Call for Proposals

Contribute to the Summit experience

Call for proposals has now closed. Mainstage ideas, breakout session, and lightning talk submissions were accepted Thursday, November 13 through Monday, November 24, 2025.

Thank you to all who submitted a proposal. We aim to let you know if your submission has been accepted in late February 2026. If selected, you must confirm your participation and all session details by March 20, 2026. Please note that mainstage content will be reviewed on a separate timeline, and we’ll follow up with next steps at a later date.

If your submitted proposal requires internal approval, we recommend starting that process now to help you meet the final approval deadline. 

Questions? Get in touch at summit@codeforamerica.org

Who should apply?

We welcome submissions from anyone whose work touches government technology and civic innovation. Whether you’re a government employee, a technologist, an academic, or anyone else in the civic tech space—if you’re doing the hard work of improving people’s lives through technology and government, your knowledge and passion have a place here.

Summit is the place where experts and leaders learn from newcomers and beginners, and vice versa. We invite anyone to share their story, regardless of career stage or level of experience.

What can contributing to Summit look like?

There are three ways to present at Summit:

  • Breakout session: 60-minute deep-dives with a maximum of four speakers
  • Lightning talk: Five minutes to tell us about your bold idea, one speaker only
  • Mainstage content: Lightning talks, fireside chats, or 20-minute panel discussions that speak to a broad audience or cover a huge recent milestone in civic tech
    • Please note that mainstage content will be reviewed on a separate timeline, and we’ll follow up with next steps at a later date.

Think about the format you’re going for when you submit your proposal—but if you’re open to it, we may reach out and see if the session you submitted might work better in a different slot on the Summit agenda.

Theme

The Future We Build

All across the country, technologists, policy changemakers, community organizations, and leaders at every level are laying the foundation for what’s next in our nation. This moment demands bold ideas, cross-sector collaboration, and vision that supersedes difference. Together, let’s create the tomorrow we know is possible when we innovate today.

Conference tracks

Service Design + Delivery
This track focuses on the end-to-end design and delivery of government services, which are at the core of what matters most—where people experience government. Delivery of services, technical or non-technical, was once viewed as an afterthought to policy decisions. Today, we know that a ready, responsive, and resilient government must get implementation right.

Policy + Administration
In many ways, policy and technology are two sides of the same government coin. Policy is how the government creates the guardrails for our society, and technological implementation is how those policies are brought to life. But there’s often a disconnect between the intention of a policy and its impact when implemented. This track focuses on bringing policy and administrative decisions closer to their desired real-world outcomes.

Emerging Technology + Innovation
It’s critical we leverage the latest advancements to build more effective and efficient public services. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence have the power to transform government services, but we must ensure that they are deployed thoughtfully and ethically. This track showcases the latest technologies and forward-thinking strategies that are driving positive change and reshaping the future of civic technology.

People Power + Community
Code for America was founded over 15 years ago on the belief that government can work for the people, by the people, in the digital age. This track is for anyone who believes that our best creative problem solving comes from bringing people together. It spotlights change agents and innovators who influence government to better serve all people.

What does a winning proposal look like?

For years, Summit attendees have been asking for it, and we’re looking to you to make it happen: we want more advanced sessions that dive into the specifics of technical implementation for government innovation projects. That means we want you to get granular, lean into the complexity, and give your peers something challenging to think about.

“Why open sourcing improves innovation” is a 101 level presentation—and we love to have some of those at Summit for people just entering the space! But we’re really excited about those well-developed, unique 201 or 301 level sessions. Take that open source idea and turn it into something like “How to transition to open source when your projects depend on more traditional cloud computing services” and “Navigating privacy requirements in open source data repositories.”

Here are some examples of what a specific, advanced technical submission might look like. We’d love to see proposals like these: 

  • In the Emerging Technology + Innovation track, we’d love something like “Evaluating LLMs for different applications in government.” Walk attendees through the evaluation criteria you used when assessing different LLMs for a project you piloted and the lessons you learned applying this type of AI in different contexts.
  • In the Service Design + Delivery track, we’d love something like “Deciding between traditional machine learning and AI while building an integrated benefits portal.”  Show attendees how you designed an integrated benefits portal and the methods you used to decide between different technical approaches for each component of the tool, from client support pages to document uploading. 
  • In the People Power + Community track, we’d love something like “Conducting outreach for programs with automatic enrollment.” Show your attendees how you used already available program data to locate participants for a new benefits program, the communications strategies you employed to get them to use the benefit, and how you handled challenges like address validation and other barriers to program implementation.
  • In the Policy + Administration track, we’d love to see something like “Piloting entity resolution for data cleanup.” Give a presentation on the basics of entity resolution, the steps agencies would need to take to clean up their data before deploying this tool, the administrative benefits of having an easily navigable data infrastructure, and the internal data policy changes you had to make.

