Fab25: A Week of Connection, Creativity, and Collective Celebration
FAB25 was a vibrant global celebration of over 1,000 makers, educators, and innovators from 55 countries, uniting across two cities and a train for 700+ hours of collaborative learning, creativity, and community.
Reflecting on our time at the heart of the global Fab Lab community.
That’s a wrap! It’s been a week since the Fab Lab Barcelona team returned from FAB25.cz, and we’re still basking in the joy of shared memories, meaningful conversations, and incredible energy. From reconnecting with longtime friends to meeting new collaborators, this year’s global gathering was a beautiful reminder of the strength and spirit of our international maker community.
FAB25 was nothing short of spectacular: over 1,000 attendees, 138 workshops, 700+ hours of learning and making, and representatives from 55 countries — all spread across two cities and a train! The event brought together Fab Labs, makers, educators, artists, and policymakers in a vibrant celebration of digital fabrication, collaboration, and imagination. It wasn’t just a conference—it was a living, breathing showcase of what a distributed, open, and creative future can look like.
Fab Lab Barcelona contributed with 1 hackathon, 11 workshops, 2 Academany working groups, and the Academany Graduation. It was an intense and inspiring week, and we’re already looking forward to Fab26 in Boston with our friends at CBA-MIT and the Fab Foundation.
In this blog post, we’re sharing some of our favorite moments and the outputs, outcomes, and next steps from our contributions.
© Fab Foundation
✨ Highlights from a Week to Remember
One of the most heartfelt moments came from Sherry Lassiter, who opened with “Ready, Fire, Aim!”—a moving reflection on 25 years of the Fab movement. Her stories, spanning continents and decades of dedication, brought tears and earned a well-deserved standing ovation.
Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, inspired us with the evolution of the platform and finally revealed the origin of the name “Arduino”! His reminder that “open source is love” truly resonated with the community. We were also blown away by Adrian Bowyer, founder of RepRap, who presented his latest project—the RepRap Micron—capable of micron and sub-micron 3D fabrication. A new frontier for open hardware.
Gonzalo Guarner, one of our Fab Academy graduates, brilliantly connected quantum mechanics with augmented reality and LEGO, weaving together the themes of Neil Gershenfeld’s keynote on quantum computing and digital fabrication. And of course, the Fab Academy Graduation—with students taking the stage, shaking hands with Neil, and capturing the moment in a group photo—was a joyful milestone celebrating the future of making.
Halfway through the week, we hopped aboard the Maker Train from Brno to Prague—yes, a train filled with makers! Neil was right when he said this might’ve been the best Fab gathering yet. In Prague, we were welcomed by a stunning venue with multiple pavilions and outdoor pop-up makerspaces. The PRUSA Pavilion hosted a beautiful showcase from Fabricademy students, highlighting the intersection of tech and textiles, art and science.
© Fab Foundation
🛠️ What We Brought to Fab25
Before the event, we shared a packed list of what we’d be bringing to the table. Here’s a glimpse into what came out of it:
🛰️ Open Data, Open Hardware & Citizen Science
Óscar González, Adai Suriñach, Rebecca Peters and our director, Guillem Camprodon, co-led a multi-day hackathon with Seeed Studio, Meshtastic, Hackster.io, University of Glasgow, and Sensirion to start developing the new version of the Smart Citizen Kit 3.0, bringing LoRa capability, leveraging the popular Meshtastic protocol. You can check the results in this POST. We are doing this together with contributors from the Fab Lab Network, and we run a hackathon to start the development. In addition, with Fab Labs from Chile, León, and Ecuador, we took the first steps on drafting a Manifesto for Environmental Protection using open data and citizen science within Fablabs, which will now be discussed periodically in an online working group that will join again in September—stay tuned for the event to join us!.
© Fab Foundation
🧵 DTecla, FLA & STEAM in Schools
Julia Leirado introduced the DTecla Project, a research-based initiative co-led with the Diverse Foundation, which aims to help primary schools across Catalonia increase their students’ STEAM capital. To date, the project has engaged with over 400 students and 85 teachers from schools in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. In her e-textiles workshop, participants explored how to use the sew:bit board—a micro:bit-compatible textile interface that merges code with craft. Teachers and learners prototyped soft circuits and wearable tech, bridging electronics with creativity. Full documentation is available for those wanting to replicate or remix the activity.
The Fab Learning Academy (FLA) also had a strong presence throughout the week. As part of our contribution to rethinking education, FLA offered micro-interventions rooted in fabrication-based learning, blending digital fabrication, pedagogy, and distributed knowledge.
Santi Fuentemilla, representing FLA, facilitated sessions and conversations around how to equip educators with tools, strategies, and confidence to teach through making. These engagements focused on fabrication as a language for learning, promoting active, inquiry-based approaches to STEAM education that are adaptable across local contexts.
These activities reflect the broader mission of the Future Learning: to support educators and learners in cultivating STEAM skills through community-based, open-ended, and purpose-driven challenges.
Santi Fuentemilla also presented Ruractive, which explores how rural Fab Labs can bridge the digital divide.
© Fab Foundation @fla
🌍 Circular Cities and Policy Prototypes
Milena Juarez, together with the Fab City Foundation, hosted a PENCE EU Project workshop on bottom-up policy design for climate action. Participants discussed and shared recommendations on how creativity, design methods, and artistic practices can inspire new approaches to public policy and civic engagement. Until May 2026, a series of events, including hands-on activities, talks, and exhibitions, will take place in Barcelona exploring the role of creativity in advancing climate action as part of the PENCE project.
Jessica Guy, in collaboration with Opendot and the Fab City Foundation, co-led a prototyping workshop focused on co-designing modular pop-up makerspaces using LEGO. Participants worked with three realistic case studies from the Make-a-thek pilots, which helped guide design decisions for circular makerspace models. The insights generated during the workshop will inform Opendot’s development of a toolkit to support the creation of nine Make-a-thek pilot makerspaces across Europe. Notably, this toolkit will also assist Barcelona’s Camp de l’Arpa Library, which is working with Fab Lab Barcelona to launch its own textile-focused circular makerspace by 2026.
Images 2 and 3 © Fab City Foundation
🔗 What Comes Next
Events like Fab25 recharge our spirit. They remind us of the power of community, the beauty of collaboration, and the urgency to act. We return to Barcelona full of new ideas, partnerships, and the drive to keep building.
We’ll continue activities at events like the Distributed Design x PENCE Conference on the 16th and 17th of October 2025 at Fab Lab Barcelona and explore follow-up collaborations across Europe.
Huge thanks to hackster.io, Seeed Studio, Meshtastic, Opendot, the Fab City Foundation, Diverse Foundation, Fab City Hamburg and every single community member who made these activities possible. You inspire us.
© Fab Foundation