Announcing the 2025 PSF Board Election Results!

The 2025 election for the PSF Board created an opportunity for conversations about the PSF's work to serve the global Python community. We appreciate community members' perspectives, passion, and engagement in the election process this year. 

We want to send a big thanks to everyone who ran and was willing to serve on the PSF Board. Even if you were not elected, we appreciate all the time and effort you put into thinking about how to improve the PSF and represent the parts of the community you participate in. We hope that you will continue to think about these issues, share your ideas, and join a PSF Work Group or PSF initiative if you feel called to do so.

Board Members Elect

Congratulations to our two new and two returning Board members who have been elected! 

• Abigail Dogbe
• Jannis Leidel
• Sheena O’Connell
• Simon Willison

We’ll be in touch with all the elected candidates shortly to schedule onboarding. Newly elected PSF Board members are provided orientation for their service and will be joining the upcoming board meeting. 

Thank you!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing board members. Kushal Das has been serving on the PSF Board for over ten years– WOW! Kushal has been a part of change after change for the PSF and Python community, serving in PSF Board officer positions, and we are incredibly grateful for his contributions. Dawn Wages quickly became an integral part of the Board during her tenure, stepping up as Treasurer and then Board Chair. Dawn helped guide us through a period of major change– navigating a difficult economy, adapting to the rise of AI, and supporting important shifts in our programs. Thank you, Kushal and Dawn, for your leadership and dedication to the PSF and the Python community. You will be missed and are deeply appreciated! 

Our heartfelt thanks go out to each of you who took the time to review the candidates and submit your votes. Your participation helps the PSF represent our community. We received 683 total ballots, easily reaching quorum–1/3 of affirmed voting members (929). We’re especially grateful for your patience with continuing to navigate the changes to the election processes and schedule, which allows for a valid election and a more sustainable election system.

We also want to thank everyone who helped promote this year’s board election, especially Board Members Cristián Maureira-Fredes and Georgi Ker, who took the initiative to cover this year’s election and produced informational videos for our candidates. This promotional effort was inspired by the work of Python Community News in 2023. We also want to highlight the PSF staff members and PSF Board members who put in tons of effort each year as we work to continually improve the PSF elections.

What’s next?

If you’re interested in the complete tally, make sure to check the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2025 Results page. These results will be available until Nov 11, 2025.

The PSF Election team will conduct a retrospective of this year’s election process to ensure we are improving year over year. We received valuable feedback about the process and tooling. We hope to be able to implement more changes for next year to ensure a smooth and accessible election process for everyone in our community.

Finally, it might feel a little early to mention this, but we will have at least 3 seats open again next year. If you're interested in running or learning more, we encourage you to contact a current PSF Board member or two this year and ask them about their experience serving on the board.

Sprints are the best part of a conference

When I first started attending Python conferences, my focus was entirely on the talks on the schedule. That's not surprising, there's no conference without talks! Over the years, though, I came to appreciate the so-called hallway track and the usual post-conference sprints that many events include. These days, I mostly come for those. Let's talk about why.

Raw numbers

Before we get into subjective and soft reasons why sprints are great, just consider how productive they are for Python. To give you an idea, let's focus on three Python conferences of different sizes on three continents.

At PyCon US 2025, 370 new PRs were open to the Python organization during, 286 to the cpython repository alone. Close to 300 PRs were merged into the Python GitHub organization during that time. That's for four days of sprints. This is over 2X the number of PRs handled during the same period when there's no sprint happening.

There's been two days of sprints at EuroPython in Prague this year, but they didn't disappoint either: 122 new PRs open to the Python organization, including 99 to the cpython repository. 79 PRs were merged into the Python GitHub organization during this time. This is 1.75X the number of PRs handled during a typical weekend.

Even single-day sprint days at conferences are pretty productive. At PyCon Korea earlier this August the attendees managed to open 59 new PRs to the Python organization, including 35 PRs to the cpython repository. Over 40 PRs were merged into the Python organization that day. Still 1.7X the typical velocity.

Hopefully, you're seeing what I'm seeing: sprints can provide a measurable boost to an open-source project. The longer the sprints are, the bigger this boost is. This is because many contributions need more than a day to bake, some bugs can be pretty stubborn, and many features uncover surprising depth once you start implementing them.

