#FreeWebSearchDay 2026: A day dedicated to freedom of information and democracy is taking place for the fourth time!

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For the past four years, #FreeWebSearchDay (FWSD) has been held annually on and around September 29, featuring various activities and events centered on free and transparent internet access. Together, participants work on ideas for an open and fair digital future and raise awareness of how important this is for preserving our democracy.

FWSD thus offers a global platform for various events related to these topics.

This year’s program highlights include:

  • As part of the monthly Open Web Search Community Meet-up, a presentation on “Acceptance Requirements of Search Engine Users” will be held on September 14, during which the results of a Europe-wide survey will be discussed and analyzed in an online meeting.
  • From September 22 to 25, the German Informatics Society (GI) invites you to this year’s Informatics Festival 2026 at TU Dresden. Under the motto “Digital Sovereignty – Now or Never!”, a symposium will take place on September 22 as part of the festival to discuss solutions for a sovereign digital future, including a keynote address on the topic “Europe Disconnected from the Web? Open Web Data as the Foundation of Digital Sovereignty.”
  • On October 3, as part of this year’s Open House at the Garching Research Campus, a lecture titled “Can You Still Think That’s Okay?! How Search Engines and AI Shape Our View of the World” will take place at the Leibniz Computing Center Garching.
  • From October 7 to 9, the 8th International Open Search Symposium #ossym26 will be held at the Code University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Under the theme “Boosting Digital Sovereignty”, various conference formats will explore how an open web data ecosystem can contribute to digital diversity.
  • As part of an evening event for #ossym26, a side event on the topic “Sovereignty on the Web – How a European Web Data Infrastructure Strengthens Freedom, the Economy, and Democracy” will take place on October 8 at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin.

For more information on other events and ongoing updates about #FreeWebSearchDay, visit: https://freewebsearch.org/en/events/

Get involved!

Whether you’re a data center, search engine, school, company, or even an individual… #FreeWebSearchDay thrives not only on its planned program but above all on individual initiative. If you have ideas and would like to get actively involved, simply send an email to .

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German panel discussion in partnership with the Weizenbaum Institute: register now!

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“Sovereignty on the Web – How a European web data infrastructure strengthens freedom, the economy and democracy”

As part of #ossym 2026, we are delighted to invite you, in partnership with the Weizenbaum Institute, to an evening event featuring a panel discussion in Berlin. Please note that the event will be held entirely in German.

  • What: Panel discussion followed by networking (including snacks)
  • When: 8 October 2026, 7.00 pm
  • Where: Weizenbaum Institute, Hardenbergstrasse 23, 10623 Berlin

    Weizenbaum event englisch

The development of competitive European services in the field of artificial intelligence – particularly in innovative approaches such as agent-based AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) – requires access to valid, large-scale web data. At present, the value generated from this publicly accessible data on the internet is almost exclusively controlled by a handful of non-European monopolists. This lack of transparency poses massive risks for Europe: distorted information, one-sidedly trained AI models and products that do not reflect European values and legislation jeopardise our digital sovereignty and democratic discourse.

Political initiatives such as the Digital Commons EDIC are important milestones, but they fall short without an open and comprehensive web data infrastructure of our own. Europe urgently needs an independent web search and web data infrastructure as the foundation for innovation and freedom.

Key questions in the discussion:
  • How can we ensure free and unbiased access to global information for European businesses and the academic community?
  • What framework conditions must policymakers put in place to provide an open, values-based alternative to the monopolies held by providers from third countries?
  • How does an independent data infrastructure strengthen the resilience of our democracy and economy in the age of AI?
Panelists confirmed so far:
  • Stefan Mesken (Chief Scientist, DeepL)
  • Esther Görnemann (Research Synthesis Officer, Weizenbaum Institute)
  • Stefan Voigt (Chair of the Open Search Foundation; researcher at DLR)

Moderator: Olivier Blanchard (Economy Working Group at the Open Search Foundation, management consultant)

Registration

Registration for free on-site attendance is now open. Please register here.
Further information on the evening event can be found here. Subject to change.

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Registration for #ossym2026 is now open

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The 8th International Open Search Symposium (#ossym) brings together experts and practitioners from across computer science, law and regulation, ethics, economics, and civil society.

