marie : from Anima France NGO presented the “animal suffering footprint”
Sunday morning was also an opportunity to share with the community some of Open Food Facts innovations, upcoming projects, tools in development, and future directions.
In the afternoon, workshops resumed on various topics, followed by restitutions, where each team presented the outcomes of their collaborative work.
After warm goodbyes, we also appreciated help from many contributors to clean up the different spaces.
Julia (Poland)
“I took part in the Open Food Facts Days 2025 because I wanted to contribute to a community that reflects what I believe in – working together, transparency and making a positive impact. Presenting the UX research I’ve been working on over the past month was not just about sharing findings, but also about opening a dialogue on how design and empathy can drive meaningful change. I’m excited to keep contributing to this journey!
The event went incredibly well. I felt both proud and grateful to be part of something that extends beyond individual contributions and creates real-world impact.
What I enjoyed most was learning about what others in the community are doing – hearing different perspectives in the workshops and lightning talks, seeing how people approach challenges, learning from them and connecting with those who share the same passion for making a difference.
I especially loved the energy in the room, because it was inspiring and contagious!”
Couldn’t make it ?
In a few weeks, we will publish the recorded sessions of the lightning talks, presentations & more on our Youtube channel.
Final words
As the doors of the Académie du Climat closed on this edition, we hope everyone went home with their heads full of ideas, their hearts warmed by new encounters, and their motivation renewed to keep building Open Food Facts together.
A huge thank you to all the participants, whether newcomers or long-time contributors, for making the weekend so rich in exchanges and energy. We are equally grateful to our speaker, workshop leaders, and lightning talk presenters for sharing their expertise and enthusiasm.
Special thanks to the City of Paris and the Académie du Climat for once again hosting us free of charge, and to our volunteers behind the scenes who made the weekend run smoothly.
Your feedback & testimonials 🗣️
Don’t hesitate to let us know your feedback via this cryptpad form and ideas for future editions. It helps a lot to improve & make it the best experience for each guest!
We can’t wait to see what the community will achieve before the next Open Food Facts Days… and we look forward to meeting again in 2026! 🧡
Hao
“Thank you again for organizing such a great event! I participated because I believe in the value of building open standards and community collaboration in food and nutrition. The sessions were insightful, and I especially enjoyed the discussions on data sharing and practical applications.
I’m particularly interested in improving data quality and would like to learn how I can best contribute to Open Food Facts forward by participating in this event.”
