On September 15th, 2026, the DBpedia community came together for this year’s DBpedia Day in Ghent, Belgium. Once again, the DBpedia Day was part of the SEMANTiCS Conference and brought together researchers, developers, organisations and community members to discuss current developments in the DBpedia ecosystem and the future of Knowledge Graphs.
First and foremost, we want to thank the Institute for Applied Informatics for supporting our community and many thanks to the SEMANTiCS organization team for hosting this year’s DBpedia Day.
Opening of the DBpedia Day
Our CEO Sebastian Hellmann, InfAI/DBpedia Association & Enterprise, opened this year’s DBpedia Day with an input titled “DBpedia 2026: Creating Opportunities for the DBpedia Community”. In his presentation, Sebastian introduced ideas for a more community-driven future for DBpedia and outlined opportunities for contributors, organisations and community members to get involved.
Afterwards, Ricardo Usbeck, Leuphana University Lüneburg, presented his keynote “More Than Data: Making Knowledge Graphs Work Together for Actionable Insights”.
His keynote focused on the role of integrated Knowledge Graphs in trustworthy AI systems. Ricardo Usbeck discussed how the combination of language models with dynamic Knowledge Graphs can provide structured and continuously updated information for applications in high-stakes and dynamic environments. Drawing on the COYPU, PROVIDER and RescueMate projects, he showed how integrated Knowledge Graphs can provide the verifiable grounding needed for applications such as supply chain resilience and crisis management.
Trustworthy Knowledge Graph Systems and Infrastructure
After the opening session and a short coffee break, Milan Dojchinovski, InfAI/DBpedia Association, TIB and CTU Prague, chaired the session “Trustworthy Knowledge Graph Systems and Infrastructure”.
The first presentation was given by Chad Nantais from Syntopic, who presented “From Paraphrase to Provenance: Building a Verbatim Claim-Spine from Spoken-Word Archives”.
Next, Marcel Fröhlich from eccenca presented “The Universal CPQ Interface: Exploring Product Configuration Models via MCP and Knowledge Graphs”.
The following presentation, “Transforming a Database into a Conversational Knowledge Graph: Tales from the ScaleTrust Project”, was given by Felix Brei from the Institute for Applied Informatics (InfAI).
The session demonstrated the broad range of approaches currently being developed around trustworthy Knowledge Graph systems, from provenance and product configuration to conversational Knowledge Graphs and accountability layers for AI systems.
From Semantic Foundations to AI Applications
After the lunch break, we continued with the session “From Semantic Foundations to AI Applications”, chaired by Sebastian Hellmann.
Ege Atacan Doğan from JMU Würzburg started the session with “Classifying Classes in Wikidata”, presenting work on the classification of classes in Wikidata.
Next, Milan Dojchinovski, InfAI/DBpedia Association, TIB and CTU Prague, presented “DBpedia KG Catalog”. The presentation introduced the Knowledge Graph Catalog and its role in making Knowledge Graphs and related datasets more discoverable and accessible.
DBpedia 2026: Creating Opportunities for the DBpedia Community
The final session of the DBpedia Day focused directly on the DBpedia community and its future. Chaired by Sebastian Hellmann and Milan Dojchinovski, the session “DBpedia 2026: Creating Opportunities for the DBpedia Community” was designed as an open discussion with DBpedia contributors, chapter leads, organisations and community members.
The discussion explored what a more community-driven future for DBpedia could look like and how the community can work together to address long-standing challenges. Four key elements were at the centre of the discussion: a shared Knowledge Graph Lifecycle System (KGLS) and interoperable services, DBpedia Community Projects such as language, thematic and regional initiatives, shared infrastructure and operations, as well as new roles and opportunities for community members and organisations to contribute and lead projects.
The session was highly interactive, with participants contributing their perspectives, ideas and suggestions. The goal was not only to discuss existing challenges, but also to identify concrete opportunities for collaboration and jointly shape the future of the DBpedia community.
The discussions and notes from the session are available in the Agenda and Notetaking document.
Get together in Ghent
After an intensive day of presentations and discussions, the DBpedia community continued the conversations during the evening reception at Ghent City Hall.
We thank everyone who attended and participated in this year’s DBpedia Day! We are now looking forward to more DBpedia events in the upcoming months and next year’s SEMANTiCS Conference in Bologna, Italy.
Stay safe and follow us on our LinkedIn for updates. Furthermore, you can subscribe to our Newsletter for the latest news and information around DBpedia.
Julia
On behalf of the DBpedia Association
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