Moving from implementation to widespread adoption and scale is a significant challenge faced by digital identity and credential ecosystems around the world. They need to build trust and serve issuers, relying parties, and credential holders. They must also enable interoperability across sectors and borders.

Having seen this challenge firsthand, the OpenID Foundation is often called on to advise ecosystems as they grow. The Foundation recognizes the value of the lessons being learned along the way, and is keen to make them available to others.

The OpenID Well-Known Conference, taking place February 2–4 2027 in London, aims to do just that. The conference will bring together ecosystem leaders, practitioners, and standards experts in order to learn from each other.

To facilitate this, the OpenID Foundation is calling for proposals with a strong focus on addressing how standards and technology can help digital identity and credential ecosystems drive adoption and achieve scale. 

Elizabeth Garber, the OpenID Foundation’s Strategy and Marketing Director, reiterates this: “Every ecosystem that works toward scale learns lessons that others can use. This conference is about sharing them. We want to hear practical, honest accounts of what worked, what did not, and what people would do differently. Organizations take different approaches, and there is value in learning from all of them, whether a program has reached scale or is still working toward it.”

The guidance below is intended to help speakers shape their submissions. 

Proposals that help others learn

Each proposal should consider one question: how does this story contribute to adoption, scalability, or both? On scale, proposals might explain how trust was scaled across the ecosystem, and what barriers or challenges arose along the way. On adoption, they might set out how adoption was achieved, and what is being done to increase or accelerate it.

Strong proposals also:

• Offer lessons another ecosystem or jurisdiction could apply.
• Explain how an ecosystem got to where it is, not only what it built.
• Share what did not work, as well as what did.
• Consider relying parties and credential holders, not only issuers.
• Focus on experience and insight, rather than products or services.
• Link AI and identity topics clearly to adoption or scale.

How to submit

The proposals can be submitted here. 

Tickets are already available and can be booked through Eventbrite here.

Members interested in sponsorship can review the Sponsor Prospectus.

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to building trusted identity ecosystems. Our mission is to lead the global community in identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy respecting. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts. The Foundation's OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. More recently, the FAPI security profile - built on OAuth 2.0 - has become the standard of choice for interoperable Open Banking and Open Data implementations, while OpenID for Verifiable Credentials specifications are underpinning a new generation of digital wallets. Today, the OpenID Foundation's standards are the connective tissue that enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling "networks of networks" to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.