#ossym2026 will take place as a hybrid event in Berlin from 7–9 October 2026, hosted at CODE University of Applied Sciences and supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This year’s conference theme is “Boosting Digital Sovereignty.”
Join us for inspiring talks, thoughtful discussions, and the latest research on open and distributed web search, open web data infrastructure, and their role in AI.

Program focus: open web search + AI in the context of sovereignty

We are especially interested in how an open web data infrastructure can counter the current concentration of web services, value loss, and regulatory pressure. Key questions include:

  • How can open web search and web data infrastructure strengthen digital diversity?
  • Which technical and economic concepts improve acceptance and resilience?
  • Which ethical and legal questions must be addressed to make this approach work?

Keynotes

Confirmed* keynote speakers include:

  • Stéphane Beemelmans (DLR)
  • Peter Gehle (DLR)
  • Julian Kunkel (GWDG / University of Göttingen)
  • Aline Blankertz (Structural Integrity)
  • Stefan Mesken (DeepL)
  • Hannes Taubenböck (DLR)

Tracks and sessions

#ossym2026 features a hybrid format with scientific talks, poster sessions, panels, demonstrations, and informal discussion spaces. The conference includes science tracks on:

  • Crawling
  • Retrieval
  • Spatial modeling
  • AI in Science
  • Web data driven applications

And sessions around:

  • Ethics + Society
  • Legal aspects of open web search & AI training
  • User behavior and preferences in search and AI

Workshops and community formats

Workshops and community activities include (among others):

  • Evaluating design patterns for legally compliant Open Web Index and Search Engine systems
  • Disinformation tools
  • Open Web Data Working Group of EuroHPC
  • Student project session / index access tutorial
  • Additional workshop opportunities (details may be updated on the website)

Side Event at Weizenbaum Institute

This year, a special  panel discussion (in German) & networking dinner will take place at Weizenbaum Institut.
„Souveränität im Netz – Wie eine europäische Webdateninfrastruktur Freiheit, Wirtschaft und Demokratie stärkt“

Find more here.

Registration

Registration for onsite and online participation is open and free of charge. Please register here.
Better be fast, as availability may be limited for on-site seats!
The conference programm* is available here.

 

*The conference programm and keynote speaker announcements are published under reservation of the right to make alterations

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“Wo bleibt das europäische Google oder Facebook?” | arte.tv

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Our OpenWebSearch.EU project was recently featured in a German arte.tv report about European alternatives to overseas BigTech web services.

The video highlights our commitment to strengthening European digital sovereignty in the world wide web.
The report provides insights from Prof. Dr. Ir. Djoerd Hiemstra, Professor of Federated Search and Head of the Information Retrieval research group at Radboud University, one of the OpenWebSearch.EU consortium partners. Djoerd introduced the Open Web Index in its current state and the role it could play in creating powerful European search solutions.
Skip to minute 4:16 to hear Djoerd‘s insights:

Alternatively, watch the video directly on Arte.tv: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/121620-127-A/wo-bleibt-das-europaeische-google-oder-facebook/

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Fact checking, smart search, and more: Nine partner projects show what the future of open web search could look like

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Just in time for the wrap-up of the 42-month EU project OpenWebSearch.EU, we present exciting use cases based on the Open Web Index, which was developed in the project


As a reminder, the OpenWebSearch.EU project was implemented by 14 partner organizations from the research and non-profit sectors and aimed to create the first European Open Web Index as the centerpiece for sovereign structured access to the internet.

The OWI (Open Web Index) has been up and running since June 2025 and has crawled an impressive 1.3 petabytes of data to this date. In the course of the project, a total of 15 third-party partner projects were integrated through various open calls. The goal: to conduct legal, technical, and commercial analysis and feasibility studies related to the Open Web Index in order to lay a solid foundation for the expansion of a European web data infrastructure.

Seven of the third-party partner projects (projects from Open Call 2) dealt with specific technical application examples based on the OWI. The projects demonstrate the range of possibilities when web index data is openly accessible. We have summarized the promising results briefly:

VERITAS project: Fact-checking the war in Ukraine with a RAG chatbot

The company DEXAI (Czechia) developed a so-called retrieval-augmented generation chatbot and a Chrome browser extension for real-time fact-checking. Statements about the war in Ukraine were examined as test examples. The system filtered 30 days of OWI crawl data, extracted news content, indexed it using embeddings, and used an established LLM to generate source-supported, evidence-based responses to user queries. Users can highlight any text on a web page and receive an instant evaluation based on verified news sources. The project shows that open web data enables domain-specific fact checking tools that would otherwise rely on proprietary search APIs.
The full VERITAS story can be read here: https://openwebsearch.eu/results-veritas/

