Blogathon 2026 guide

Blogathon 2026 is a first-of-its-kind community event that will bring together writers from around the world to explore the past, present, and future of documentation. This event is hosted by The Good Docs Project, an open source community of writers from around the world.

This year, the blogathon will be a bold experiment with a new kind of a hybrid community event: it's half hackathon (a fast sprint to build something, but for writers) and half unconference (collaboratively exploring ideas on a specific topic). Our goal is to create a series of blogs that we'll publish to the broader documentation community shortly after the event and into next year.

The event will take place on October 10 for EMEA/AMER and October 11 for APAC. On the day of the blogathon, we're offering two sessions for different time zones. Sign up for the session that best matches your schedule. Each session is meant to take place over roughly three hours:

• We'll have an opening kickoff with a brief keynote and general guidelines for participating.
• You'll head off into one of our writing rooms and work on a draft of your blog post.
• When your draft is ready, you'll move into a review room to get matched up with a reviewer and get personalized feedback from a member of our community.
• When your blog is done, you'll jump into our celebration room to share your blog with other writers from around the world. Hang around and network or sign off any time you're ready to be done.

We want our blogathon to be a space where everyone feels safe to participate, share ideas, and get feedback regardless of their experience level or background. To ensure everyone has a positive experience, we ask that all attendees, volunteers, and organizers agree to our code of conduct before the event and follow it for the full duration of the event.

If you ever feel uncomfortable or witness behavior that doesn't align with our code of conduct, come to our Help Desk to let an event organizer know right away and we will address your concerns immediately. Read the full code of conduct before the event so you know what to expect.

In order to ensure that the people we invite are the ones who join the event, you'll need to use your real name at this event, and it must match your Zoom display name. We use this to verify your invitation at the door. If it doesn't match, we won't be able to let you in.

After the event, we'll write a recap blog post. We'll ask in your application whether you consent to letting us use your name and screenshots/photos of you in event publicity. Consent isn't required to attend, and we'll respect your choice either way. Indicate that you don't want photos or screenshots in your display name or on your image on Zoom.

Recording the event is not permitted, per our code of conduct. AI notetakers are also not permitted.

There is no cost to attend this event. It's free to all participants. However, space at the blogathon is limited to approximately 50 participants (25 per session), not including organizers and members of our community. For that reason, attending the event starts with a short application rather than open registration. Applications close on September 23, 2026.

When you apply, you'll tell us a bit about yourself, pitch up to three blog ideas you're excited to write about, and agree to follow our code of conduct.

This event is very experimental and it's our first time hosting it, so we don't know exactly how many people will apply. If we get 50 applications or fewer (25 per session), everyone who applies gets to attend. If we get more than that, we'll be more selective, basing our decisions on the quality of your blog ideas.

We will try to let as many people who want to attend join our event. Everyone who applies will automatically be added to a waitlist and will be notified if a slot is available.

We'll notify you whether you have been accepted or added to the event waitlist by October 3, 2026 or earlier. At that time, we will ask you to RSVP to confirm your attendance to allow waitlisted participants to join if your plans have changed. In the week leading up the event, if you are on the waitlist and an opening becomes available, we will contact you and invite you to attend.

If we receive more than 50 applications (25 per session), we won't be able to accept everyone right away. If we need to be selective, here's what we will look for in your pitch:

• Clear idea — We can tell what you'd actually write about and why it matters in a few sentences.
• An interesting angle — You're doing more than just rehashing conventional wisdom or tired ideas. You're addressing a specific question, sharing an opinion or personal experience, or responding to other people's ideas with a new perspective.
• Fits a theme — You've connected your blog idea to one of our published themes, or you've made a strong case for your own new pitch.
• Doable in a few hours — It should be realistic for a short writing sprint. No dense research projects or multi-page manifestos.

After the blogathon wraps up, our community will review and edit submitted blogs before we publish them on our website throughout the year. Note that we reserve the right to edit your blog entry as needed to match our style guide, but will make a strong effort to retain your voice and original ideas. We will notify you when your blog is scheduled to go live shortly before we publish it. You'll get a byline credit, along with your bio and any social media links you'd like us to include.

Did we mention that you can also join our community at any time? We hope you have a really fun time at this event and enjoy talking to the Good Docs community members that you meet. We think it's a magical place that you might want to join. If you want to join, sign up for a Welcome Wagon meeting to learn about our community and get access to our community Discord. Welcome Wagon week is at the end of October, just two weeks after this event.

Do you have a question? Check this section first to see if we've answered it. If not, use our Contact us form to ask your question directly.

Have a question that isn't covered in this guide? Reach out through our Contact us form and we'll get back to you. If it's something other attendees are likely to wonder about too, we may add it to the questions in the previous section.