Momentum

There's something magical about a large group of people banding together to attack problems. While this is what open source is in general, adding together physical presence in the same physical space at the same time is the secret sauce. Real-time coordination really is more efficient. We can guess at reasons for this, but we can safely assume a big part is simply that humans are social animals. It's easier to empathize with a person when they're in the same room with you. In my experience, pointing at a screen still beats Internet communication.

Part of what makes sprints so productive is that it is a time-boxed period of uninterrupted time away from your usual work environment. And that's true for everyone, so people have the ability to focus on a specific project or problem for an extended period of time. But since there's a time limit to how long the sprints are, there's also some productive pressure to ship something concrete by the end of your stay. So, it's rare to see people playing games or doomscrolling during sprints. Instead, they want to ship something, even if it's a humble small first contribution.

Better yet, after you spend some time with a person in real life, even online interactions with them afterwards change. My brain does this thing where it reads GitHub comments of people I know in their voice. This little thing additionally humanizes the pixels on screen and makes the interaction smoother. When you come to sprints, you build more lasting connections, because you don't only talk about stuff in the hallway, you're solving problems together.

You're getting for free what you wouldn't be able to buy if you tried

You're solving problems together alongside developers from different companies, backgrounds and specialties. Some of them are maintainers of the projects you're contributing to, with a wealth of expertise they're sharing freely. You get immediate feedback, you can learn at a rate that is impossible to match online. You learn not only by doing and asking questions, but even just by watching others work. You discover better tools or ways to use them you didn't know existed.

To put it bluntly, the experts you work with during sprints would be impossible to hire as tutors, and here you get to work with them free of charge. Think about it, that alone makes it worth staying for sprints. And don't get cold feet, either, because...

You belong

I've heard some newcomers are worried that maybe the expected experience level is too high. I say you will definitely find something productive to do. I even blogged about this specifically for PyCon US this year, so you can read "What to Expect at PyCon US Sprints" to get an idea about how to make your experience great. The PyCon Korea sprint organizer and Steering Council member Donghee Na says: "I notice that the participants who had a good experience at last year's sprint tend to rejoin the sprint this year. I hope that many of them come back next year too." I'm seeing the same thing, and want to see even more of it. We do care about your experience.

Specifically at PyCon US, this year we tried something new. We split the CPython sprint room into two rooms: one dedicated to first-time contributors, and one to seasoned developers that needed to focus on some feature or bugfix they really wanted to ship before leaving Pittsburgh. It turned out great. Talking to attendees on both ends, I think both rooms enjoyed this setup and we will be repeating that for next year. While I was coordinating the first-time contributor room, I was heartened to see that quite a few veteran core developers joined me in the room. It was fun all four days!

At EuroPython, the setup this year was such that Petr Viktorin and I were coordinating the CPython sprint... or so we thought! In parallel, Adam Turner was leading the CPython documentation sprint, but attendees responded so well to him that he quickly organically became the de facto leader of the entire CPython sprint. Kudos, Adam, you did great!

Dedicated sprint events

It's not all roses with sprints that are attached to conferences. After an intense few days of the larger event, people tend to get tired. Introverts run out of steam. Key people that you could use talking to don't stay or are only available on the first day. If only there could be an event where core developers gather for a week just to sprint. No distracting talks and hallway tracks!

CPython actually does this annually since 2016 with the obvious online-only hiccup of 2020 and 2021. We do love those sprints as they are both productive and fun. Last year we returned to Meta while this year we will be sprinting at Arm Ltd in Cambridge UK. Unlike the conference sprints, this is an invite-only event for core developers where we can focus on making the next version of Python shinier than it would otherwise be.

But maybe organizing sprint-first events makes sense in general? It seems to me like that could be pretty helpful. Or maybe this is already a thing? Let us know if you know of sprint-first events in your area.

And in the meantime, consider staying for sprints at the next conference you're attending. It's well worth it!

 

The 2025 PSF Board Election is Open!

It’s time to cast your vote! Voting for the 2025 PSF Board Election is open starting today Tuesday, September 2nd, 2:00 pm UTC, through Tuesday, September 16th, 2:00 pm UTC. 

