Re:publica – A digital society festival

It was not only for me personally the first time to visit re:publica in Berlin, “Europe’s largest digital society festival” according to its own website, but also for Tuta – the company behind end-to-end encrypted email, calendar and drive solutions – to be a partner of re:publica 2026. Together with the European companies Ecosia, Nextcloud and Mastodon, we joined forces to spread the word about how to become digitally sovereign and free from Big Tech abusers.

Starting in 2007, and with nowadays more than 30.000 visitors, the re:publica has become an important place for discussing today’s digital and media society. With partners ranging from NGOs, media, politics and economics, the re:publica is representing a cross-section of todays (digital) society. Under this year’s motto “Never gonna give you up”, speakers from all different fields of society – including for example politicians, scientists, authors, activists and ministers – have talked about the pressing topics of the 21st (digital) century. The motto for this year thereby serves as a reminder, according to the fair’s website, to never give up on democracy, freedom and freedom of the press and to fight for pluralism, participation and humanity.

Pictures of the entrance of re:publica 2026 and our “Wechselstube”

My first impressions

That re:publica is Europe’s largest digital society festival and that it has become more popular over the last decade already became apparent when I arrived to its location on Monday morning, faced by a long queue of people waiting to get entrance. The process of getting my accreditation badge was surprisingly quick and easy, considering the number of people that had already gathered in front of the entrance. Luckily for me, not only was the sun shining but I could quickly make my way to our booth by using the separate partner’s entrance.

Fortunately for Tuta, as well as for me, it did not take long for me to find our booth as it was the first thing to see when entering the hall through the entrance door as it was placed more or less directly in front of it. As mentioned before, for this year Tuta collaborated together with other European open source companies – namely Ecosia, Nextcloud and Mastodon – to have a shared booth at re:publica with the overall theme of digital sovereignty. At Tuta, we believe that a better web is possible, and we love joining forces with like-minded companies to actually build this better version of the internet and to fight for it online – and offline!

Ecosia, based in Berlin, is a search engine that uses 100% of its profits to plant trees globally. Nextcloud, based in Berlin as well, is an open source content collaboration platform and Mastodon is an open-source software platform for social networking with features similar to X (formerly Twitter), but also very different, and part of the fediverse. In fact, Mastodon is our favorite social platform, and you should definitely check it out.

With a big sign at our booth that stated “Ich bin souverän” (“I am sovereign” in English), people had the opportunity to take a selfie with it in the background to post it on social media and further spread the message. The visitors, if they did not feel like taking a photo, also had the opportunity to have a chat with me or my colleauges at our booth with the heading “Wechselstube”. The idea, and therefore the name, behind our “Wechselstube” was that people would come to us to switch their American Big Tech services or profiles to European sovereign alternatives.

You can have a closer look at our DeGoogle list that helps you find the best private Google replacements.

My conversations with the visitors

Over the course of the next three days, I stood with my colleauges behind our “Wechselstube” to chat with visitors about the how and why of digital sovereignty. Our main mission was to start a conversation about how to change from American Big Tech companies – who by now are known for their “privacy washing” that track and collect your data and switch to European open source alternatives by showing that there are alternatives available.

My general impression was that a lot of people that came to our booth were already aware of the problems with Big Tech companies like Google or Meta and the need to become digitally sovereign, for instance because of the recent Microsoft scandal where Microsoft disables the Outlook account of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Moreover, most people already knew one or some of the companies at our booth and, thus, learned something about the other companies and their products. As mentioned before, with our booth we wanted to show that you do not have to use Big Tech companies like Microsoft or Google because there are alternatives with all needed features available. The fact that Google had its booth just a few metres away from us was an ironic coincidence, but while our booth was mostly packed, theirs looked quite empty at times…

