The embedded world Conference 2026 will take place from March 10–12, 2026, at the Messezentrum Nürnberg in Nuremberg, Germany.
Established in 2003, the embedded world Conference is entering its 24th edition in 2026. Over the years, it has become a leading global platform combining a major exhibition for engineers and technical management with a world-class conference at the intersection of applied research and industrial applications.
Driven by both technology and real-world use cases, embedded world focuses strongly on system-level thinking and cross-domain innovation. True to its slogan, “Connecting the Embedded Community,” the event brings together experts, companies, researchers, and open-source communities from around the world.
The Zephyr Project is proud to participate as a Community Partner of embedded world Conference 2026. Through close collaboration with fellow community partners and the program committee, Zephyr contributes to special sessions within the conference schedule, helping address the growing complexity of dependable embedded systems.
Session Highlights:
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Class 2.2, 9:30 – 13:00 – Hands-On Zephyr Project Workshop – Jonas Remmert, SMIGHT
This class helps embedded developers explore the Zephyr Project, focusing on IoT development through simulation and hands-on exercises that guide attendees through command-line interactions, modular application building with ZBus, and testing strategies using Twister and native simulation. Participants will build foundational knowledge of Zephyr and engage in practical examples. No physical hardware is required, emphasizing virtualized environments.
Wednesday, 11 March 2026
10:00-10:30 am – Zephyr: 10 Years After Launch – Kate Stewart, Linux Foundation
The Zephyr Project was launched at Embedded World in 2016, and the initial presentation was “Zephyr Project: An Open Source RTOS to change the face of IoT”. 10 years later, we’ve made significant progress on that aspirational goal by applying best practices for open source projects.
We started the project off with a focus on filling the gaps that the developers perceived using RTOSes on embedded controllers and sensors. When Linux was too big for a processor, we wanted Zephyr to be a viable option for product development. Building up a critical mass of developers allows us to systemically focus on quality, security, safety and establish a vibrant ecosystem. The 4.2 Zephyr release had over 800 developers contributing to it, and over 3000 have contributed in the lifetime of the project, making it one of the most active open source projects out there.
Right from the start the Zephyr project focused on security, with the first security committee meeting happening the week of the launch at Embedded World as well. Fast forward to today, and we’ve been systematically adopting security best practices over the last 10 years, which position the project well as a Steward and for conformance to the CRA requirements.
This talk will go through the best practices applied in the project and illustrate how they have contributed to it’s growing adoption.
10:30-11:00 – How to Migrate from FreeRTOS to Zephyr RTOS – Jacob Beningo, Beningo Embedded Group
FreeRTOS has long been the go-to real-time operating system for embedded developers. It’s small, simple, and proven. We love it, but as complex projects grow, they require better modularity, richer middleware, and long-term maintainability.
To solve these challenges, teams are increasingly turning to Zephyr RTOS. Migrating from FreeRTOS to Zephyr, however, can feel daunting. Different APIs, build systems, configuration approaches, and abstractions create a steep learning curve.
This session provides a step-by-step guide to help developers and teams transition from FreeRTOS to Zephyr with confidence. We’ll explore the similarities and differences between the two RTOSes, demonstrate migration strategies for tasks, queues, and synchronization, and show how to map existing FreeRTOS-based designs into Zephyr’s ecosystem.
Along the way, we’ll cover practical tips to avoid common pitfalls, validate your port, and leverage Zephyr’s unique strengths, from device trees to vendor-neutral drivers and subsystems.
Whether you’re maintaining legacy FreeRTOS code or planning a greenfield project, this session will equip you with the insights and tools needed to modernize your RTOS strategy and build scalable, future-ready firmware.
11:00-11:30 – Practical Zephyr: Boosting Your Embedded Workflow, Benjamin Cabé, The Zephyr Project
Developing with Zephyr can be incredibly powerful, but it’s not always straightforward. With its fast-evolving codebase, rich configuration system, and broad hardware support, developers often face steep learning curves and hidden pitfalls.
This talk shares a collection of practical, hands-on tips to help you get more out of your Zephyr development workflow. We’ll look at ways to configure and build projects more efficiently, how to implement testing strategies that save time, and uncover lesser-known tools and features that can boost your day-to-day productivity.
Whether you’re integrating Zephyr into your first project or already shipping products with it, you’ll walk away with concrete practices to streamline development, avoid common mistakes, and make Zephyr work better for you.
12:45-13:15 – Zephyr’s Roadmap to a Pre-Certified Kernel for Safety-Critical Systems, Dr. Tobias Kästner, inovex GmbH
Achieving safety certification like IEC 61508 is a major hurdle for embedded products, where the choice of RTOS is a critical architectural decision. While many open-source projects lack a formal safety story, the Zephyr RTOS is tackling this challenge head-on. This talk presents Zephyr’s comprehensive strategy to provide the tools, processes, and evidence required to certify safety-critical products built on Zephyr.
The talk details the integration strategy to certify full applications built upon the Zephyr kernel using the tools and evidence that will be provided by the project. The session explores the tight integration of safety and security recognizing that a modern system cannot be considered safe if it is not secure, and how Zephyr is designed to address both domains.
The project’s efforts towards an evidence package comprising relevant safety artifacts are examined for their direct impact on the safety case of product makers.
Furthermore, the presentation covers the importance of software architecture and how Zephyr is aligned with the standard’s requirements and the safety (and security) features Zephyr already provides.
The talk concludes with a clear overview of Zephyr’s safety process and roadmap to a pre-certified kernel outlining how adopters can contribute to accelerating its realization.