How to Vote

If you are a voting member of the PSF who affirmed your intention to participate in this year’s election or you voted in last year’s election, you will receive an email today from “OpaVote Voting Link <noreply@opavote.com>” with a link to your ballot. The subject line will read “Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2025”. If you haven’t seen your ballot by Wednesday, please first check your spam folder for a message from “noreply@opavote.com”. If you can’t find the ballot email from OpaVote please get in touch by emailing psf-elections@pyfound.org so we can look into your account and make sure we have the most up-to-date email for you.

Four seats on the board are open, but you can vote to approve as many of the 13 candidates as you like. We’re delighted by how many of you are willing to contribute to the Python community by serving on the PSF Board! Make sure you take some time to look at all the nominee statements and choose your candidates carefully. 

ATTN: Choose carefully before you press the big green vote button. Once your vote is cast, it cannot be changed.

Who can vote? 

You need to be a Contributing, Supporting, or Fellow member and have affirmed your voting intention by August 26th, 2:00 pm UTC, to vote in this election. Per last year’s Bylaw change that allows for simplifying the voter affirmation process by treating past voting activity as intent to continue voting, if you voted last year, you have been automatically added to the 2025 voter roll. Please note: If you removed or changed your email on psfmember.org, you may not automatically be added to this year's voter roll. 

Reminder that if you were formerly a Managing member, your membership has been updated to Contributing as of June 25th, 2025, per last year’s Bylaw change that merged Managing and Contributing memberships. 

If you’d like to learn more or sign up as a PSF Member, check out our membership types. You can check your membership status on your User Information page on psfmember.org (you will need to be logged in). If you have questions about your membership or the election please email psf-elections@pyfound.org

pypistats.org is now operated by the Python Software Foundation

For a little over six years pypistats.org has been maintained and operated by Christopher Flynn on a volunteer basis. After a recent extended outage made clear the importance of this service to the Python community, and in coordination with Christopher, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) has adopted the project into our GitHub organization and migrated the service to run from our infrastructure.

So what has changed? As far as the day-to-day operations of the service goes the PSF Infrastructure Team will now make sure that pypistats.org’s backing infrastructure, costs, and domain registration are all maintained. Otherwise, there is no material change to the service. The project remains open source and community maintained. We are appreciative that Christopher has stated his intention to stay on as maintainer of the project and we welcome the community to get involved.

We're also grateful to Christopher for his long-term volunteer contribution maintaining this service! As an organization, we are excited to have the opportunity to support pypistats.org and ensure it remains available to the community. Stories like this –under-resourced, but highly depended upon services– are not a new story for the open source community, and we are glad that this story had a positive outcome.

The PSF’s Infrastructure Team is excited to be in a place to adopt services like these into our burgeoning community infrastructure along with services like the PyLadiesCon Portal and memory.python.org. This new community infrastructure, supported by AWS Open Source via their credits program, is backed by the same tooling that delivers pypi.org, python.org, and us.pycon.org along with many other PSF hosted services. We look forward to sharing more in the coming months– not only what we're up to but also how you can get involved!

The 2024 Python Developer Survey Results are here!

We are excited to share the results of the eighth official annual Python Developers Survey. This survey is done yearly as a collaborative effort between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains. Check out Michael Kennedy's The State of Python 2025 blog post, on the JetBrains blog, which reflects his personal analysis and opinions on the data. Responses were collected October and November of 2024. More than 30,000 Python developers and enthusiasts from almost 200 countries and regions participated in the survey to reveal the current state of the language and the ecosystem around it.

Check out the survey results!

The survey aims to map the Python landscape and covers the following topics:

• General Python usage

• Purpose for using Python

• Python versions

• Frameworks and Libraries

• Cloud Platforms

• Data science

• Development tools

• Python packaging

• Demographics

We encourage you to check out the methodology and the raw data for this year's Python Developers Survey, as well as those from past years (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017). We would love to hear about what you learn by digging into the numbers! Share your results and comments with us on social media by mentioning JetBrains (LinkedIn, X) and the PSF (Mastodon, LinkedIn, X) using the #pythondevsurvey hashtag. Based on the feedback we received last year, we made adjustments to the 2024 survey- so we welcome suggestions and feedback that could help us improve again for next year!

Announcing the PSF Board Candidates for 2025!

