We're grateful to think-cell for once again sponsoring our event. They have previously sponsored every edition of C++ on Sea since the start and we're glad to welcome them back, in our new format!

Who are think-cell, and why are they so interested in our community? Let's hear from them.

think-cell has established its product as the world’s leading software for creating data-driven business presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint. Since our founding in 2002, we have helped more than 1.3 million users at over 35,000 companies build their presentations faster and more efficiently. Our mission is to streamline every aspect of presentation creation, providing the tools users need to quickly and accurately create any slide, from agendas and process flows to complex data-driven charts.

Key elements of ensuring productivity are our intuitive user interface, our unique layout algorithm, and our software’s seamless integration with Microsoft Office. We work on challenging visualization problems, we reverse-engineer Microsoft’s code, and we reinvent how slides are created. As think-cell is the only German company funding the C++ ISO committee delegation, the components we invent here have a good chance of being incorporated into the standard. Learn more about how we use C++ in our talks and publications.

As always, we received many times more submissions than we could accommodate, and we're deeply grateful to our reviewers for helping us navigate it. In fact, this year has seen a record number of submissions - even when accounting for the merging of two conferences! So, if your talk wasn't selected this year: thank you for submitting, and please don't be discouraged.

The Main Conference

The main conference runs from Wednesday 17th to Saturday 20th June. Yes, Saturday — a first for this venue! Four days, five tracks, and a lineup that spans the full breadth of what ACCU on Sea is about: deep C++ content, broader software craft, and the kind of talks that make you rethink something you thought you understood.

You'll see sessions on C++23 and C++26, reflection, contracts and safety, async patterns, memory layout, performance, programming languages, design patterns, code quality, and plenty more besides.

We previously announced our keynote speakers. Unfortunately, since then, we've had to make a change. Hopefully Sophia Turner will be able to join us next year, but for this year we'll announce a new fourth keynote, shortly.

Still with us are: Andrei Alexandrescu, Yvonne Rogers, and Walter Brown.

Workshops

Pre-conference workshops run on Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th June, and we have a strong lineup this year from some of the community's most respected instructors.

Running across both days:

• C++ Best Practices — Jason Turner
• C++ Templates for Developers — Walter E. Brown
• Speaker Training Workshop — Sherry Sontag

Monday only:

• C++ Software Design — Klaus Iglberger
• Unsafe Rust Demystified — Florian Gilcher

Tuesday only:

• C++23 in Practice: A Complete Introduction — Nicolai Josuttis
• Secure Coding in C and C++ — Robert C. Seacord

Full details on each workshop are on the workshops page. Workshop tickets are available separately — see the tickets page to book.

Evening events

This year we have the most packed evening schedule of either original event! We have something going on every evening from Tuesday (before the main conference) to Friday, inclusive. Let's take a tour...

🍸 Pre-registration evening

To enjoy the full conference, it's best to arrive the evening before the first day (unless you're in one of our workshops, in which case you'll already be there). So our registration desk will be open on Tuesday evening for you to collect your badge and goodies bag. But we'll also have the bar open, so why not stick around for some socialising, too?

⚡ Lightning Talks

Lightning talks return on all three evenings of the main conference (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday). Each talk is up to five minutes — fast-paced, diverse, and a lot of fun. Submission details will be shared closer to the event. Anyone can propose one!

🍸 Mosaic FM Welcome reception

Another tradition we're bringing over from the ACCU conference is the welcome reception, which will be held after the lightning talks on Wednesday evening. This is sponsored by Mosaic Financial Markets, who will be covering food and a drink.

🍿 Movie Night (+ think-cell pizza)

Walter Brown will, again, host his Movie Night, on Thursday evening. This was very popular at C++ on Sea in 2024, so we're excited to see it again. This runs from 19:00 to past 21:00. So think-cell will be covering pizza for everyone, and the bar will be open.

🍽️ Conference Dinner

On Friday evening we'll be hosting the ACCU on Sea Conference Dinner, a gala dinner in the Channel Suite overlooking the sea. Speakers are our guests of honour. A separate ticket is required — head to the tickets page to book yours.

👕 Hoodies!

This year, for the first time, we're offering ACCU on Sea hoodies as an add-on with your ticket (And yes, they're the kind of hoodie you'll actually want to wear.) Of course we're still offering t-shirts, too.

Get Your Tickets

If you haven't already grabbed a ticket, now is the time, and if you're not already an ACCU member it's worth noting that a digital membership is just £50 — and the discount it unlocks on your conference ticket more than covers the cost.

We can't wait to see you in Folkestone in June. 🌊

We are delighted to announce our full line-up or keynote speakers to set the tone for our 2026 conference.

Sophia Turner

Sophia has been involved in language design for over 20 years and was instrumental in the creation of TypeScript and the evolution of Rust. More recently she created Nushell and June. She's worked at Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and Cray. So she knows a thing or two about language design, evolution, success and failure.

Andrei Alexandrescu

Andrei shot to fame in the C++ world with his book, Modern C++ Design. the "Modern C++", then, was C++98 - but his ideas were way ahead of their time and set the blueprint for C++ for the next decade and beyond. But he didn't stop there. He has introduced or championed concepts that have made it into C++17, 20, 23 and beyond - even though for much of that time he was working on the D Programming Language. Now fully focused back on C++ we look forward to what he has for us next.

Yvonne Rogers

Yvonne is, or has been, a Professor of Interaction Design, CTO of LetsThink.com, chair of excellence at Bremen University, member of the US National Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the Royal Society, ACM, BCS and the ACM's CHI Academy.

She has won many distinguished awards for her contributions to the fields of maths, science, AI and computer science.

Walter Brown

Walter is an institution! With over 60 years of experience in industry, academia, consulting and research, Walter has seen it all - and has a particular way of sharing his deep experience with us that makes the complex seem simple, while also making you realise you never fully understood what you thought you understood to begin with.

The joint identity, at least, deserves its own website, so here it is, and this is the first post. For historical news the feeds on the individual sites remain, of course (accuconference.org and cpponsea.uk. But most people will never read this post, anyway. It's just here to provide a logical starting point, or to satisfy the particularly curious.

Let the conference news begin!