 

AKASE: The world’s arguments as a knowledge graph

The University of Groningen (Netherlands) constructed an argumentation knowledge graph based on over 105 million web index documents. The system automatically identifies argumentative content – claims and premises on websites, recognizes rhetorical fallacies, evaluates argumentation logics, and documents support, attack, and paraphrasing relationships between arguments. The applications include a search engine that reorders results according to argument quality and ArgsBase, a multi-agent deliberation platform that won the JTS Early Career Researcher Prize.
The full AKASE story is available here: https://openwebsearch.eu/akase-results/

 

CIFFIL Service: Sharing search statistics between Dutch municipalities

Spinque (Netherlands) integrated the Common Index File Format (CIFF) into its search platform to enable Dutch municipalities to easily exchange index statistics. Small municipal document collections – some with fewer than 10,000 documents – often suffer from poor search quality because the data sets are simply too small to provide accurate term frequency estimates (statistics on the frequency and relevance of certain terms within data collections). As a result, search result rankings cannot be designed effectively. By adopting statistics from larger municipalities via CIFF, smaller municipalities can significantly improve their ranking effectiveness.
Read the full CIFFIL story: https://openwebsearch.eu/ciffil-results/

 

DTCommerce: Supporting retailers in their transition to digital

ZenLab (Slovenia) developed open-source tools to facilitate the transition to e-commerce for brick-and-mortar retailers. Based on an Excel export from the company’s ERP or accounting tool, the system searches for information on the products listed therein. To do so it uses titles, descriptions, images, and MSRPs from supplier websites, optimizes existing descriptions using AI, and finally imports everything automatically into a WooCommerce online store via a WordPress plugin.
You can read the full DTCommerce story here: https://openwebsearch.eu/ditcommerce-results/

 

OMMS: Open Maps as an alternative to established Maps Apps

The E Foundation (France) used OpenWebSearch.EU’s crawling tools to harvest structured business data – opening hours, contact information, FAQ – from websites linked to OpenStreetMap Points of Interest (POI). This data is made available via an open-source POI server for mobile map applications. Starting in the Seattle metropolitan area and then expanding globally, the project team found that about 12% of POI-linked websites contain analyzable structured data. In addition, the project identified two promising future directions for OpenWebSearch.EU: the publication of POI relevance rankings (based on PageRank or similar metrics) to improve result sorting in open data geocoders, and the use of backlink data as an open alternative to proprietary rating databases.
The full OMMS story can be read here: https://openwebsearch.eu/results-omms/

 

FUN: Rethinking web crawling

The University of Pisa and the University of Glasgow (Italy/UK) proposed a paradigm shift in web crawling. Traditional crawlers use link-based heuristics such as PageRank to decide which pages to consider. FUN argues that in the age of AI, crawlers should instead use language models to assess the semantic quality of pages. The team developed four neural crawling strategies and tested them on 87 million pages from ClueWeb22-B. For natural language queries, the best strategy consistently outperformed PageRank in both crawling effectiveness and downstream retrieval quality, while remaining competitive for keyword queries.
The full FUN story is available here: https://openwebsearch.eu/fun-results/

 

TILDE: Trustworthy health search with fairness-conscious ranking

Know Center Research GmbH (Austria) built a health-related search system on the OWI that addresses potential biases and varying degrees of trustworthiness beyond pure search result relevance. The system extracted medical content from around 200,000 health-related websites, standardized it against the clinical UMLS ontology, and implemented a hybrid retrieval engine combining entity-based and semantic search. Its unique feature is a three-stage fairness pipeline: it enriches each search result with trustworthiness and neutrality attributes, sorts results to maximize fairness while maintaining credibility and diversity of viewpoints, and checks its own system outputs for stereotypes. The visual web interface allows users to explore medical evidence via visual knowledge graphs and faceted search.
The full TILDE story can be read here: https://openwebsearch.eu/tilde-results/

 

What happens next?

An Open Web Index enables applications that proprietary search cannot offer.
The research contributions have a direct impact on how the infrastructure itself should evolve.
With the completion of all open calls, the OpenWebSearch.EU project has built a community that extends far beyond the core consortium. The code, data, models, and tools from these projects are predominantly open source and freely available. The infrastructure contributions will continue beyond the formal end of the project.