What an exciting list! Please take a look at who is running for the PSF Board this year on the 2025 Nominees page. This year there are 4 seats open on the PSF Board. You can see who is currently on the board on the PSF Officers & Directors page. (Dawn Wages, Jannis Leidel, Kushal Das, and Simon Willison are at the end of their current terms.) 

Board Election Timeline:

• Nominations open: Tuesday, July 29th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Nomination cut-off: Tuesday, August 12th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Announce candidates: Thursday, August 14th
• Voter affirmation cut-off: Tuesday, August 26th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Voting start date: Tuesday, September 2nd, 2:00 pm UTC
• Voting end date: Tuesday, September 16th, 2:00 pm UTC

Not sure what UTC is for you locally? Check this time converter! 

Reminder to affirm your intention to vote!

If you wish to vote in this year’s election, you must affirm your intention to vote no later than Tuesday, August 26th, 2:00 pm UTC, to participate in this year’s election. This year’s Board Election vote begins Tuesday, September 2nd, 2:00 pm UTC, and closes on Tuesday, September 16th, 2:00 pm UTC. 

Every PSF Voting Member (Supporting, Contributing, and Fellow) needs to affirm their membership to vote in this year’s election. You should have received an email from "psf@psfmember.org <Python Software Foundation>" with the subject "[Action Required] Affirm your PSF Membership voting intention for 2025 PSF Board Election" that contains information on how to affirm your voting status. 

Find more information, including step-by-step instructions on voting affirmation, in our  ‘Affirm Your PSF Membership Voting Status” blog post. If you run into any issues, please email psf-elections@pyfound.org.

Voting: what to expect

If you are a voting member of the PSF that affirmed your intention to participate in this year’s election, you will receive an email from “OpaVote Voting Link <noreply@opavote.com>” with your ballot, the subject line will read “Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2025” on September 2nd. If you don’t receive a ballot as expected, please first check your spam folder for a message from “noreply@opavote.com”. If you don’t see anything get in touch by emailing psf-elections@pyfound.org so we can look into your account and make sure we have the most up-to-date email for you.

If you have questions about your membership status or the election, please email psf-elections@pyfound.org. You are welcome to join the discussion about the 2025 PSF Board election on the Python Discuss forum.

Announcing Python Software Foundation Fellow Members for Q2 2025! 🎉

The PSF is pleased to announce its second batch of PSF Fellows for 2025! Let us welcome the new PSF Fellows for Q2! The following people continue to do amazing things for the Python community:

Hamdalah Adetunji

LinkedIn

Laís Carvalho

Mark Smith

Website, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Bluesky, GitHub 

Will McGugan

Blog, X (Twitter), Mastodon, GitHub 

Thank you for your continued contributions. We have added you to our Fellows Roster.

The above members help support the Python ecosystem by being phenomenal leaders, sustaining the growth of the Python scientific community, maintaining virtual Python communities, maintaining Python libraries, creating educational material, organizing Python events and conferences, starting Python communities in local regions, and overall being great mentors in our community. Each of them continues to help make Python more accessible around the world. To learn more about the new Fellow members, check out their links above.

Let's continue recognizing Pythonistas all over the world for their impact on our community. The criteria for Fellow members is available on our PSF Fellow Membership page. If you would like to nominate someone to be a PSF Fellow, please send a description of their Python accomplishments and their email address to psf-fellow at python.org. Quarter 3 nominations will be in review soon. We are accepting nominations for Quarter 3 of 2025 through August 20th, 2025.

Are you a PSF Fellow and want to help the Work Group review nominations? Contact us at psf-fellow at python.org.

Unmasking Phantom Dependencies with Software Bill-of-Materials as Ecosystem Neutral Metadata

The Python Software Foundation Security Developer-in-Residence, Seth Larson, published a new white paper with Alpha-Omega about the work to solve the "Phantom Dependency" problem. The white paper details the approach, challenges, and insights into the creation and acceptance of PEP 770 and adopting Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOMs) to improve the measurability of Python packages. 

This work means that automated systems like vulnerability scanners, compliance, and policy tools will provide accurate results, even in complicated software composition and dependency graphs that are common for scientific computing, performance-critical workloads, and artificial intelligence.

Critical projects like numpy, cryptography, and pip are already evaluating adopting PEP 770 and providing cross-ecosystem dependency information through the use of SBOMs.