13:15-13:45 – Turning the Ignition on Safety: Zephyr RTOS in Automotive Compliance – Parthiban Nallathambi, Linumiz GmbH
Embedded Automotive RTOS (Real-Time Operating Systems) must meet stringent requirements for safety, reliability, and security, primarily governed by the ISO 26262 standard, which details ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) requirements.
Zephyr RTOS complies with key functional needs, including minimal latency, high determinism, efficient memory management, and robust multitasking capabilities to handle critical tasks. Currently, the project is actively moving toward greater alignment with the needs of the automotive industry, with specific plans outlined.
The project has achieved written concept approval toward IEC 61508 certification of the Zephyr kernel, and the Safety Committee continues work toward SIL 3/SC 3 under the IEC 61508 Route 3S pathway, with a Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) scope.
The combination of transparent governance and a maturing safety program makes Zephyr a compelling safety-critical embedded system.
Ongoing efforts for Zephyr in automotive include movement toward achieving compliance with the ISO 26262 standard for functional safety.
13:45-14:15 – Industrializing Zephyr for Safety-Critical Products: A Four-Pillar CI Playbook – Prof. Dr. Roberto Bagnara | BUGSENG / University of Parma
We provide a pragmatic starting point for teams taking Zephyr-based application software from proof-of-concept to safety-readiness. We show how to operationalize four pillars – (I) requirements &
traceability, (II) software architectural constraints (SACs), (III) coding-guideline enforcement, and (IV) testing — directly in CI so that every change produces auditable evidence.
Pillar I (specify & link): manage functional and non-functional software requirements in a versioned catalog; annotate code and tests with stable IDs; generate a traceability matrix on every build and fail fast on broken links.
Pillar II (design & constrain): encode SACs as verifiable rules — layering/no-bypass, HAL-only MMIO, header visibility, single-writer ownership — and check the whole tree in CI; freeze Kconfig/Devicetree per variant and track changes.
Pillar III (implement safely): enforce a MISRA-based policy with static analysis and coding style; baseline once, gate “no new violations,” and record deviations as per MISRA Compliance:2020. Treat the Zephyr kernel as adopted code; treat application/wrappers/local drivers as native code.
Pillar IV (verify continuously): run requirements-based unit/integration tests with Ztest/Twister on native_sim and boards; emit machine-readable reports (JSON/XUnit) and gate on coverage
thresholds.
An accompanying GitHub repository contains pipeline templates, gating criteria, and checklists teams can adapt to their boards and SIL/ASIL targets within days.
15:00-15:30 – Zephyr Squared: Zephyr and Linux ‚Side by Side‘ on the Same Device – Hugh Breslin, Microchip Technology
Have you ever run Zephyr and Linux® side by side on the same device, in the same CPU cluster? Have you ever been developing for Linux and thought, “this would be way easier in Zephyr?”
This presentation will guide you through the power and potential of an RTOS and OS combination and look down the road to the many ways this could be implemented.
We’ll see how you can run Linux and Zephyr side by side in an Asymmetric Multiprocessing mode (AMP) and then finally see how we can have 32x 32-bit cores running Zephyr while being managed by Linux.
15:30-16:00 – The RTOS Puzzle: How Far Can We Go in Vulnerability Management? A Zephyr Case Study – Joël Guittet | The Embedded Kit by Witekio
RTOS-based systems are often assumed to have a reduced attack surface. With a smaller software stack compared to Linux, for example, they are thought to present fewer vulnerabilities.
But how true is that assumption?
This session explores the possibilities and limitations of vulnerability management in RTOS environments, with a specific focus on the Zephyr Project.
We’ll examine the challenges of generating Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), which are not always straightforward, and the difficulty in identifying derivative software package versions.
We’ll also highlight the solutions available within the ecosystem to address these issues.
Using Zephyr as a case study, we’ll demonstrate practical approaches to improving transparency and control in RTOS-based systems.
16:00-16:30 – How Zephyr Delivers Low Power – Dr. Ayoub Bourjilat, AC6
Achieving low power across heterogeneous IoT hardware requires an operating system that aligns system policy, drivers, and configuration. Zephyr provides this alignment. At system level, the idle path estimates time to the next activity, applies latency and residency constraints, arms a low-power timer, and enters the deepest feasible sleep, with entry and exit notifications to preserve state and route wake interrupts correctly. At device level, standardized runtime power states let peripherals suspend when idle and resume on demand; wake-capable interrupts, interrupt- or DMA-driven I/O, and dependency-aware sequencing of clocks and regulators minimize active time without reducing determinism. Configuration is centralized in the device tree, which declares wake sources, retained memory, and gateable clock and power domains, yielding consistent behavior across devices. Runtime power statistics illustrate the efficiency of Zephyr’s low-power modes when these mechanisms are applied. The result is predictable deep sleep, on-time wake, and portable configurations.
Learn more about the conference here in PDF format or check the program here.
Exhibitor Forum: Sessions
- Developing Bluetooth LE products with our Zephyr RTOS-based SDK – Sebastián Viviani, Nordic Semiconductor – Learn more.
- Secure OTA Updates for Zephyr: Practical Lessons from Real-World Deployments – Edmund Watson, Northern.tech AS (as Mender.io) – Learn more.
We look forward to another inspiring and community-driven edition in Nuremberg.
Learn more about the Zephyr Project at the embedded world Exhibition & Conference here, and join our 2026-embedded-world channel in the Zephyr Discord server to connect with the community and stay up to date.