foundingGIDE Community Event 2026

foundingGIDE has evolved into a landmark global community effort dedicated to standardising biological and preclinical imaging data. Following highly successful international exchanges in Okazaki, Japan (2024) and Brisbane, Australia (2025), the project will culminate in its final community event from 4–8 May 2026 in Heidelberg, Germany

This capstone event marks a key milestone in building a Global Image Data Ecosystem (GIDE). Over the course of the project, our community has worked collaboratively to advance interoperability by delivering harmonised metadata models across major image data repositories (BioImage Archive, IDR, SSBD:database) and recommending a core set of ontologies for biological and preclinical imaging.

We invite researchers, infrastructure providers, technology developers, funders, policy makers and industry representatives to join us in Heidelberg as we reflect on the project’s outcomes and, crucially, look ahead to what comes next. The foundingGIDE Community Event 2026 offers a unique opportunity to engage directly with the standards, tools, and recommendations developed through the project, to exchange perspectives across disciplines and regions, and to help shape the future direction of a truly global, interoperable imaging data ecosystem.