Last week I attended WordCamp Europe 2026. Like every year, I came home feeling grateful, energized, and proud to be part of this amazing community!
The event was fantastic. The venue was (honestly) great. The organization was impressive. Over 2,000 people traveled from all over the world to spend a few days learning, networking, meeting friends (that would be me!), and celebrating WordPress.
But there is one thing I keep thinking about every time I attend a flagship WordCamp: someone had to make all of this happen. Actually, not someone. Dozens of people.
People who spent months planning, organizing, coordinating, budgeting, negotiating, communicating, solving problems, and dealing with the endless list of tasks required to run an event of this size.
And they did it for free.
The more I think about it, the more I struggle to understand how this can be considered a sustainable model for the long term.
Maybe it’s because I’ve just organized the first edition of Checkout Summit. Maybe it’s because I now have a much better understanding of what happens behind the scenes. Or maybe it’s because I believe that people who create value should be rewarded for it…
Whatever the reason, I’ve reached a conclusion that I know won’t be popular with everyone: it’s time to pay WordCamp organizers and speakers.
I Don’t Understand Why Anyone Does This for Free
A few months ago, I would have probably had a different opinion (even though this was always on my mind, to be honest).
Then I spent months organizing Checkout Summit 2026. We had a single track, a small number of attendees, a handful of sponsors, and a much simpler setup overall. Even then, it became one of the most demanding projects I’ve worked on in years. There are sponsor conversations, venue negotiations, speaker coordination, attendee communication, budgeting, marketing, and a hundred little problems that appear every week.
That’s why I keep thinking about the people behind flagship WordCamps. Those events are on a completely different scale. Some organizers spend close to a year preparing for them.
Dozens of calls and meetings, maybe a couple of trips, thousands of emails and Slack messages, countless spreadsheets… you name it.
I genuinely don’t understand how they do it without any financial reward waiting at the end.
I’m here, questioning the long-term sustainability of the “WordCamp model“.
A Free Ticket Is Not Compensation
Whenever this topic comes up, someone mentions that organizers get a free ticket. I never understood why that is considered a meaningful benefit.
And a WordCamp ticket is usually no more than €50! 🙂
A free ticket doesn’t pay for accommodation. It doesn’t pay for transportation. It doesn’t pay for meals. More importantly, it doesn’t compensate for the months and hundreds of hours spent.
The ticket is useful if you were planning to attend anyway. It doesn’t change the fact that organizers are carrying a huge amount of responsibility for months before the event even starts.
Having organized my own conference, I know how much mental space these events occupy. You don’t stop thinking about them when the weekly meeting ends. They’re constantly in the back of your mind.
Paying People Doesn’t Destroy the Community
Whenever compensation enters the conversation, people worry that it will somehow change the spirit of the community.
Well, I don’t see it that way!
WordPress contributors get sponsored by companies every day. Open source projects receive funding. Community initiatives receive support. Nobody argues that these activities suddenly become less valuable because money is involved.
I also don’t think every volunteer role needs to be paid. Plenty of people are happy to help for a few hours because they enjoy being part of something bigger. What I’m talking about are the people who spend months carrying the event on their shoulders.
If someone dedicates a significant part of their year to making a conference happen, I don’t think a financial reward damages the community. I think it shows respect for their effort.
What Checkout Summit Will Do Differently
For the first edition of Checkout Summit, I worked within the limits of the budget. Also, to be 100% transparent, I… launched a beta version, trying to keep my time and money investment as low as possible because I had no idea if it was a viable product:
I paid myself as the organizer because this is part of my business, and I covered accommodation costs for speakers (a few of them even turned those reimbursements into sponsorships or credit for future editions, which I greatly appreciated).
Still, I would have loved to do more.
The good news is that the event received overwhelmingly positive feedback, including from many people I met at WCEU. That gives me confidence that sponsorship demand will be much stronger next year.
If that happens, one of my priorities will be setting aside a budget for speakers and for organizers who help throughout the preparation process. I believe their contribution deserves to be recognized in a tangible way.
WordCamps Need Sustainable Incentives
WordCamps are some of the best events I’ve ever attended.
The organizers behind them deserve enormous credit. The fact that these events continue to happen year after year is a testament to the dedication of a small group of people who care deeply about the community.
My concern is what happens five or ten years from now.
Burnout is real (been there), life changes (been there), businesses change (oh, been there too!), family priorities change (yep). At some point, asking people to dedicate a year of their lives to an event without compensation becomes harder to sell.
I don’t know exactly what the solution looks like. Maybe it means smaller organizing teams, i.e. fewer people taking on more responsibility and being compensated for it.
What I do know is that appreciation alone doesn’t create a sustainable system.
If we want great WordCamps in the future, we should start thinking seriously about how we reward the people who make them possible.
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Photo credits: Nilo Vélez (flickr)
I love how you are opening this conversation Rodolfo. Especially with your experience organising your own event (which I loved as well).
Compensation for costs would already be a big win for a lot of organisers.
I have been an organiser doe WCEU for 8 years and loved it but paying for my own stay and trip felt a bit off. The rest of the work was not an issue. I was more than willing to invest my time in contributing to a great event. But the financial investment of getting there (preferably a couple of times, once for the event and some venue visits) was a big burden, especially when I worked for myself. I think this touches on a bigger issue about getting paid especially for the givers in the world. Compensating would make it more accessible for different types of people as well.
Yes! I also love the inclusion angle, lots of people who would be amazing organizers can’t really commit to work for 12 months for free, they need to pay bills at the end of the month. I don’t think this is hard to implement!
One of the reasons that WordPress Accessibility Day is no longer an official WordPress community event is that we wanted to pay speakers. It’s a virtual conference, so there are no travel costs, but creating a presentation, recording it, and showing up live still takes time, and we especially want people who are not sponsored by an employer, including people with disabilities, to be able to present. We ended up creating our own nonprofit event just so we can pay speakers.
We’re not yet at a point where we can pay organizers. It’s a huge amount of work – like hundreds of hours for leads. But we haven’t had sponsorships to cover that yet, and attendees can tune in free (though some choose to donate). Most organizers have returned multiple years in a row, and several have been with us for over 5 years. I think organizers get emotional value from it, and several of us work in accessibility full-time, so we either see it supporting our business initiatives, or some folks might be tracking the time toward continuing education credits for accessibility certifications.
WordCamp is a whole different scale, as you mentioned. I think most organizers of the flagships, particularly the leads, are paid by their employer to contribute or allowed to organize during their salary-covered time. At smaller camps, that may not be the case.
Contribution in general (organizing events or contributing to the open source project) is difficult if you aren’t employed by a large company, and even now, a bunch of the large companies are not paying contributors like they used to.
That’s excellent feedback, thank you! I know for sure many leads are not even backed by their employers, they do it completely for free and outside their work hours… This has to change in my view, also to allow (as Wendie said) more people to have the chance to lead.
I don’t think I’m asking for a huge amount of money here, so every little helps.