Why this year’s Clojure/Conj matters beyond the conference

Written by: Nubank Editorial

Every engineering community has its moments of convergence. Moments when people working on similar problems, often from different countries, industries, and backgrounds, come together to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and learn from one another.

For the Clojure community, Clojure/Conj has long been one of those moments. Each year, the conference brings together developers, language contributors, researchers, and engineering teams who are interested in functional programming and the practical challenges of building reliable software. It’s a space where discussions range from language internals and architecture decisions to lessons learned from production systems, creating opportunities for conversations that often continue well beyond the event itself.

This year, Clojure/Conj 2026 will take place from September 30 to October 2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. While the technical program remains at the heart of the conference, one aspect makes this edition particularly meaningful for the broader developer community: the event will be streamed online free of charge.

That decision may sound operational at first glance. In practice, it makes technical conversations accessible to a much wider audience.

A conference that reaches further

Technical conferences have always been valuable places to exchange knowledge. They create opportunities to hear directly from the people building languages, libraries, frameworks, and large-scale systems. They also provide the informal conversations that shape future collaborations.

At the same time, participating in these events has traditionally depended on a combination of factors that many developers simply don’t have: the ability to travel internationally and the budget for tickets and accommodation.

None of these barriers are related to curiosity or technical ability. Yet they often determine who gets to participate.

By offering free online access, Clojure/Conj 2026 makes it easier for developers everywhere to join the conversation regardless of where they live. Removing the financial barrier doesn’t replace the in-person experience, but it significantly expands who can benefit from the knowledge shared during the conference.

Watching the conference live also offers something that recordings can’t fully capture. Online attendees experience the event as it unfolds, following the same conversations as the audience in Charlotte, seeing speakers respond to questions in real time, and sharing the energy of the conference alongside the community. The event is designed to connect onsite and online participants, creating a shared experience rather than simply broadcasting presentations.

For developers joining from different parts of the world, the live stream is expected to include language support that helps make the sessions easier to follow. More importantly, it allows people to participate in the same moment as the rest of the community instead of catching up later.

Accessibility in technology, sometimes, is about making sure more people can participate in the same technical conversation.

Strong communities grow when knowledge moves freely

One of the defining characteristics of the Clojure ecosystem has always been its emphasis on thoughtful discussions and knowledge sharing.

Many of the ideas that shape the community develop through open source projects, blog posts, podcasts, mailing lists, meetups, and countless conversations between developers solving real-world problems.

Conferences like Clojure/Conj serve as a meeting point for those ongoing discussions. They bring together people working in different contexts but facing similar engineering challenges, creating opportunities for ideas to evolve collectively rather than in isolation, and that exchange benefits far more than the attendees.

A presentation often becomes a blog post; a conference discussion turns into an open source contribution; a production lesson inspires improvements in another team’s architecture months later; and knowledge continues to circulate long after the closing keynote. The healthier these feedback loops become, the stronger the ecosystem grows.

Making those conversations accessible to a broader audience means expanding not only the number of people listening, but also the diversity of perspectives contributing back to the community.

Why Nubank supports initiatives like this

At Nubank, Clojure has been part of our engineering journey for many years. Throughout that time, we’ve benefited enormously from the work of the broader open source community—from the language itself to the libraries, tools, ideas, and discussions that help teams build better software. Supporting community initiatives is one way of giving something back.

That commitment extends beyond participating in conferences. Over the years, Nubank has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships for open source developers working across the Clojure ecosystem, helping maintain the libraries and tools that countless engineering teams rely on every day. Supporting the people behind open source projects is one way to help ensure the ecosystem remains healthy, sustainable, and able to evolve over time.

Community support also means helping sustain the environments where engineers can learn from one another, exchange experiences, and collectively advance the state of software engineering. Healthy technical ecosystems depend on people who are willing to document what they’ve learned, publish their successes alongside their failures, maintain open source projects, answer questions from newcomers, and create spaces where knowledge can circulate freely. Events like Clojure/Conj are another important part of that ecosystem, creating opportunities for ideas to spread across teams, organizations, and countries.

Making the conference available to anyone with an internet connection extends those conversations to developers who might otherwise remain outside them. Alongside initiatives such as our ongoing sponsorship of open source maintainers, it reflects the belief that investing in both people and knowledge sharing helps strengthen the community as a whole. That ultimately benefits everyone who builds software using Clojure, whether they attend the conference or simply encounter the ideas it helps spread.

For readers interested in learning more about Nubank’s open source sponsorship program, we’ve previously shared the motivation behind the initiative, and many of the projects and maintainers we support are publicly listed through our GitHub Sponsors profile.

Join the conversation

Whether you’ve been writing Clojure for years or you’re simply curious about functional programming, Clojure/Conj offers an opportunity to learn directly from people working on real systems, exploring new ideas, and contributing to the language’s future.

This year’s edition, taking place from September 30 to October 2 in Charlotte, North Carolina, makes that opportunity more accessible than ever. Free online streaming removes geographic and financial barriers, allowing more developers to take part in the conversations as they happen. Joining live means experiencing the event alongside the community—following the discussions in real time, seeing the interaction between speakers, the MC, and both onsite and online audiences, and participating in the shared momentum that makes conferences much more than a collection of recorded talks.

We’re excited to support another edition of Clojure/Conj and to see even more developers, from more places and backgrounds, take part in the conversations that help shape the future of the Clojure community.