April 16–17 In person & online The Old Custom House, Porto

Vellichor25

Two days on the software we intend to keep.
Come build the things that outlive us.

Get tickets

A panel discussion on stage — photo by Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent on Pexels

A wall of bound archive volumes — photo by Bo Ponomari on Pexels

A full auditorium before a keynote — photo by BBSO on Pexels

Attendees working through a session together — photo by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels

A speaker presenting to the main hall — photo by Atlantic Ambience on Pexels

The crowd between talks — photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels

Vellichor gathers the people who maintain, document and archive the software everyone else depends on, for two days of workshops on longevity, provenance and the craft of documentation. Come for the archives, stay for the arguing. See you in Porto.

Meet us in Porto or join from anywhere, 16–17 April.

Stream pass

Both days of main-hall talks streamed live, plus the full session archive for six weeks after the event.

Community pass

Our lightest in-person ticket: the main hall, the Reading Room, the Bindery and the Long Table lunches.

General admission

Everything in the Community pass plus all four workshop rooms and the hands-on repair clinics.

Patron pass

Reserved seating for both keynotes, the maintainers' dinner on the 16th, the archive tour, and everything above.

Questions? Read the FAQ

This year’s tracks

Four threads across two days: keeping things running, writing them down, proving where they came from, and building tools patient enough to last.

Keeping software alive

Maintenance as a discipline: funding models that survive a founder leaving, succession plans for critical dependencies, and what to do when the only maintainer is tired.

Documentation as infrastructure

Writing that outlasts the people who wrote it — reference architecture, changelog discipline, and how to keep a decision record readable eleven years later.

Archives & provenance

Preserving artefacts, licences and the record of who changed what: reproducible builds, signing chains, and the practicalities of a twenty-year retention policy.