The Security Developer-in-Residence position is sponsored by Alpha-Omega. If you'd like to support improving Python at the ecosystem-scale contact sponsors@python.org to discuss sponsoring a Developer-in-Residence position.

The PSF has paused our Grants Program

TL;DR:

Effective August 1st, 2025, the PSF is temporarily pausing our Grants Program after reaching our 2025 grant budget cap earlier than expected. We know how important this program is to many in our community and making this decision was difficult. This is a necessary step to protect both the future of the program and the short- and long-term sustainability of the PSF. (If this moves you immediately to donate to the PSF, we welcome your contributions via our donations page).

The PSF Grants Program is paused

As we shared in December 2024 (specifically, part 3), the PSF implemented changes to the Grants Program in March 2025 in an effort to ensure the sustainability of the program and the foundation. PSF Staff have been checking in quarterly on our award expenditure, and at the end of Q1, we were on track. When PSF Staff reviewed approved grant awards at the end of Q2, however, we had granted close to 80% of the 2025 grant budget. The grant applications received so far through July exceed the budget ceiling. 

What does this mean? The PSF Board has voted to implement a pause, effective August 1st, 2025, on the PSF Grants Program. The PSF Board and Staff explored our options thoroughly before coming to this tough, and frankly painful, decision as we deeply understand how important the grants program is to the Python community. 

Everyone at the PSF is constantly amazed and impressed with the creativity, drive, and ingenuity of the Python community. Supporting the community’s success with our Grants Program is at the heart of our mission—and it brings so much joy to the PSF Board, our small but mighty team of staff, and the wonderful folks in our Work Groups. We are heartbroken to have to pause that work and we know this will be challenging and create more difficult decisions in turn for the many community groups that had planned to apply for the grants program. 

We will be distributing the small amount of remaining funds in the 2025 PSF Grants Program budget. To honor the time and energy spent on applications already submitted and in the spirit of equity, any applications that were received before August 1st, 2025 will be granted a uniform percentage of the award amount for which they are eligible. If you have a grant application in the system, you will receive an email from us soon with more information. Please send any urgent inquiries to grants@python.org.

The PSF aims to be as transparent as possible, and we want to have two-way conversations with the community about this change. We are holding an additional PSF Grants Program Office Hour in August on the PSF Discord. We welcome folks to join both or either session:

• August 13th, 8-9 pm UTC
• August 19th, 1-2 pm UTC

We also welcome your feedback, particularly how we can support you during this pause, via email to grants@python.org or on the thread we’ve started on discuss.python.org.

How we got here 

 

Since announcing Grants program changes in December 2024, grant requests have grown about 40% over last year. It’s wonderful to see long-time events continue to grow. It’s been equally inspiring to see events being revived as we move further from 2020 and the start of the COVID pandemic, alongside brand-new initiatives from new and seasoned organizers. The PSF loves seeing the growth, but the heart of the issue is that Python and its community continue to grow exponentially, while our funding has not kept pace, and in fact, has decreased.

With Python being the number one language on GitHub and rising steadily on the TIOBE index, it’s no surprise that our community continues to build and grow as well. You can see the TIOBE index shows what the growth of Python looks like over the years, and how much it’s grown in just the past year:
 

By contrast, the PSF’s available resources have decreased over the last three years and are projected to decrease again in 2025 due to increasing PyCon US and foundation costs. Much of the growth shown before 2022 in the chart below comes from grants we received that were restricted funds dedicated to specific staffing and other programs. The result is increasing global community activity against a decreasing pool of available funds. 

For example, 2023 year-end assets were $5.5M with total grants awarded at $677K. The following year, 2024 assets decreased slightly to $4.3M, but grants awarded jumped to $952K. You can see in the graph above how that negatively impacted our assets, a trend that is not sustainable even in the short term. Please check out the PSF’s 2024 Annual Impact Report for more details of our finances and our work.

The PSF Grants Program adjustments implemented earlier this year aimed to reduce total grant award spending while providing a more equitable approach, but the growth in new/revived grant applications outpaced the lowered caps and other limits. As we reviewed Q2 spending, it became clear that the unexpected influx of qualified grant proposals had already almost exhausted the total amount we had budgeted for the full year. 

