The XML community is still active. Recent conference programs show people building publishing systems, validation tools, query engines, and scholarly text collections. You can connect through public proceedings, the XML.com Slack, specialist project channels, and open language-development discussions.
Community snapshot: October 3, 2026. XML Prague met in June 2026; Markup UK’s latest published proceedings cover June 2025; Balisage’s final conference took place online in August 2026. Those events offer different ways into the same overlapping community. The overviews below draw on organizers’ programs and proceedings.
Recent conferences: what people are working on
XML Prague 2026 — June 4–6, Prague
XML Prague 2026 combined an opening community day with two main program days. Its Friday program covered Invisible XML, Schematron developments, XPath 4.0 map implementation, journal-production quality checks, and a test-suite runner. This is useful territory for developers who want to connect language features with working tools.
The Saturday program added XQuery and Invisible XML tutorials, accessible digital publishing, XProc regression testing, Word-to-XML publishing, and XML differencing. Several sessions explored AI integration into existing XML workflows. For readers evaluating a technique, start with the problem and the validation method described in the presentation, then examine the accompanying implementation.
Start here: the conference home page links its stream and a proceedings PDF labeled as a draft. Choose a session close to your task, follow its author or project links, and record the software version used in the demonstration.
Markup UK 2025 — June 5–7, London
Markup UK’s 2025 event was at King’s College London, with online attendance offered for the two main conference days. Its published proceedings include modular Invisible XML, testing iXML with XSpec, processing JSON with template rules, schema testing, XProc, print CSS, and multilingual JATS documents.
Start here: read the testing papers if you maintain a transformation pipeline; explore the JATS and print work if your concern is publication. Markup UK and XML Prague announced an alternating-year arrangement beginning in 2022. Check the organizers’ current announcements for the next event’s confirmed dates and format; older registration notices remain on their sites.
Balisage 2026 — August 3–7, online; the final event
The organizers explicitly identify Balisage 2026 as the last Balisage conference. Its post-conference proceedings, volume 31, remain a starting point for research and practice. Topics include complex validation in XProc, Schematron fixes, TEI processing, maintaining SGML libraries, and music notation.
The 2026 program also describes publishing case studies: validation-driven ingest at NCBI Bookshelf, interactive XQuery across a scholarly journal archive, and the long evolution of the Women Writers Project. These make the archive especially useful when your question concerns document lifecycles and institutional collections.
Start here: follow a relevant paper into its references and implementation details. Treat Balisage as a completed conference series with a valuable technical record. Its closure changes the meeting calendar; the work and participants continue through other channels.
A community organizing its next chapter
A September 22, 2026 announcement from organizers on XML.com described an initiative arising at Balisage to establish an international XML organization, with a public planning meeting scheduled for September 25. The public IOXML-L archive includes a September 26 message arranging the first workgroup meeting.
This is an organizing effort to follow as it develops. Read the recent list discussions for its current decisions, participation arrangements, and meeting notices. The early planning record establishes active organizing; governance and future events should be checked against subsequent announcements.
Alongside that effort, QT4CG publishes language specifications, meeting agendas, minutes, and links to public issues. Its mail archive contains discussion throughout 2026. Together with the conference programs, these are concrete signs of ongoing XML work, without requiring a guess about the size of the community.
Choose a place to connect by your purpose
| You want to… | Go here | First step |
|---|---|---|
| Meet other XML users | XML Prague’s XML.com Slack invitation | Use the invitation on the organizer’s page; the page points to the #xmlprague channel. Browse channel descriptions and introduce your area of work. |
| Follow news and projects | XML.com | Read recent articles and dated announcements, then follow the original project or event source for current details. |
| Discuss XPath, XQuery, or XSLT development | QT4CG’s public issues, minutes, and mailing list | Search for the feature or problem first. For formal participation, read the Community Group joining information. |
| Help with broader community organizing | IOXML-L public archives | Read recent threads and use the archive’s Subscribe or Unsubscribe link if you want to participate. |
For a bug or usage question in a particular processor, begin with that project’s documented support channel or issue tracker. Include its exact version. A language-design group can discuss specification behavior; a maintainer can investigate how a specific implementation handles your example.
Public conference materials are accessible starting points before joining any discussion space. Slack requires an account and invitation; W3C’s Community Group page explains its account and participation terms. Read access and formal participation have different requirements.
Make a useful first contribution
You can enter the conversation with a small, well-explained problem. Reduce it until someone else can reproduce the result without your production system.
- State the task. For example, selecting book titles from a namespaced XML document.
- Identify the environment. Give the processor and version, language version, and relevant configuration.
- Supply minimal input and code. Preserve the namespace declarations and the part that causes the problem; use invented data where the originals are private.
- Show expected and actual output. Copy the exact error message when there is one.
- Close the loop. Test suggestions and post the final explanation or corrected example so the discussion helps the next reader.
If the vocabulary is unfamiliar, start with the XML FAQ and the practical learning guide. For a desk reference and its edition limits, read XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition. Browse all XML guides for parsing, publishing, data, and messaging topics.