Any Summit proposal should show us how you’re addressing four criteria:

Timeliness

How does the topic address emerging trends or pressing issues within the civic tech community?

Audience engagement

Are there interactive elements—such as Q&A segments, live polls, and group activities—planned to foster participation?

Clear takeaways

What actionable insights or tools will attendees gain from your session?

Uniqueness

What have you thought of that we haven’t seen at Summits past?*

*One of our favorite proposals of recent years included a custom-made tarot deck for helping civic tech practitioners make decisions!

Submit your proposal

Review our submission guidelines, tips, and helpful FAQs to help make your proposal stand out from the hundreds we receive annually.

Call for proposals has now closed. Mainstage ideas, breakout session, and lightning talk submissions were accepted Thursday, November 13 through Monday, November 24, 2025.

Thank you to all who submitted a proposal. We aim to let you know if your submission has been accepted in February 2026. If selected, you must confirm your participation and all session details by March 20, 2026. Please note that mainstage content will be reviewed on a separate timeline, and we’ll follow up with next steps at a later date.

If your submitted proposal requires internal approval, we recommend starting that process now to help you meet the final approval deadline.

Frequently asked questions

When and where is Summit 2026?

Code for America Summit 2026 will be an in-person experience May 7-8 in Chicago, IL. Mainstage, breakout sessions and lightning talks will be held on both Thursday, May 7 and Friday, May 8. You will be able to select which day(s) you are available, and we will do our best to accommodate your selections, however we can’t guarantee the date.

How should I structure my session?

Mainstage segments can be a lightning talk (5 minutes), fireside chat, or 20-minute panel discussion that speaks to a broad audience or covers a huge recent milestone in civic tech.

Breakout sessions last one hour, allowing for at least 10 to 15 minutes of questions and answers. We strongly encourage no more than three or four presenters per panel, including the submitter. We’re eager to see how you would structure your session and encourage sessions with an interactive element to engage your audience. Please specify how you’ll use the time to deliver quality, engaging material.

Lightning talks are short but impactful five-minute talks with a limited slide presentation given by one individual. Selected lightning talks will be delivered one after another, in a time slot concurrent with breakout sessions.

Will my session be on the Summit mainstage?

Yes, if you submitted a mainstage idea and it’s selected by our content chair. If you submitted a proposal for breakout sessions or lightning talks, they will not appear on the mainstage.

Who is the Summit audience?

Code for America Summit is open to anyone and everyone whose work touches government technology and civic innovation.

What should I know about Summit attendees?

Our attendees represent a wide range of local, state, and federal government personnel, as well as civic tech practitioners from across the country. They include public servants (both technical and non-technical) who are involved in delivering government services, representatives of technology vendors who work with governments, nonprofit advocates, and other change agents.

What’s the key information to include in submissions?

For your submission, you’ll need to let us know:

  • About you: Your name, contact information, title, organization, and demographic information
  • About your submission: Your target audience, your chosen track, your session or lightning talk title, description, and format
  • About your co-presenter (if applicable): Their name(s), title, organization and demographic information
What happens after I submit?
  • The submission deadline is November 24, 2025, 11:59 p.m. PT.
  • We aim to inform you if your submission has been accepted in late February 2026.
  • If selected, you must confirm your participation and all session details by March 20, 2026.
How are sessions selected?

We’ll be curating dozens of sessions across the two days of Summit. All submissions are reviewed by our content committee, which is made up of your peers in the government technology and civic innovation community. We review submissions based on the quality of title and description and how well they fit in with our tracks and other submissions, and our goal is to select content that reflects the diverse perspectives and experiences of our attendees.

What do I receive if my session is selected?

All session speakers (breakout sessions and lightning talks) will receive one complimentary in-person ticket for Summit.

Will my session be recorded?

All mainstage sessions will be recorded.

Breakout sessions and lightning talks may be recorded. All recordings will live on Code for America’s YouTube channel.