We’re in this together

The PSF is in a similar position to the many other organizations and NGOs (and all of our volunteer conference and meetup organizers!) trying to support the Python community and foundation while faced with inflation, lower sponsorship, economic pressure in the tech sector, and global/local uncertainty and conflict. 

Last year, the PyCon US blog explained that PyCon US 2024 generated a significant loss; losses from PyCon US are paid for by PSF general funds that are also the financial source for the PSF Grants programs. For many years, PyCon US created a surplus used to fund Grants, PSF staff, and other programs. Based on the current numbers for PyCon US 2025, the PSF will need to fund another loss. Many factors including the lower-than-budgeted attendance, higher location costs, and the current economic and political situation contributed to the loss despite incredible efforts by staff and volunteers to control costs. 

What’s the solution?

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to pause the Grants Program and would instead be granting even MORE awards to our inspiring community. And while that’s not currently the case, we do think you can help us unpause the grants program and fund the PSF’s other work. The PSF needs more support and resources from the corporations that are built on and making revenue from Python. As a community, let’s ask corporations to step up and sustain the health of the community and programming language they rely on. The AI sector, for example, relies heavily on Python and is mostly untapped for the PSF, PyCon US, and our entire community. If you have potential sponsorship connections (in AI or otherwise) we welcome you to send us leads or connect us via sponsors@python.org. 

The PSF is ever grateful for our sponsors, past and current, and we do everything we can to make their sponsorships beneficial and rewarding. PSF Staff also work hard to make those sponsorship dollars stretch as far as they can. Frankly, the PSF simply needs more sponsorship to continue to support the astonishing growth of Python and its community.

The PSF is also incredibly grateful for our individual donors and PSF members. We truly couldn’t do this without you. If you’re inspired to help because of this post, we urge you to ask your employers to sponsor the PSF. Send them the PSF’s sponsorship page! We know times are financially challenging for everyone, but if you’re feeling very inspired and in a position to donate, we welcome your contributions via the PSF’s donation page. You can also join us as a PSF Supporting Member (a sliding scale is also available!), to invest in the future of Python and its community.

Some additional context

As PSF Staff reviewed the Q2 numbers for the Grants Program, we found the following:

• Revived events. 10 out of the 75 (or about 13%) grants applications we’ve received in 2025 are for “revived” grant applications for events that weren’t run in 2024 (including one that hasn’t been run since 2015, whoa!).
• Net new applications. 19 out of the 75 (or about 25%) grant applications we’ve received in 2025 are for totally new events and initiatives. While we did expect some growth, this is tremendous!
• Earlier applications. We encouraged folks to apply earlier—and you did, thank you! We weren’t expecting this level of awarding by mid-year. We also expect that to continue, so we can now plan better for that in the future.
• Higher $$ requests. Across all returning applications the amount being requested is about 13% higher than in years previous. 

While we expected more interest from the community in the PSF grants program, the amount of growth far exceeded our expectations. 

What’s next?

The PSF is working on our strategy to balance support for the worldwide Python community and funding constraints, now and in the future. The unknown and rapidly growing number of new Python events and initiatives—combined with the ongoing needs of existing events and organizations that have historically relied on the PSF Grants Program—is challenging to manage sustainably on a rolling application basis.

So, here’s our plan:

• First, the PSF Board will continue to refine the grant program’s guiding principles and how they translate into program policy. 
• From there, PSF Staff will research, plan, and implement a quarterly review and awarding approach for the PSF Grants Program to provide an equitable and financially sustainable process.

Moving to a quarterly review process from the rolling approval process the Grants Program currently uses will be a big change! We will do our best to implement processes that work well for the community, the Grants Workgroup, and PSF Staff. 

Even with our best efforts, we acknowledge that there will be learning opportunities around moving to a quarterly review and most likely a series of adjustments ahead of us to get things working smoothly. Your feedback as grant applicants and recipients will be extremely helpful as we take on this journey. During this process, we will determine on what timeline we can re-open the Grants Program. You can expect updates from us on the future of the PSF Grants Program in early 2026.

PSF Board Election Nominations Opening July 29th

This year’s PSF Board Election nomination period opens next week on Tuesday, July 29th, 2:00 pm UTC and closes on Tuesday, August 12th, 2:00 pm UTC. Who runs for the board? People who care about the Python community, who want to see it flourish and grow, and also have a few hours a month to attend regular meetings, serve on committees, participate in conversations, and promote the Python community. 

