Rustikon 2026: Two Days, More Energy, and a Stronger Community

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 11:54:00 +0000
Conference, Rust, Rustikon

Rustikon 2025 got us off to a great start, but Rustikon 2026 raised the bar even higher. Last year, everyone agreed: "One day is not enough." We listened and transformed the experience into a full two-day event.

Looking back at the packed schedule and the electric atmosphere at the Polin Conference Centre in Warsaw (March 19-20), it’s clear this was the right move for our growing community.

Let’s get this party started

Day 1 kicked off with Andre Bogus (pictured below) and his session, "An Option? Have a slice!". Andre shared the fascinating journey of adding as_slice methods to libcore, proving that contributing to the compiler is accessible even without deep internal knowledge.

The momentum continued with Wojciech Kargul, who addressed the growing pains of private crates by demonstrating how CrabHub brings consistency to versioning and workflows.

Shortly after, Ciara R (pictured below). delved into the sometimes murky world of Procedural Macros 101, showcasing essential tools like cargo expand that turn "black magic" into manageable building blocks. To close the first morning block, Michal Wojtas and Superteam Poland ignited the stage with a high-energy Lightning Talk.

Following a quick coffee break, we shifted our focus to modern development workflows. Krzysztof Grajek wowed the crowd by demonstrating how to supercharge Axum development with Claude Code, emphasizing practical AI-assisted workflows.

We then went deeper into the hardware-software interface with Jon Gjengset (pictured below), who challenged our core assumptions in his deep dive, "Are mutexes slow?". To round out the morning, Bartłomiej Kuras explored the nuances of Existential Types, helping the audience navigate the "to impl or not to impl" dilemma in modern Rust.

The afternoon sessions maintained an exceptionally high technical standard. Aliaksandr Zaitsau shared his extensive experience contributing Link-Time Optimization (LTO) changes to major open-source projects, while Marek Grzelak and Mateusz Maćkowski provided a vital reality check on the RIIR (Rewrite It In Rust) movement, testing popular rewrites against their battle-tested predecessors.

Education remained a core theme as Paweł Szulc brought us back to fundamentals, recreating Karpathy's micrograd ideas entirely in Rust. After an inspiring Lightning Talk by Exein, Jesús Pérez (pictured below) shared his journey into Infrastructure Automation, explaining why Rust provides the safety infrastructure engineers need to finally "sleep at night."

The day’s stage sessions concluded with Kostiantyn Mysnyk exploring AI Agents in an Iron Cage, showing how Rust’s type system enforces safety guardrails, and an online session from Orhun Parmaksız, who introduced the crowd to the art of "Ratatuifying" the Rust package manager, Cargo.

Networking opportunities & afterparty

Between sessions, the networking area, supported by our main sponsors Helsing, Exein, and partner Superteam Poland, was the true heart of the event. After a full day of brain-melting code, the community moved to the Arco Club for the official afterparty.

Whether debating async runtimes over pizza or competing on the bowling lanes, these moments formed the "social glue" that makes Rustikon a developer favorite. Seeing world-class engineers celebrate their strikes (and gutter balls) together is exactly...