What it is
EU Open Data Days is the European Union’s conference on open public data, organised by the Publications Office of the EU through the team that runs data.europa.eu, the official portal for European data. It is not held on a fixed cycle. An earlier edition, in November 2021, was online only. The most recent took place on 19 and 20 March 2025 at the European Convention Centre in Luxembourg and was streamed online. No later edition has been announced.
How the programme works
The 2025 edition ran as two half-day sessions, on a Wednesday afternoon and a Thursday until mid-afternoon, under the slogan “From insights to impact”. According to the event announcement, it was organised around success stories and best practice, the problems publishers and re-users face, data visualisation, and data literacy. The Director-General of the Publications Office opened it. Talks ranged from a keynote on AI-powered digital twins for policymaking to a practical account of how Lithuania inventoried nearly 2,000 public-sector datasets.
Who goes and how to take part
The audience is mixed: data publishers in public administrations, analysts, policymakers, academics, companies that re-use data, and open-data advocates. In 2025, in-person places needed registration, while the online stream did not. We could not find a fee published.
What came out of the last edition
The organiser’s wrap-up page reports 289 people on site in Luxembourg and more than 2,300 views of the online broadcast over the two days, and quotes participants calling it “the most important event on open data in Europe”. Recordings and slides for most sessions are linked from the programme, which makes the 2025 edition usable as a free course for a city data team.
Why it matters for cities
The conference is not aimed at cities alone, but some 2025 sessions were directly local: one presented a city-wide approach to measuring sustainability and CO2 footprints using data from municipalities, property operators, research institutions and mobility studies. For officials who have to justify an open-data programme, the conference shows how other public bodies organise publication and measure reuse.
Going, or following from home
There is nothing to book at the moment. The best way to follow is to watch the 2025 recordings and to check data.europa.eu for news of a next edition. Given the four-year gap between the last two editions, do not count on a yearly rhythm.