TACON is an annual conference on test automation that brings together practitioners from mid-sized and large companies. Around 130 participants meet in Leipzig for two days. Experience reports from companies that use test automation form the core of the program, alongside networking and an evening event. TACON 2026 took place on September 16 and 17.
Key Takeaways
- TACON is a conference dedicated entirely to test automation, deliberately kept to around 130 participants so that personal conversations and real networking remain possible.
- Every talk comes straight from a company that uses test automation. The reports show the setbacks as well as the successes, because that is what others learn the most from.
- Participants consider the evening program the most important part of the event, because conversations there get more candid than in any talk.
- Alongside TACON there is a Community Day for quality assurance leads from larger companies. It takes place in Leipzig every six months and works directly on the participants’ own problems.
- TACON 2026 took place in Leipzig on September 16 and 17.
TACON: A Conference Focused Entirely on Test Automation
Held every year in Leipzig, TACON keeps a narrow focus, and that is on purpose. TACON 2026 took place on September 16 and 17. The conference is about test automation at its core, not about the full breadth of quality assurance.
Neighboring topics come up, but only on the side: test management, test data, agile ways of working, test processes. Automation stays at the center.
The result is two intensive days on a single subject. If you automate tests in your daily work, you won’t find a scattering of other disciplines here. You’ll find depth in your own.
Andre Köhler, one of the conference’s organizers, sees the discipline itself as here to stay: “I do believe that test automation is a discipline we will have for good.”
Why a Small Conference Leads to More Exchange
With around 130 participants, TACON stays deliberately small. That size is big enough for variety and small enough to stay personal.
Nobody manages to talk to everyone in two days. At the same time, the group is small enough that it never feels like an anonymous trade fair. Participants describe the atmosphere as more like a big family.
That helps professional exchange. Conversations start quickly because the setting is close and personal. If you want to build a network of experts, you can collect a lot of relevant contacts here in a short time.
The practical benefit lasts beyond the two days. After the conference your address book is full, and when a specific question comes up in your own project, you can simply pick up the phone and get a fresh idea.
Why TACON Talks Are Experience Reports, Not Glossy Presentations
The talks at TACON come directly from companies. The organizers go to IT departments and test automation teams, ask people what they are working on right now and whether they would like to present it.
The assumption behind this is clear: you learn the most from people who are actually doing the work. Theory at a high level of abstraction helps less in everyday work than a case you can follow step by step.
What matters is honesty. Nobody gets on stage and claims everything works perfectly for them. Speakers show what they achieved over the past year, but also what didn’t work and where they stumbled.
Those stumbling blocks are the valuable part. Teams that aren’t that far yet can steer around a known mistake and learn from others’ experience instead of repeating it themselves.
Who Attends TACON
TACON is for people who are responsible for test automation in their company or who do the hands-on work. That includes members of dedicated test automation teams as well as test automation engineers in agile teams.
What connects them is one question: how can we get better at test automation in our own organization? The audience is practitioners, not observers.
Participants typically come from mid-sized to large organizations. Insurers, banks, car manufacturers, government agencies and the public sector are all strongly represented.
The Most Valuable Part Happens in the Evening
Unofficially, the evening program counts as the most important part of the event. During the day you pick up expert knowledge from the talks, but the real action happens around them.
Breaks lead to one-on-one conversations where people share things they would never say in a talk. That is where the discussion goes a level deeper.
At the evening event it shifts once more. Over a glass of wine, conversations get more candid, and with the right people this is where you take away the most.
The gaming area is new and competes, in a friendly way, with the talks. Tetris, Pac-Man and a Jenga tower of large wooden blocks lighten the mood, though they leave the organizers with the job of steering people back into the talks on time.
Why AI Is the Current Focus at TACON
Artificial intelligence currently dominates the discussion in test automation. The community is in a phase of trying things out, collecting first experiences and finding out what works and what doesn’t.
That phase will move on. A year from now, talks are likely to be about concrete cases with measurable results rather than first experiments.
Hype topics come and go regularly in this discipline. The current one will be followed by the next and the one after that, and that constant change is exactly what keeps the conference format alive.
An Event Thrives on Input from Its Community
Feedback and ideas are explicitly welcome. Right after each talk, participants put up dots so the organizers can see how it landed.
Wishes for content count as well. If you’d like talks or a workshop on a particular topic at the next edition, you can say so, and the organizers try to put those topics on the agenda.
Between the in-person events there are online meetups. A talk that had to be canceled, for example, is made up in an online session, so the exchange isn’t limited to the two conference days.
How TACON Fits into a Larger Series of Conferences
TACON is part of a series of conferences along the software lifecycle. There are also events on requirements management, security, governance, software architecture and enterprise architecture management.
For testing, there is an additional, smaller format: the Community Day. About 30 quality assurance leads from larger companies meet there, also for two days in Leipzig, roughly every six months.
This format is deliberately closed. Nothing is recorded, the door stays shut, and people can talk openly. Anyone who brings a concrete problem from their own department can work on it together with the others.
The difference from TACON lies in the emphasis. TACON provides input through talks, while the Community Day is an intensive session on quality management where discussion comes before any talks.