Overall, I had the opportunity to talk to countless different people from different countries and with different (professional and technological) backgrounds. I talked to them about Tuta and what we are doing and what the future for digital sovereignty might look like if we continue to work together. Many visitors to our booth were really interested, at least that was my perception, and wanted to have a closer look at Tuta and check it out. If you want to check out Tuta, you can also sign-up for free here. Nevertheless, some people were only interested in the stickers we had layed out or the tote bag stating “I am sovereign” they could get for free. Especially among young students, who visited re:publica with their teachers, our stickers became quite popular. However, whether our message of digital sovereignty has stuck with them is another question, but at least they are now having a better chance to understand the problems of Big Tech’s data abuse. In general, I can say that I only had nice and interesting conversations with people from all over the world who wanted to learn more about European alternatives to Big Tech and how to become digitally sovereign. Lots of people also shared with me the alternatives they are alreading using and that they are happy that the movement of “Go European” becomes bigger and bigger and more countries are starting to ditch Microsoft.

Pictures of our CEO Matthias talking to Katja Mast (the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs) and our CEO Hanna talking with Dr. Karsten Wildberger (the Federal Minister of Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation)

The second day – VIP’s coming to our booth

The highlight of my three-day stay at re:publica was definitely Tuesday, the second day. Not only was it, at least that was my impression, the most crowded day with a lot of people coming to our booth and asking about Tuta and our products, but also because of the visit of two high-ranking politicians. It is facinating to witness first-hand all the work and preparation that goes into a five-minutes visit at a fair booth. Several briefings by the politician’s assistants and employees beforehand, showed how busy they are and how much organization it needs to coordinate their visit.

First, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social affairs Katja Mast visited our booth to have a small talk with our CEO’s Hanna and Matthias as well as with the colleagues from Ecosia and Nextcloud. My job then was to take nice pictures and videos that we can post to our social media channels – and to this blog post. Then later that day, after having his talk on stage, the Federal Minister of Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation Dr. Karsten Wildberger had his walk around the fair and took his time to stop by our booth. Hanna, our CEO, also had the chance to briefly talk with him about the need to become digitally sovereign and how Tuta can help to achieve this by offering end-to-end encrypted email, calendar and drive solutions. Again, witnessing one person being guarded by several employees, assistants and security who stand around them and watch them all the time, was definitely a compelling look behind-the-scenes of Germany’s top-level politicians and ministers which I will probably not get to observe live again so quickly.

Hanna Bozakov, CEO of Tuta, said the following about our visit at re:publica 2026:

My colleague Hanna was also quite impressed by this. She said:

For us at Tuta, it was a great opportunity to speak with influential politicians to make the industry voice better heard on what needs to happen in Germany and in Europe to make digital sovereignty a reality. We’d like to thank the organizers of re:publica, particularly Markus Beckedahl, for giving us this opportunity! It’s great to see how re:publica is helping shape the discussion on digital politics and boosting an important voice: The need of people and businesses to free themselves from American dependency”

The fair in general – between talks and tech companies

Fortunately for me, my colleague Hanna from Tuta and I could take turns. So one person took over the booth while the other one could have a walk around the fair, have a look at other booths or attend some of the interesting talks. With renowned speakers, such as Angela Merkel (Germany’s former chancellor) or Karl Lauterbach (Germany’s former minister of health), there were definitely some impressive talks to attend. Unfortunately for me, the queue to attend Angela Merkel’s talk was so long that I had no chance to attend at all. Nevertheless, I could still follow some other interesting talks, about prosperity in times of crisis or how to report news in the age of reels and TikToks for example.

One thing I would like to highlight in general is that I found the organization of the fair to be pretty amazing, especially the free drinking station that was available for everyone and even offered sparkling water! Although you could also eat at the fair grounds, with different food trucks offering different meals, it was definitely on the pricey side.

My personal conclusion

All in all, I had some very exciting and interesting three days with lots of impressions. I had so many nice and interesting interactions with different people from different backgrounds and not only did they learn something about Tuta but I also learned more about how to become digitally sovereign and the other alternatives to Big Tech that exist on the market.

Attending different talks by interesting speakers, of which I even knew some from the media, and having a walk around the fair was a nice little extra. Overall, the re:publica was a complete success (for me and for Tuta) and there is only one thing left to say: See you next year at re:publica Berlin!