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Merkur: ‘Starnberg Initiative launches charter: Internet search as critical infrastructure’

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Read more
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“Google is not democratic. It lives off the data of its users” | Interview for HomoDigital

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“Imagine, our streets would have no names and our houses no readable house numbers. Just a cryptic code readable only by machines.”

Dr. Stefan Voigt, Chairman of the OSF Board, explains the mission of the Open Search Foundation and the goal of the Open Web Index project in an interview for the Polish web blog HomoDigital.

He goes into more detail about the challenges and the great importance of the project in current political, social and technological context.

“So one of the main challenges is to inspire people and computing providers to cooperate on this large but socially extremely relevant task and to jointly make public information publicly accessible and usable again.”

Dr. Stefan Voigt is optimistic about a possible paradigm shift away from the current market concentration of large tech companies on the Internet.

The full interview is available on HomoDigital (in Polish) here.

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Registration for the 7th Open Search Symposium #ossym25 is now open

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The annual International Open Search Symposium #ossym will take place for the seventh time in a row in 2025. From 8 to 10 October, #ossym25 invites the open search community to travel to Helskinki/Finland to participate in the 3-day long interdisciplinary forum at this year’s event partner CSC – IT Center for Science or online.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on classic web search and AI

As every year, the #ossym brings together experts from a wide array of fields such as computer science, law & regulation, ethics, business, politics and society. The seventh International Open Search Symposium provides a forum for innovating ideas regarding open and distributed web search as well as its use cases. The focus will be on artificial intelligence (AI), search applications and technologies, legal and ethical aspects of open web search as well as topics relating to information exploitation/media literacy.

Keynotes on data governance and knowledge management

Viivi Lähteenoja is Chief Executuve Officer at MyData Company and gives impulses on the topic of data governance.

Harri Ketamo is founder and CEO of Headai and will speak on “The openness of knowledge data and its role in Future Search Solutions”.

Scientific sessions on the topic of “Architecture & Infrastructure”

Two science tracks on the topic of “Architecture & Infrastructure” will deal with the extraction of structured data from the Open Web Index, data storage structures for the URL Frontier in OpenWebSearch.eu, and the extraction of geodata from semi-structured data with the help of LLMs. Additionally, Common Crawl offers insights into the coverage of diverse European language and cultural content.

Application tracks on “Retrieval Augmented Generation & Large Language Models”

Decentralized approaches for accessing information via browser-agentic web as well as the fusion of retrieval, grammar and decision trees for text generation will be presented and discussed.

Search Engine Tracks remain an integral part of the #ossym conferences

A popular #ossym tradition are the Search Engine Tracks, which focus on alternative search engines and their areas of application. Already confirmed this year are fragFinn.de and searchmysite.net.

Ethics, law and society

Non-technical topics such as societal interests and special needs search solutions will round up the program and will provide exciting food for thought.

Information and Registration

The Finnish Supercomputing Center CSC – IT Center for Science offers around 100 on-site seats.

All information on registration and tickets can be found at:
https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym25/

The Open Search Foundation e. V. is a European movement that creates the basis for independent, free and self-determined access to information on the Internet. In cooperation with research institutions, data centers and other partners, we are committed to a web search that benefits everyone.
 True to the motto: “Together for a better net”.

Contact :
Open Search Foundation e.V. – OSF

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After 2,5 years in the making: The Open Web Index OWI goes public in June

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With the vision to revolutionize web search on a European scale, the Open Search Foundation was one of the driving forces that kicked off the Open Web Search initiative in 2018.
Under this very initiative the eponymous OpenWebSearch.eu project was implemented in 2022 with 13 additional organizations from research and economy, all in all uniting forces across 7 European countries.

Now, only 2,5 years later, in 2025, the consortium proudly presents its common European federated Open Web Index pilot by the name of: OWI.
This achievement not only marks an important first cornerstone in European digital sovereignty, but it also comes at a critical time amidst urgent calls for action in the face of rapidly progressing  global AI developments.

Innovators & early adopters wanted

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

This is an active call for early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“
says OpenWebSearch.eu’s Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and she elaborates further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

Kick-off Event happens on 6 June

On 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST you can join the official kick-off event via Zoom.
Registration to the event is open under the following link:
https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration


 

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