This year, there are 4 seats open on the PSF Board. Check out who is currently on the PSF Board on our website. (Dawn Wages, Jannis Leidel, Kushal Das, and Simon Willison are at the end of their current terms.) Check out the following resources to learn more about the PSF, as well as what being a part of the PSF Board entails:

• Life as Python Software Foundation Director video on YouTube
• FAQs About the PSF Board video on YouTube 
• Our past few Annual Impact Reports:
• 2024 Annual Impact Report
• 2023 Annual Impact Report
• 2022 Annual Impact Report 

Board Election Timeline

• Nominations open: Tuesday, July 29th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Nomination cut-off: Tuesday, August 12th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Announce candidates: Thursday, August 14th
• Voter affirmation cut-off: Tuesday, August 26th, 2:00 pm UTC
• Voting start date: Tuesday, September 2nd, 2:00 pm UTC
• Voting end date: Tuesday, September 16th, 2:00 pm UTC

Not sure what UTC is for you locally? Check this UTC time converter!

Nomination details

You can nominate yourself or someone else. We encourage you to reach out to people before you nominate them to ensure they are enthusiastic about the potential of joining the Board. 

To submit a nomination for yourself or someone else, use the 2025 PSF Board Election Nomination Form on our website. The nomination form opens on Tuesday, July 29th, 2:00 pm UTC and closes on Tuesday, August 12th, 2:00 pm UTC.

To support potential candidates and nominators, the 2025 PSF Board Election team has created a nomination resource (embedded below). It includes tips, formatting instructions, and guidance on what to include in a nomination. The goal is to help nominees understand what to expect and ensure that all candidates are provided the same clear and consistent standards. 

Voting Reminder!

Every PSF Voting Member (Supporting, Contributing, and Fellow) needs to affirm their membership to vote in this year’s election. You should have received an email from "psf@psfmember.org <Python Software Foundation>" with the subject "[Action Required] Affirm your PSF Membership voting intention for 2025 PSF Board Election" that contains information on how to affirm your voting status. 

You can see your membership record and status on your PSF Member User Information page. If you are a voting-eligible member and do not already have a login, please create an account on psfmember.org first and then email psf-elections@python.org so we can link your membership to your account. 

Affirm Your PSF Membership Voting Status

Every PSF voting-eligible Member (Supporting, Contributing, and Fellow) needs to affirm their membership to vote in this year’s election.

If you wish to vote in this year’s PSF Board election, you must affirm your intention to vote no later than Tuesday, August 26th, 2:00 pm UTC. This year’s Board Election vote begins Tuesday, September 2nd, 2:00 pm UTC, and closes on Tuesday, September 16th, 2:00 pm UTC.

You should have received an email from "psf@psfmember.org <Python Software Foundation>" with the subject "[Action Required] Affirm your PSF Membership voting intention for 2025 PSF Board Election" that contains information on how to affirm your voting status. If you were expecting to receive the email but have not (make sure to check your spam!), please email psf-elections@pyfound.org, and we’ll assist you. Please note: If you opted out of emails related to your membership, you did not receive this email. 

Need to check your membership status?

Log on to psfmember.org and visit your PSF Member User Information page to see your membership record and status. If you are a voting-eligible member (active Supporting, Contributing, and Fellow members of the PSF) and do not already have a login, please create an account on psfmember.org and then email psf-elections@pyfound.org so we can link your membership to your account. Please ensure you have an account linked to your membership so that we can have the most up-to-date contact information for you in the future. 

How to affirm your intention to vote 

You can affirm your voting intention by following the steps in our video tutorial:

• Log in to psfmember.org
• Check your eligibility to vote (You must be a Contributing, Supporting, or Fellow member) 
• Choose “Voting Affirmation” at the top right
• Select your preferred intention for voting in 2025
• Click the “Submit” button 

PSF Bylaws

Section 4.2 of the PSF Bylaws requires that “Members of any membership class with voting rights must affirm each year to the corporation in writing that such member intends to be a voting member for such year.”

Our motivation is to ensure that our elections can meet quorum as required by Section 3.9 of our bylaws. As our membership has grown, we have seen that an increasing number of Contributing and Fellow members with indefinite membership do not engage with our annual election, making quorum difficult to reach. 

