This year we are open to both talks and workshops.

Talks submitted should be max 30 minutes long, and there is space for 20 talks in the agenda.

Workshops can be up to 4 hours long and will take place on Sept 22.

What kind of talks are we looking for? 

Rails in 2026 is stronger, faster, more stable, and more secure than ever thanks to Rails 8 and its modern defaults. But more importantly, Rails now exists in a fundamentally different software landscape.

We have landed in an agentic era where AI-assisted development is suddenly mainstream, teams are smaller, and leverage matters more than ever. In this world, the winners are not the teams with the most complexity, but those who can build, iterate, and ship with the least friction.

Rails is uniquely positioned for this moment.

For Rails World 2026, we are looking for talks that demonstrate how Rails helps developers and companies move faster, stay smaller, and win against complexity.

We are especially interested in real-world experience: production systems, measurable outcomes, hard lessons, and honest insights from shipping software with Rails today.

We are open to all Rails-related topics, but we will especially interested in talks that fall into a few specific themes:

• Rails 8 in the production: Real-world experiences using Rails 8 and its default stack in production systems. Lessons learned from upgrading, what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised teams. Includes performance, stability, and developer experience changes, and how large-scale applications are adapting to the latest Rails defaults.
• AI-native development with Rails: How AI is reshaping Rails development workflows and engineering practices. Covers AI-assisted coding, refactoring, and maintenance, as well as CI/CD automation with LLMs. Includes designing codebases that are safe and effective for AI-driven modification, improving developer productivity, token efficiency strategies, and exploring new team structures enabled by AI-assisted engineering.
• Rails + AI / Agentic Systems: How Rails is being used as the application and orchestration layer for AI-powered products. Focuses on production systems, not prototypes, including LLM integration patterns (RAG, tool use, structured outputs), agentic workflows, async execution, and streaming AI experiences. Also covers cost, latency, and reliability challenges when building AI-native features.
• Trust, Security, and Reliability: How teams maintain correctness, security, and trust when code is increasingly generated or modified by AI systems and AI-assisted attacks are on the rise. Includes threat modeling for LLM-integrated applications, prompt injection risks, secure-by-default design patterns, and supply chain concerns. Also covers code review, auditing practices, and observability in non-deterministic systems.
• Focus on the frontend: How Rails fits into the evolving frontend and web ecosystem. Covers Hotwire, Turbo, and Rails-native UI approaches in production, as well as integration with modern frontend frameworks like React and Vue. Includes real-time UX, streaming interfaces, and architectural decisions behind frontend choices in Rails applications.
• Deep technical Rails: Deep dives into database performance, scaling strategies, Rails internals, observability, etc.
• The competitive advantage of Rails: How small teams are building and scaling high-impact products with Rails. Solo developers and small teams (2–5 engineers) achieving outsized results through better tooling, architecture, and AI leverage. Includes reducing infrastructure overhead, improving developer velocity, and concrete examples of scale achieved with minimal resources.
• The Business of Rails: While the focus of Rails World is technical talks, we have a limited amount of space for talks that fall outside of the scope of code, for instance building and scaling SaaS products, replacing SaaS with in-house solutions (thanks to AI), consulting, freelancing, and open-source sustainability. Includes pricing, growth, operational strategy, and long-term business advantages of using Rails in production environments.
• Other: Surprise us. You never know.

We encourage you to submit proposals that challenge the status quo, showcase forward-thinking ideas, and push the boundaries of what’s possible with Rails. 

What kind of workshops are we looking for? 

Workshops need to be hands-on, teachable in 4 hours or less, and leave people with something concrete to take away.

To that end, not all of the above topics would be suitable, so while we are open to all topics, we would strongly consider workshops with topics that attendees have asked for before:

• AI-Native Development with Rails
• Rails + AI / Agentic Systems
• Focus on the frontend

Selection process

A committee will review all proposals and make a final selection based on the technical content of the proposal, and its potential to inspire attendees with forward-thinking ideas and insights. We will strive to inform all applicants before ticket sales launch.

Please note: preference will go to:

• Highly technical talks with key takeaways
• Talks that have not been given before Rails World 2026 (does not apply to workshops)

Selection criteria

At Rails World, we believe that diverse voices and perspectives are critical to driving innovation and advancing the tech industry as a whole, and so our ideal lineup would showcase a diverse range of speakers.

"We need disagreement. We need dialects. We need diversity of thought and people. It’s in this melting pot of ideas we’ll get the best commons for all to share. Lots of people chipping in their two cents, in code or considered argument." - Rails Doctrine

With that said, we recognize that, despite our best efforts, our strict commitment to selecting talks based on the content of the sessions might limit the diversity of our speaker lineup. 

To mitigate this issue, we will strive to share this CFP with as broad an audience as possible, and we encourage all presenters, regardless of their background or experience, to submit proposals that showcase their technical expertise and their ability to push the boundaries of what's possible with Rails. 

You can help by sharing this CFP within your own broad network.

Speaker benefits

We want the experience of speaking at Rails World to be one of the best and most inviting in the industry.

If you are chosen as a speaker, here is what is included:

• Free admission to the conference, naturally.
• Accommodation: The Rails Foundation will cover 3 nights hotel accommodation for each speaker in the speaker hotel (Sept 22-25). It is not required that you stay in this hotel, but the offer only extends to the hotel of our choosing. It is not transferable to another hotel.
• Speaker dinner: Speakers will be invited to a private dinner hosted by Rails Foundation Core & Contributing members on Sept 26.
• A speaker gift.
• Online Presentation Coaching session with Be Your Own Coach to prepare you for the Rails World stage.

These benefits are made possible thanks to the kind support of our Speaker Support sponsor, Beyond Finance.

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Code of Conduct

We are committed to fostering a welcoming community. We abide by, and expect all community members both online and in person to abide by the Rails Code of Conduct.

We reserve the right to remove or refuse entry to any attendee, speaker or sponsor from the event for violating the Code of Conduct, without refund or compensation.

3 nights accommodation in the Speaker hotel, Speaker dinner invite, Speaker gift