Hands-on testing at TIIME 2026 confirms real world readiness of OpenID Federation across nine implementations.  

On 13 February 2026, implementers of OpenID Federation - a specification that provides a common framework for organisations to verify and trust one another at scale, without requiring bilateral agreements between every party - gathered in Amsterdam for a hands-on interoperability event.

The event was held as part of the Trust and Internet Identity Meeting Europe (TIIME) unconference — a practitioner-led forum bringing together experts across identity management, policy, privacy and trust infrastructure. 

Testing at scale 

Twelve participants representing nine implementations and nine countries came together to test their work against one another in real time. Implementers represented Croatia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Sweden and the US. Nine implementations from nine countries successfully testing together is a meaningful milestone. It demonstrates that OpenID Federation is being adopted across the world, and that those implementations interoperate.

The event was organised by Niels van Dijk, Technical Product Manager for Trust and Security at SURFnet, and Davide Vaghetti, Head of Identity Federation service at GARR. Davide ran the session, assembling and managing the test federation that participants used for testing. 

The OpenID Federation Browser, created by Giuseppe De Marco of the Italian Digital Transformation Department, gave participants a visual way to navigate and understand the federation structure in real time.

Momentum beyond Amsterdam

The test federation assembled for the event has remained active since, with a number of participants continuing to test against one another in the days following the in-person session. This continued engagement shows that not only are the implementations solid, but having a shared environment to test against is clearly valuable to the community.

OpenID Foundation board member and specification editor, Mike Jones, commented: “I was thrilled that the identity community came together and organized a day dedicated to OpenID Federation at TIIME 2026, including the interop event. While the OpenID Foundation organized the previous interop event at SUNET, this time it came about because practitioners organized it themselves.” 

Building on the milestone

The interoperability event coincided with OpenID Federation 1.0 achieving Final status — adding further weight to the community's work in Amsterdam. OpenID Foundation Executive Director Gail Hodges said: “With OpenID Federation 1.0 having now achieved Final status, the effort by this multinational group of expert implementers not only further proves out the value of the specification, but they are also pressure testing the OpenID Federation open source tests that will launch for self-certification in due course. 

“Ecosystems that are exploring what trust management specifications are right for their needs will stand to benefit from the hard work of these early innovators and adopters.”   

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to helping people assert their identity wherever they choose. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts leading the creation of open identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy preserving. The Foundation’s OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. In the last five years, OAuth2 - the FAPI standard for interoperable, high security - has become the standard of choice for Open Banking and Open Data implementations, allowing people to access and share data across entities. Today, the OpenID Foundation’s standards are the connective tissue to 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.

To learn more about conformance testing and self-certification, please visit the OpenID Foundation’s FAQ section.