FreeCAD News

The FreeCAD Project Asso­ci­a­tion (FPA) has just pub­lished the 2025 annu­al report and plans for 2026.

Here are the report’s highlights:

• Start­ed active­ly work­ing with the Open­Cas­cade team (paid position).
• Start­ed explor­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with KiCad and oth­er projects in the ecosystem.
• Approved a grant pro­pos­al that aims to improve the UX/UI sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly.
• Award­ed sev­er­al doc­u­men­ta­tion grants.
• Start­ed pro­duc­ing auto­mat­ic min­utes for all the Saturday/Sunday devel­op­er meet­ings and Wednes­day FPA meet­ings for bet­ter transparency.
• Launched an exper­i­men­tal bug boun­ty pro­gram and issued sev­er­al rewards.
• Launched a new pro­gram to pay active main­tain­ers a month­ly allowance.
• New posi­tions: Addon Ecosys­tem Coor­di­na­tor, Addon Ecosys­tem Tech­ni­cal Lead, Infra­struc­ture Man­ag­er, OCCT Liai­son, Finan­cial Officer.
• Total dona­tions in 2025: €129,981.32. Total expen­di­tures: €127,093.95.

2026 plans:

• Invest­ing more in con­ti­nu­ity and sta­bil­i­ty: bet­ter doc­u­men­ta­tion, more test­ing, improved release cycles.
• Ampli­fy­ing trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty on the FPA’s part.
• Gen­er­al 2026 bud­get: €230,000. It’s con­sid­er­ably above last year’s bud­get. We will use funds from the deposit that we have had for a few years now.