Meet the winners of the Nextcloud Community Awards 2026!

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We are happy to announce the winners of the fist edition of the Nextcloud Community Awards! Our jury selected three winners nominated by our community for outstanding and unique contributions to the Nextcloud universe. We have presented the winners at the award ceremony at the Nextcloud Community Conference 2026.

About Nextcloud Community Awards

The Nextcloud Community Awards are a new recognition initiative launched as part of Nextcloud’s 10th anniversary in 2026 to celebrate the people who have made outstanding contributions to our community and ecosystem. Rather than being an industry award or public competition, the awards are intended as a heartfelt recognition of the individuals and teams who have helped shape the Nextcloud ecosystem through collaboration, innovation, and community engagement.

Nextcloud community members submitted nominations in three categories: Best Non-technical Contribution, Hidden Gem, and Side Quest. Our jury carefully reviewed the nominations based on criteria defined for each category. You can read more about the categories in the Nextcloud Community Awards announcement blog.

The jury consisted of Frank Karlitschek (founder and CEO of Nextcloud), Anna Larch (Developer Relations), and Jos Poortvliet (co-founder and VP Communications).

Meet the winners of the Nextcloud Community Awards in 2026

1. Best Non-technical Contribution: Romy Schneider

Open source is about people sharing knowledge, exchanging experiences, and building solutions together. In the true spirit of open source, Romy has built a community structure around the ver.diAktiv!Cloud, a Nextcloud-based collaborative system for Germany’s second largest trade union. In her approach, the focus was not on the technology, but on the people using it.

Romy developed an interactive, gamified learning journey for thousands of volunteers using ver.diAktiv!Cloud, enabling them to learn how to use Nextcloud and how to pass knowledge and experience to others, creating a decentralized, peer-to-peer system for support and collaboration.

I was very lucky to be one of the people who could help build the structure around it. To connect the dots, create a learning environment, and make it easier for people to become confident and independent at using Nextcloud.

Romy Schneider

Digital Collaboration & Enablement Expert at OpenSource Praxis-Lab

2. Hidden Gem: Benedikt Schächner

The lesser-known Nextcloud Social app brings decentralized social networking directly into Nextcloud by implementing ActivityPub and connecting a Nextcloud instance to the Fediverse, basically turning Nextcloud itself into a lightweight federated social server. Sadly, the app has not been properly maintained for a long time, until Benedikt took over its development and single-handedly revived Nextcloud Social. A young developer under the age of 18, he cleaned the code base, made the app stable and compatible, and added new features and improvements based on his own ideas.

For the past few years, however, the app has largely stopped working. Right now, there’s going to be a major overhaul. Most of its current code has already been reworked and brought back to life. Today, you can install the app from the App Store and connect with other Mastodon or Fediverse instances from all over the world.

Benedikt Schächner

Student at König-Karlmann-Gymnasium Altötting

3. Side Quest: Marcel Klehr

Many people move to Nextcloud driven by a desire to escape the « walled gardens » of Big Tech. However, bookmarks are one of the toughest parts of browser lock-in. In the Side Quest nomination, the award goes to Marcel Klehr, a developer who has created and maintained floccus, a free and open source bookmark management app that is uncompromising in privacy, for 10 years. Practically, as long as Nextcloud exists.

As the original nomination text said (and we couldn’t have put it better), « In an era where our digital lives are fragmented across multiple browsers and devices, the ability to maintain a unified, private, and self-hosted library of bookmarks is more than just a convenience. It is a matter of digital sovereignty. »

I’ve been working on floccus for 10 years now, and it’s a project that is very dear to my heart. So it means a lot to me to receive this recognition today. Thank you for everybody supporting me and all the people all over the world who use floccus and help make it better.

Marcel Klehr

Software Engineer at Nextcloud

Beginning of a new tradition

We want to thank our community for all the nominations submitted in each of the categories. Our jury’s task to pick the winners has not been easy. With so many exciting projects and contributions submitted, we are certain the Nextcloud Community Awards should become a good tradition of ours. We are looking forward to recognizing more outstanding contributions in the coming years!