An election that does not reach quorum is invalid. This would cause the whole voting process to be re-held, resulting in fewer voters and an undue amount of effort on the part of PSF Staff.

Recent updates to membership and voting

If you were formerly a Managing member, your membership has been updated to Contributing as of June 25th, 2025, per last year’s Bylaw change that merged Managing and Contributing memberships. 

Per another recent Bylaw change that allows for simplifying the voter affirmation process by treating past voting activity as intent to continue voting, if you voted last year, you will automatically be added to the 2025 voter roll. Please note: If you removed or changed your email on psfmember.org, you may not automatically be added to this year's voter roll. 

What happens next?

You’ll get an email from OpaVote with a ballot on or right before September 2nd, and then you can vote!

Check out our PSF Membership page to learn more. If you have questions about membership, nominations, or this year’s Board election, please email psf-elections@pyfound.org or join the PSF Discord for the upcoming Board Office Hours on August 12th, 9 PM UTC. You are also welcome to join the discussion about the PSF Board election on our forum.

Notice of Python Software Foundation Bylaws Change - Effective July 23, 2025

This post serves as notice that the Board of the Python Software Foundation has resolved to amend the Bylaws, effective July 23, 2025, to remove a condition of the Bylaws that would prevent the Foundation from complying with data privacy laws including those in effect in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the State of California.

Section 3.8 of the Bylaws grants Voting Members the right to request the list of Voting Members’ names and email addresses. As written, this data must be given unconditionally, which would violate the previously mentioned laws. The amendment we are making grants the Foundation the ability to place conditions upon the use of that list in a way that allows us to comply with data privacy laws.

The full change can be found at https://github.com/psf/bylaws/pull/7/files

The Board determined that this change was time-sensitive and chose to amend the Bylaws without prior consultation with Voting Members. We greatly value the input of our membership in the governance of the Foundation. Therefore, we have opted to make only the most minimal change that will enable the Foundation to comply with data privacy laws and protect our members, while preserving the spirit of the text that the membership agreed to when adopting these Bylaws.

A future Bylaws update will be offered to the membership at a future election. As we are less than 3 months from the 2025 Board election, we are targeting the 2026 Board election to allow the membership to discuss further amendments for the membership to vote upon.

Thanks,

The Python Software Foundation Board

Thinking about running for the PSF Board? Let’s talk!

PSF Board elections are a chance for the community to choose representatives to help the PSF create a vision for and build the future of the Python community. This year, there are 4 seats open on the PSF Board. Check out who is currently on the PSF Board on our website. (Dawn Wages, Jannis Leidel, Kushal Das, and Simon Willison are at the end of their current terms.)

Office Hours Information

This year, the PSF Board is dedicating a few of their regular Office Hour sessions on the PSF Discord to the topic of the election. This is your chance to connect with current board members to ask questions and learn more about what being a part of the Board entails. 

The two upcoming Office Hour sessions will be dedicated to the topic of the election:

• Tuesday, July 8th, 1 PM UTC - Nominations
• Tuesday, August 12th, 9 PM UTC - Membership & general election questions

We welcome you to join the PSF Discord to participate in Office Hours. The server is moderated by PSF Staff and locked between office hours sessions. If you’re new to Discord, check out some Discord Basics to help you get started. 

Who runs for the Board?

Who runs for the board? People who care about the Python community, who want to see it flourish and grow, and also have a few hours a month to attend regular meetings, serve on committees, participate in conversations, and promote the Python community. Want to learn more about being on the PSF Board? Check out the following resources to learn more about the PSF, as well as what being a part of the PSF Board entails:

• Life as Python Software Foundation Director video on YouTube
• FAQs About the PSF Board video on YouTube 
• Our past few Annual Impact Reports:
• 2024 Annual Impact Report
• 2023 Annual Impact Report
• 2022 Annual Impact Report

Nomination info

You can nominate yourself or someone else. We encourage you to reach out to people before you nominate them to ensure they are enthusiastic about the potential of joining the Board. Nominations open on Tuesday, July 29th, 2:00 pm UTC, so you have a few weeks to research the role and craft a nomination statement. The nomination period ends on Tuesday, August 12th, 2:00 pm UTC. There will be a 'call for nominations' blog post with more information and resources about nominations coming soon.